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Dutch edition book cover of Why I Am Not a Christian. Why I Am Not a Christian is an essay by the British philosopher Bertrand Russell.Originally a talk given on 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 has been republished several times in English and in translation.
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Criticism of religion involves criticism of the validity, concept, or ideas of religion. [1] Historical records of criticism of religion go back to at least 5th century BCE in ancient Greece, in Athens specifically, with Diagoras "the Atheist" of Melos. In ancient Rome, an early known example is Lucretius' De rerum natura from the 1st century BCE.
The argument from religious experience is an argument for the existence of God. It holds that the best explanation for religious experiences is that they constitute genuine experience or perception of a divine reality. Various reasons have been offered for and against accepting this contention.
In the dialectic form of the essay, which is commonly used in philosophy, the writer makes a thesis and argument, then objects to their own argument (with a counterargument), but then counters the counterargument with a final and novel argument. This form benefits from presenting a broader perspective while countering a possible flaw that some ...
A popular example was the misconception that people from the Middle Ages believed that the Earth was flat, and that only science, freed from religious dogma, had shown that it was spherical. This thesis was a popular historiographical approach during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but most contemporary historians of science now reject it.
Ultimately James made a pragmatic argument for religion, writing that "the uses of religion, its uses to the individual who has it, and the uses of the individual himself to the world, are the best arguments that truth is in it". [15] As an example of this he gives the therapeutic effects of prayer. [16]
In this essay, Hume offers a pioneering naturalist account of the causes, effects, and historical development of religious belief. Hume argues that a crude polytheism was the earliest religion of mankind and locates the origins of religion in emotion, particularly hope, fear, and the desire to control the future.