Bertrand Russell on Creation
"Science and Religion"
(1931) in Bertrand Russell on God and Religion (Buffalo, NY:
Prometheus, 1986), p. 177-78.
Are we to infer from this that the world was made by a Creator?
Certainly not, if we are to adhere to the cannons of valid scientific
inference. There is no reason whatever why the universe should not have
begun spontaneously, except that it seems odd that it should do so; but
there is no law of nature to the effect that things which seem odd to
us must not happen. To infer a Creator is to infer a cause, and causal
inferences are only admissible in science when they proceed from
observed causal laws. Creation out of nothing is an occurrence which
has not been observed. There is, therefore, no better reason to suppose
that the world was caused by a Creator than to suppose that it was
uncaused; either equally contradicts the causal laws that we can
observe.
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