Why I Am Not a Christian

this planet will eventually die out. It is merely a "flash in the pan"—a brief stage in the decay of the solar system. At a certain stage of this decay, you get conditions of temperature and environment suitable for protoplasm, and there is life for a short time in the history of the entire solar system. You can see in the moon the state toward which the earth is tending: something dead, cold, and lifeless.

I am told that this view is depressing, and people will sometimes say that if they believed it, they would be unable to go on living. Do not believe it; it is all nonsense. Nobody really worries much about what will happen millions of years from now. Even if they think they are worrying about it, they are deceiving themselves. They are actually worried about something much more mundane, or perhaps it is merely a bad digestion; but nobody is seriously rendered unhappy by the thought of something that will happen to this world millions and millions of years hence. Therefore, although it is a gloomy view to suppose that life will eventually die out—at least, I suppose we may say so, though sometimes when I contemplate what people do with their lives, I think it might be a consolation—it is not enough to render life miserable. It simply makes you turn your attention to other things.

THE MORAL ARGUMENTS FOR DEITY

Now we reach one stage further in what I shall call the intellectual descent that the