II The Views of Bertrand Russell

The Views of Bertrand Russel years for a baby to grow to full adult height, followed by a process of maturation which goes on for many more years, or that it can take more than half a century for a tree to grow from a seed to its greatest height. In order to believe in Almighty God, it has never been thought necessary to believe that the man and the tree came into existence all of a sudden. Even if, in future, research proves that the phenomena of life did not appear abruptly but came into existence by means of a long evolutionary process, there can be no question of a rethinking of, far less a rejection of religion. A Final Word The above-quoted statements of Bertrand Russell, an avowed atheist, serve as an acknowledgement of the truth of religion in principle. He admits that there is design in the universe, and that design can prove the existence of a designer. But in order to reject this argument based on design, he had to have recourse to Darwinism, which means rejecting his own accepted position on very flimsy grounds. This is because the existence of design is a unanimously established fact, whereas Darwinism is not an established fact. At least, that part of the theory of evolution which asserts that, by material action and interaction, meaningful design can come into existence among living species is certainly still only a hypothesis. When the design exists, the argument in favour of a designer is, according to Russell, valid. Since Darwinism has yet to be acclaimed as a final truth, a ‘Russell’ can hardly on this basis, reject arguments in favour of religion. 1. My Philosophical Development p. 11. 2. Ibid, p.16. 3. Human Knowledge, p.9. 4. Our Knowledge of the External World, p.13. 5. My Philosophical Development, p.277. 6. The Problems of Philosophy, p.46. 7. My Philosophical Development, p.46.