Bertrand Russell on Fine People
"Why I Am Not a Christian" in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1986), p. 62.
Do you think that, if you were granted omnipotence and omniscience and
millions of years in which to perfect your world, you could produce
nothing better than the Ku Klux Klan, the Fascist, and Mr. Winston
Churchill? Really I am not much impressed with the people who say:
"Look at me: I am such a splendid product that there must have been
design in the universe." I am not very impressed by the splendor of
those people. Therefore I think that this argument of design is really
a very poor argument indeed. Moreover, if you accept the ordinary laws
of science, you have to suppose that human life and life in general on
this planet will die out in due course: it is merely a flash in the
pan; it is a stage in the decay of the solar system; at a certain stage
of decay you get the sort of conditions of temperature and so forth
which are suitable to protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in
the life of the whole solar system. You see in the moon the sort of
thing to which the earth is tending — something dead, cold, and
lifeless.
Sin, Evil, Inhumanity + The Goodness of God

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