(Originally written September 4, 2005 in Book 2)
Why I am not a Christian
Bertrand Russell
1957
Do we survive death?
A person is merely a series of experiences connected by memory and by certain similarities of the sort we call habit.
It is impossible to prove that we do not survive death, meaning that our person as defined previously does not stay alive through the soul, but it is very unlikely because our memory is tied into our brains, which die.
Emotions, not rational thought causes belief in an afterlife.
The fear of death is the most important emotion in this belief.
An afterlife kills the fear of death.
The admiration of the excellence of man is another emotion that causes belief in the afterlife.
Our beliefs of good and evil are derivative of experience and culture, not of divine or supernatural origin.
We only believe man is good in abstract.
"The world in which we live can be understood as a result of muddle and accident, but if it is the outcome of deliberate purpose, the purpose must have been that of a fiend. For my part, I find accident a less painful and more plausible hypothesis" (Russell).
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