Russell's Essay
His essay may be summed in his quote: "The good life is one inspired by love and guided by knowledge".
He does not claim this is a logically necessary belief, but instead he wishes to convince the most people to believe in it by providing examples and its consequences.
I believe that when I die I shall rot, and nothing of my ego will survive. I am not young and I love life. But I should scorn to shiver with terror at the thought of annihilation. Happiness is nonetheless true happiness because it must come to an end, nor do thought and love lose their value because they are not everlasting. Many a man has borne himself proudly on the scaffold; surely the same pride should teach us to think truly about man's place in the world. Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cosy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigour, and the great spaces have a splendour of their own.
Quoted in The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins, 2006, ISBN 978-0-618-68000-9, pp354
Read more about this topic: What I Believe
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