Why I Am Not a Christian

and so they say that there must be a God, and there must be heaven and hell, so that in the long run there may be justice. That is a very curious argument. If you looked at the matter from a scientific point of view, you would say: "After all, I know only this world. I do not know about the rest of the universe, but so far as one can argue at all on probabilities, one would say that probably this world is a fair sample, and if there is injustice here, the odds are that there is injustice elsewhere also." Supposing you received a crate of oranges that you opened, and you found the entire top layer of oranges bad; you would not argue, "The ones underneath must be good, so as to redress the balance." You would say, "Probably the whole lot is a bad consignment." That is really what a scientific person would argue about the universe. He would say, "Here we find in this world a great deal of injustice, and so far as that goes, that is a reason for supposing that justice does not rule the world; therefore, as far as it goes, it provides a moral argument against a deity rather than in favor of one."

Of course, I know that the intellectual arguments I have been discussing are not what really move people. What really leads people to believe in God is not any intellectual argument at all. Most people believe in God because they have been taught to do so from early infancy, and that is the main reason.

Then I think the next most powerful reason is the wish for safety, a sort of feeling that there is a "big brother" who will look after