The September 2014 Bookworm Report

This is the first of what we expect to be a regular feature:  The Bookworm Report by HSGP member Russell Pizer.  The series will explore books not just on topics such as Humanism and religion but other related topics such as the history of American religious ideas including the Founding Fathers and their relationship, or lack thereof, with religion.  

The Bookworm Report

In 1999, I finally found a belief system with which I was – I think I should say – "the most

comfortable." It was with the Palm Coast, Florida, Freethinkers. I really didn’t know

what a "Freethinker" was but the meetings of that organization appealed to me.

After talking with the chairperson, Mimi Cerniglia, individually on a number of

occasions over the next few months, she suggested I read a book by Bertrand Russell

titled: Why I Am Not a Christian. It was a book that greatly helped solidify many of my

thoughts regarding questions I had been asking myself – directly and indirectly –

since the mid 1950's.  However, I was then confronted with that ugly demon of truth that

Carl Sagan has identified as the "Bamboozle Factor."

Carl Sagan has describes this ugly factor in his book, The Demon Haunted

World. On page 241 this is found: "One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve

been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re

no longer interested in finding the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too

painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken . . . "

This book by Bertrand Russell – Why I am not a Christian – enabled me to ask the

questions – if only of myself – that I previously had not even considered. For me,

the facts pointed a way to easily surmount the "Bamboozle Factor."

For this "Bookworm Report," I will simply lift the description of this book from

the back cover of the paperback edition that is dated 1957.

"Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has

always been concerned with the basic questions to which religion also addresses

itself–questions about man’s place in the universe and the nature of the good life,

questions that involve life after death, morality, freedom, education and sexual

ethics. He brings to his treatment of these questions the same courage, scrupulous

logic and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, writer and teacher has

been famous. These qualities make the essays included in this book perhaps the

most graceful and moving presentation of the freethinker’s position since the days of Hume

and Voltaire.

"‘I am as firmly convinced that religions do harm as I am that they are

untrue,’ Russell declares in his Preface and his reasoned opposition to any system or

dogma which he feels may shackle man’s mind runs through all these essays in this

book, whether they were written as early as 1899 or as late as 1954.

"The book has been edited, with Lord Russell’s full approval and cooperation,

by Professor Paul Edwards of the Philosophy Department of New York University. In an

Appendix, Professor Edwards contributes a full account of the highly controversial

‘Bertrand Russell Case’ of 1940, in which Russell was judicially declared ‘unfit’ to teach

philosophy at the College of the City of New York.

"Whether the reader shares or rejects Bertrand Russell’s views, he will find

this book an invigorating challenge to set notions, a masterly statement of a

philosophical position, and a pure joy to read." 

– Russell Pizer