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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Ultimate Questions in Philosophy of Religion Chapter 10: Dad! But...Who Made God?! Bertrand Arthur William Russell; the British philosopher and mathematician of the 20th century (died in 1970) with his emphasis on logical analysis influenced the course of 20th century philosophy. He is a well known in the West for his anti-religious attempts.

His work ‘What I believe' which was published in 1925 barred him from teaching at the College of the City of New York, for his attacks on religion. In his lecture ‘Why I Am Not a Christian' delivered at the Battersea Town Hall in London in 1927, he argues the existence of God by refuting the argument of the First Cause as presented by Christian theologians. This chapter aims at addressing his argument and unveiling the fallacy of it.

I will also elaborate on the misleading theological roots to his misconceptions of God. Part of his lecture on ‘Why I Am Not a Christian' reads: “ Perhaps the simplest and easiest to understand is the argument of the First Cause. It is maintained that everything we see in this world has a cause, and as you go back in the chain of Causes further and further you must come to a First Cause, and to that First Cause you give the name of God.

That argument, I suppose, does not carry very much weight nowadays, because, in the first place, cause is not quite what it used to be. The philosophers and the men of science have got going on cause, and it has not anything like the vitality that it used to have; but apart from that, you can see that the argument that there must be a First Cause is one that cannot have any validity.

I may say that when I was a young man, and was debating these questions very seriously in my mind, I for a long time accepted the argument of the First Cause, until one day, at the age of eighteen, I read John Stuart Mill's Autobiography, and I there found this sentence: "My father taught me that the question, Who made me?

cannot be answered, since it immediately suggests the further question, Who made God?" That very simple sentence showed me, as I still think, the fallacy in the argument of the First Cause. If everything must have a cause, then God must have a cause. If there can be anything without a cause, it may just as well be the world as God, so that there cannot be any validity in that argument.