Your Morning Bertrand
For Thursday, May 15th, 2025
Week 114 of our regular morning feature here at Friedman of the Plains Worldwide in which we highlight the great words and works of great men and women, as well as those who are insufferable, delusional, and even fictional.
This Week Bertrand Russell
“That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.” — Why I Am Not a Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects
Oh, if only that quote had some kind of relevance to the current situation.
I enjoy TV shows like Person of Interest in which bad people get the shit beat out of them. If I were allowed to dictate, all people who have been undisputedly convicted of multiple violent felonies would be beaten to death in the public square. I also understand that my fantasies should never become reality because of organizations like ICE that can't be bothered with legality. Religion has given people throughout history the license to indulge their most murderous impulses and then blame their deity. The tragedy is that they have convinced others in society to accept such a lame excuse.