Religion and Science
2. The Views of Bertrand Russell
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Let us throw some light on Russell’s statement.
What he means to say is that it is the claim of
religion that there is design in the universe, which is
a proof that there is some consciousness behind it,
which has accorded it this ‘design’. Had it not been
so, the universe would have been a pile of garbage,
and to Russell, this argument is true in principle.
But then he says that Darwin has proved from his
study of biological species that various species of
life which exist on earth in organized and
meaningful form have, in fact, evolved over a
period of millions of years through a process of
material action and interaction. For instance, the
giraffe was not created, but evolved from the goat
after a long process of natural selection.
I do not want to dwell in detail on Darwinism,
suffice it to say that Russell, while admitting the
validity of the argument in principle, has rejected
the very same argument on very flimsy grounds.
First and foremost, it must be borne in mind that
Darwinism is an unproved theory. The only thing
that it can be said to indicate is that all forms of
life did not appear on earth at one and the same
