I. INTRODUCTION
a. Background information to introduce the issue
Bertrand Russell was a revolutionary in the field of humanitarian ideals and freedom of thought. Aside from that he was probably one of the most profound and sophisticated spokesman for atheism from the last century, His literary and communication skills are definitely almost unprecedented winning a nobel prize for Literature. His influence and iconicness that stood the test of time and his literary works that are still being talked about years after his death is a proof of his undying influence.
Despite the fact that he was agnostic and an atheist, he felt that he was not up to the pedestal of being a Christian because he thought he couldn’t live up to the righteous maxims of Christianity, he found the religion too hypocritical and its norms too uptight and self-righteous for his own sake. It was his contention that religion and its maxim’s purpose was to limit knowledge, especially to children and prevents their ability to think clearly by trapping them with norms and inhibiting them from cooperating with others whose views are different from theirs. He also believes that religion flourishes fear and dependency. He also asserted that religion caused war, oppression and misery that is happening right now. Issues:
According to Russell, The character of Christ isn’t as divine as God because of the flaws in his teachings and to his followers. Russell attacks Christ’s divinity and characteristics and followers in attempt to debunk Christianity.
And that the argument of design is unpersuasive because if God was omnipotent, why would he create such detrimental things such as the KKK and fascists. Russell asserts that God’s imperfections caused detrimental things.
However, it’s very noticeable that Russell’s persecuting points about Christianity all stemmed from his biased hatred towards Christianity and obviously all these hatred lapsed into his arguments that were all blinded by his own biased views.

Thesis Statements:
Bertrand Russel’s Essay about why he’s not a Christian is both unpersuasive and shallow due to the fact that the criterion he used for grilling Christ’s character was very arbitrary and that his attempts at finding holes in the argument for design were not only futile but shallow at best.

A.)Main Argument 1:
Russell tries (and fails) to debunk Christ’s character and divinity by the type of arguments he used
B.)Evidence:
In this argument, Russell tries to throw out the Character of Christ by using an unethical way of arguing by having no respect to the context of the verses and using selective and arbitrary criterions of explaining these verses which just made him unprofessional and shallow. For example, Russell picks out a verse from the bible like this:“But I tell you, Do not resist an evil person. If someone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.” (Matthew 5:39; Luke 6:29). Russell asserts that not many Christians turn their other cheek when someone does them wrong, and since Christians font follow this rule, there’s something wrong with the Christians and by extension, Jesus Christ himself. But what Russell forgets is that this verse is taken out of context and has no respect to the entire text which offers a better explanation! And according to D.A Carson,
“...we must agree that absolutizing any text, without due respect for the context and flow of the argument, as well as for other things Jesus says elsewhere, is bound to lead to distortion and misrepresentation of what Jesus means.‛ ( Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount, pg 54)

What the verse really meant In the larger passage of Matthew 5:38-42, Jesus Christ was referring to the act of personal self-sacrifice; and a smite on the cheek was typically referred to as an insult as opposed to an act of bodily harm, which was translated from the Greek text, something not present on the english translation. Jesus was saying that to be Christian, you shouldn’t stoop down to insults, he wasn’t referring to ignore your sense of self-preservation. To conclude otherwise would be a misrepresentation of Christ’s words.

Jesus believes in hell because a just God would never let a grave mistake to go unpunished, not doing so would just steam more criticisms from Russell. In this argument, we are criticizing Russell for criticizing Christ’s concept of hell. He then makes this statement: “I do not myself feel that any person who is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment” and also this: “vindictive fury against these people who would not listen to his preaching”, he combines these verses to once again question Christ’s morality into the table
And as evidence of his contentions, Russell, again selectively picks out a random verse from the bible: “you snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? ‛”(Matthew 23:33). And just like his previous argument, he arbitrarily takes out a verse out of it’s context because it has the right combination of words to make Christ look bad and can make his point. In the whole chapter 23, Jesus was condemning the leaders of Israel because their intransigence has led their people astray. It’s not an example of Jesus being personally insulted. The leaders of Israel had been given the law and the prophets and in the mind of Jesus, they had no excuses for their continued disobedience other than their own stubborn hearts. Condemnation is a consequence of decision, not a punishment by Christ.

Bertrand Russell just uses oversimplification on his explanations about selected verses using simple cause and effect explanations where there should be multiple extraneous variables present. As I said before, the evidences that Bertrand Russell pointed out to debunk Christ was purely arbitrary and unfair. He is using an ignorant approach in all of these, it’s hard to believe that Russell used these types of argument to prove his point where he can be seen as a poster boy for the Atheist Association of America rather than a serious philosopher.
He encourages the reader to accept the arguments as it is but what he’s really showing his lack of ethics. If he could just research the entire biblical and theological context of the verses that he abused for his own interest makes him downright ignorant. Furthermore, the mishandling of the scripture to mislead people into believing a falsified context of the Leadership of Christ just screams bitter and angry to me. It’s sad to see Russell being blinded by his own anger and ignorance.
C.) Main argument 2:
His contentions on debunking the argument of design were all futile and unpersuasive because he asserted that we live in the best suitable world for us to adapt to
D.) evidence:
In our first argument to debunk Russell of his criticisms against the argument of design, we are gonna tackle this holistically, and say that the world that God created has already gone. Humans and the current state of technology has since change it from what God envisioned, Russell in his statements made an overgeneralization that anyone could just raise their eyebrows in confusion because as well know, the world has changed because of humans, because of the knowledge that we had and still have.
Russell didn’t even try to bother asking any of the fundamental questions such as how did the organism survive before it had “grown to be suitable to” its environment? How did we gain this knowledge and technology that we have? These are of course, avoided and unanswered question by Russell which is enough to throw out this senseless argument out of the window
In the later part, Russell asked that if God was really omnipotent and omniscient, and had millions of years to perfect the world then why would God create the KKK and fascists but what Russell failed to say is that the existence of KKK and the fascists were surged by our free will not because of God’s flaws.
And in an attempt to kill the beast that is the argument of design, he asked the question stated in the previous paragraph. The answer to these questions depends on whomsoever person you ask. The racists would agree about KKK while normal persons wouldn’t. but then again, why would he resort to such an outlandish arguments when his own reasons would’ve been enough? Russell’s failure to address the theological angle is really troubling. He fails to simply offer and say that the state of perfection (which is an ideal world free of racists) is filled with humans with their own free will. That God took the risk of having it because he was willing to take in order for love to be present rather than simply having a band of ignorant followers.
I mean if Russell really pushed for this, he wouldn’t even be writing this essay to begin with. He would be a lifeless android following Christ’s every command and not being able to do what he does best, which is writing.
And lastly, Scientists are still open to the intelligent design theory as opposed to the macro evolution theory that stemmed from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution because In order to enthrone natural selection by dethroning nature's God, the Darwinist must covertly assume a God's-eye view of the proceedings. Natural selection is blind to the survival value of adaptive strategies. Only an intelligent observer can appreciate this problem-solving strategy. Thus the naturalist must step outside of nature and look back at nature with a godlike detachment. A hidden homunculus is always peering over the shoulder of the blind watchmaker.

Russell's appeal to simple ends and means seems to be endless, even a simple 12 year old kid can figure out that the world doesn’t operate on a mere 1+1 =2 situation. Natural or moral evils may be a means to a higher good. Moreover, to brand the world as "defective" presupposes an ideal standard of reference. And this, once again, assumes a standpoint superior to nature. Something is only defective if it falls short of the mark. So Russell must resort to goal-oriented norms to eliminate teleology from nature. Seems like an exercise in self-rebuttal.

Conclusion: Therefore we conclude that Russell’s arguments do not provide any substantial or persuading evidence as to why he shouldn’t be a Christian or anyone else for that matter, his attempts were rather mediocre and futile at best. His desperate attempt at debunking Christ’s Character has led him to engage in the worst case of biblical criticism. This is conveniently ignoring both general context and the immediate verses which serve to clarify the appropriate meaning of the verse he arbitrarily selected. I understand that his bias and anger with religion hindered him from creating a constructive and ethical criticism against Christ and because of this, Russell has failed to plunge the Character of Christ through the evidence he used. Another thing is that we conclude that Russell’s attempt to debunk the Argument of design was futile at best; because his view of the world is irrational, A world that is based on his own “intelligent theories”. The fact that he purposely ignored our own free will, our knowledge and the scientists who are more skilled in the area of evolution better than him is very noticeable in his failure in trying to debunk this theory.

Bibliography Various Authors. (2004). Why I'm not Bertrand Russell . Available: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2004/04/why-im-not-bertrand-russell.html. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.
2 Rev. Ralph Allan Smith. (2008). Why Bertrand Russell Was Not A Christian. Available: http://www.berith.org/pdf/Why_Bertrand_Russell_Was_Not_A_Christian.pdf. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.

3 Warren Rachele. (2009). Page 1 A Critical Response to Bertrand Russell ’ s Why I Am Not a Christian. Available: http://loveacceptforgive.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/a-critical-response-to-why-i-am-not-a-christian-by-bertrand-russell.pdf. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.

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[ 1 ]. Various Authors. (2004). Why I'm not Bertrand Russell . Available: http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2004/04/why-im-not-bertrand-russell.html. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.
[ 2 ]. Rev. Ralph Allan Smith. (2008). Why Bertrand Russell Was Not A Christian. Available: http://www.berith.org/pdf/Why_Bertrand_Russell_Was_Not_A_Christian.pdf. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.
[ 3 ]. Warren Rachele. (2009). Page 1 A Critical Response to Bertrand Russell ’ s Why I Am Not a Christian. Available: http://loveacceptforgive.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/a-critical-response-to-why-i-am-not-a-christian-by-bertrand-russell.pdf. Last accessed 11th Feb 2014.