SPROUL: In his book, Why I Am Not a Christian, Russell relates the experience he had
as a teenager when he first wrote the writings – I’m sorry, he first
read the writings of John Stuart Mill. And, Mill had a profound influence upon Russell's thinking.
He relates in this anecdote that going into his later teenage years,
Russell believed in the existence of God, based upon the simple
reasoning and inference that the world, as he perceived it, required ultimately a first cause.
He reasoned causally and cosmologically back to the creator from his observations
of the creation. Which is the standard approach with the use of the so-called cosmological
argument, because it is an argument based upon the cosmos demanding a sufficient cause for its being.
When he was 17 or 18 years old, Bertrand Russell read this critique by John Stuart Mill regarding
causality, and Mill made the observation that if everything that exists requires a cause,
then not only would the universe require a cause but God Himself would require a cause. If God
required a cause, then whatever it was that caused God would likewise require a cause, ad infinitum.
And so, Mill argued against the cosmological argument on the basis of the logical possibility
of an infinite regress—that is the idea of an infinite series of finite causes. Now,
Russell considered that insight that he gleaned from Mill to be
something of an epiphany. He said that controlled his thinking with respect to the existence of God,
literally for the rest of his life. So, it was a philosophical argument that he heard as a teenager
that turned him from a theist into an agnostic. Again, this is based upon the possibility
that he saw for an infinite regress, or an infinite series of finite causes. Now,
the problem, if I may interject a brief critique at this point,
is that Russell made the same error with respect to the cosmological argument
that John Stuart Mill had made. Mill passed the error onto Russell, and neither one of these
great mental giants ever realized the obvious error that they were making. The error, of course,
was in their understanding of causality and the law of cause and effect. The law
of cause and effect does not assert or maintain that everything must have a cause. Rather,
the law of causality, as we have seen, declares that every effect must have an antecedent cause.
As sharp as Russell was in the application of principles of logic and mathematics to philosophy,
frankly he should have noticed the difference in definition here, and he would have seen that
the classic definition of the law of cause and effect is an analytically true statement, because
the statement is true by definition. To say that every effect must have a cause
is the same as saying every triangle must have three sides. An effect, by definition,
is that which has an antecedent cause. A cause cannot be a cause without producing an effect.
An effect cannot be an effect without having been caused. So, the law of causality is merely
a formal extension of the law of non-contradiction and is a logical necessity.
Now it’s one thing to say that every effect must have a cause. It’s quite another thing to say
that everything that exists must have a cause. That second statement
presupposes that everything that is, is an effect. The whole point of Christian theism is that God
is not an effect. He is not caused by something prior to Him or outside of Him, but He has the
power of existence, or the power of being in and of Himself, eternally. From a logical perspective,
the concept of a self-existent eternal Being violates no rule of math or of logic. It is a
perfectly legitimate, rational idea. The idea of an uncaused effect is a perfectly irrational idea,
and it is falsified because it is false by definition. So, it amazes me
that Bertrand Russell, as sharp as he was, missed that critical distinction all of his life.