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Chula Vista · 02-19-2016, 11:30 AM

I think Bertrand Russell summed up my current opinion best, long before I was born.

Quote:

Most of us have been brought up to believe that the universe owes its existence to an all-wise and all-powerful creator, whose purposes are beneficent even in what to us may seem evil. I do not think it is right to refuse to apply to this belief the kind of tests that we should apply to one that touches our emotions less intimately and profoundly. Is there any evidence of the existence of such a being? Undoubtedly belief in him is comforting and sometimes has some good moral effects on character and behavior. But this is no evidence that the belief is true. For my part, I think the belief lost whatever rationality it once possessed when it was discovered that the earth is not the center of the universe. So long as it was thought that the sun and the planets and the stars revolved about the earth, it was natural to suppose that the universe had a purpose connected with the earth, and, since man was what man most admired on earth, this purpose was supposed to be embodied in man. But astronomy and geology have changed all this. The earth is a minor planet of a minor star which is one of many millions of stars in a galaxy which is one of many millions of galaxies. Even within the life of our own planet man is only a brief interlude. Nonhuman life existed for countless ages before man evolved. Man, even if he does not commit scientific suicide, will perish ultimately through failure of water or air or warmth. It is difficult to believe that omnipotence needed so vast a setting for so small and transitory a result.

Apart from the minuteness and brevity of human species, I cannot feel that it is a worthy climax to such an enormous prelude. There is a rather repulsive smugness and self-complacency in the argument that man is so splendid as to be evidence of infinite wisdom and infinite power in his creator. Those who use this kind of reasoning always try to concentrate our attention on the few saints and sages; they try to make us forget the Neros and Attilas and Hitlers and the millions of mean poltroons to whom such men owed their power. And even what is best in us is apt to lead to disaster. Religions that teach brotherly love have been used as an excuse for persecution, and our profoundest scientific insight is made into a means of mass destruction. I can imagine a sardonic demon producing us for his amusement, but I cannot attribute to a being who is wise, beneficent, and omnipotent the terrible weight of cruelty, suffering, and ironic degradation of what is best that has marred the history of man in increasing measure as he has become more master of his fate.