II The Views of Bertrand Russell

The Views of Bertrand Russel and that these arguments, or others of a similar tenor, have been accepted by many eminent philosophers, but the logic to which these traditional argu-ments appealed is of an antiquated Aristotelian sort which is now rejected by practically all logicians except such as are Catholics. There is one of these arguments, which is not purely logical; I mean the argument from design. This argument, however, was destroyed by Darwin; and, in any case could only be made logically respectable at the cost of abandoning God’s omnipotence.” (p. 9) The most important point here is that Russell has considered the argument from design as being valid. But while accepting this in principle, Russell says that Darwinism has altogether destroyed its logical position or, at least, has lessened its importance to a considerable degree. Let us throw some light on Russell’s statement. What he means to say is that it is the claim of religion that there is design in the universe, which is a proof that there is some consciousness behind it, which has accorded it this ‘design’. Had it not been so, the universe would have been a pile of garbage, and to Russell, this argument is true in principle. But then he says that Darwin has proved from his study of biological species that various species of life which exist on earth in organized and meaningful form have, in fact, evolved over a period of millions of years through a process of material action and interaction. For instance, the giraffe was not created, but evolved from the goat after a long process of natural selection. I do not want to dwell in detail on Darwinism, suffice it to say that Russell, while admitting the validity of the argument in principle, has rejected the very same argument on very flimsy grounds. First and foremost, it must be borne in mind that Darwinism is an unproved theory. The only thing that it can be said to indicate is that all forms of life did not appear on earth at one and the same time, but that the different species had their origin at different points in time. Further it shows that there was a particular sequential