Why I Am Not a Christian

Mohammedans, Buddhists, fetish-worshippers, and so on; and in that sense, we are all Christians. The geography books count us all in, but that is a purely geographical sense, which I suppose we can ignore. Therefore, I take it that when I tell you why I am not a Christian, I have to tell you two different things: first, why I do not believe in God and in immortality; and, secondly, why I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.

But for the successful efforts of unbelievers in the past, I could not take so elastic a definition of Christianity as that. As I said before, in olden days it had a much more full-blooded sense. For instance, it included the belief in hell. Belief in eternal hellfire was an essential item of Christian belief until relatively recent times. In this country, as you know, it ceased to be an essential item because of a decision of the Privy Council The highest judicial body in the British Empire at the time, and from that decision the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Archbishop of York dissented; but in this country, our religion is settled by Act of Parliament, and therefore the Privy Council was able to override their Graces, and hell was no longer necessary to a Christian. Consequently, I shall not insist that a Christian must believe in hell.

THE EXISTENCE OF GOD

To come to this question of the existence of God, it is a large and serious question, and if I were to attempt to deal with it in any adequate manner, I should have to keep you here until Kingdom Come, so you will have to excuse me if I deal with it in a somewhat summary fashion.