God in this godless universe
Bertrand Russel
In the pre-scientific world, power was God’s. There was not much that man could do even in the most favourable circumstances, and the circumstances were liable to become unfavourable if man incurred the divine displeasure. This showed itself in earthquakes, pestilences, famines, and defeats in war. Since such events were frequent, it was obviously very easy to incur divine displeasure. Judging by the analogy of earthly monarchs, man decided that the thing most displeasing to the Deity is a lack of humility. If you wished to slip through life without disaster, you must be meek; you must be aware of your defencelessness, and constantly ready to confess it. But the God before whom you humbled yourself was conceived in the likeness of man, so that the universe seemed human and warm and cozy, like home if you are the youngest of a large family, painful at times, but never alien and incomprehensible.
In the scientific world, all this is different. It is not by prayer and humility that you cause things to go as you wish, but by acquiring a knowledge of natural laws. The power you acquire in this way is much greater and much more reliable than that formerly supposed to be acquired by prayer because you never could tell whether your prayer would be favourably heard in heaven. The power of prayer, moreover, had recognized limits; it would have been impious to ask too much. But the power of science has no known limits. We were told that faith could remove mountains, but no one believed it. We are now told that the atomic bomb can remove mountains, and everyone believes it.
It is true that if we ever did stop to think about the cosmos, we might find it uncomfortable. The sun may grow cold or blow up; the earth may lose its atmosphere and become uninhabitable. Life is a brief, small and transitory phenomenon in an obscure corner, not at all the sort of thing that one would make a fuss about if one were not personally concerned. But it is monkish and futile, so the scientific man will say: to dwell on such cold and unpractical thoughts. Let us get on with the job of fertilizing the desert, melting Arctic ice, and killing each other with perpetually improving techniques. Some of our activities will do good, some harm, but all alike will show our power. And so, in this godless universe, we shall become Gods.
