"One is often told that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it. That is the idea—that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked.
We find as we look around the world this curious fact, the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. Every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organised Churches of the world.
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. You may think that I am going too far when I say that that is still so. I do not think that I am."
— Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not a Christian (1927)
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Why I Am Not a Christian is a 1927 essay by British philosopher Bertrand Russell that was hailed by The Independent as "devastating in its use of cold logic" and is listed in the New York Public Library's list of the most influential books of the 20th century. It was originally a talk given 6 March 1927 at Battersea Town Hall, under the auspices of the South London Branch of the National Secular Society. It was published that year as a pamphlet and was later published, with other essays, in the 1967 book, Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects.
Along with What I Believe (1925) Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) ranks for many as articulate examples of Russell's thoughts. The ideas contained within were and still often are, considered controversial, contentious and - to some of the religious - blasphemous.
Image: Original 1927 recto title page to the pamphlet of Why I Am Not a Christian.
