Have you noticed that we tend to copy the behaviours of those we admire most? Judging by what he says and does, I'd suggest that Richard Dawkins admires Bertrand Russell.
(Although
Russell is often quoted by atheists as one of their champions, he was
an agnostic, by his own admission.) "He was a regular visitor at
Garsington, the country estate of Lady Ottoline Morrell with
whom he had a long affair.
In
1921 he divorced and married
for the second time to Dora Black,
with whom he set up a progressive school.
During
the late 1920s and early 1930s, as his marriage to Dora broke down
and as he lost faith in Beacon Hill, Russell continued to write books
intended to emancipate readers from what he saw as the fetters of
outmoded religious belief, restrictive
marriages, repressed attitudes towards human sexuality.
In
1936 he married for the third time
to Patricia Helen Spence. "
"Bertrand
Russell, Biographical Notes," Mantex.com.
http://www.mantex.co.uk/ou/a319/russell.htm>(6
November, 2006).
Tsk, Tsk, so Bertrand Russel married as often as Newt Gingrich, Tom Cruise, Kate Winslet and my elder sister. Thanks for that detail.
ReplyDeleteAs for his alleged agnosticism, instead of psychological assumptions, let him speak for himself.
"None of us would seriously consider the possibility that all the gods of homer really exist, and yet if you were to set to work to give a logical demonstration that Zeus, Hera, Poseidon, and the rest of them did not exist you would find it an awful job. You could not get such proof.
Therefore, in regard to the Olympic gods, speaking to a purely philosophical audience, I would say that I am an Agnostic. But speaking popularly, I think that all of us would say in regard to those gods that we were Atheists. In regard to the Christian God, I should, I think, take exactly the same line."
From "Am I An Atheist Or An Agnostic? - A Plea For Tolerance In The Face Of New Dogmas", 1947
(Note the date, will you)