Illogic Primer Quotes Clippings Books and Bibliography Paper Trails Links Film

Bertrand Russell on Creation Out of Nothing

"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.