Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects Paperback – Illustrated, 30 October 1967

Dedicated as few men have been to the life of reason, Bertrand Russell has at all times 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 remedy of these questions the same courage, scrupulous logic, and lofty wisdom for which his other work as philosopher, author, and teacher has been famous. These qualities make the essays included in this book in all probability 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’re 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 of the 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 once 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’ll find this book an invigorating challenge to set notions, a masterly remark of a philosophical position, and a pure joy to read.