“What modern apologists call 'true' Christianity is something depending upon a very selective process. It ignores much that is to be found in the Gospels: for example, the parable of the sheep and the goats, and the doctrine that the wicked will suffer eternal torment in Hell fire. It picks out certain parts of the Sermon on the Mount, though even these it often rejects in practice. It leaves the doctrine of non-resistance, for example, to be practised only by non-Christians such as Gandhi. The precepts that it particularly favours are held to embody such a lofty morality that they must have had a divine origin. And yet … these precepts were uttered by Jews before the time of Christ.”

— Bertrand Russell

"Can Religion Cure Our Troubles?", in Stockholm newspaper Dagens Nyheter, part II (11 November 1954)
1950s

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Bertrand Russell 562

logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and politi… 1872–1970

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