The Copleston–Russell debate is an exchange concerning the

existence of God The existence of God (or more generally, the existence of deities) is a subject of debate in theology, philosophy of religion and popular culture. A wide variety of arguments for and against the existence of God or deities can be categorize ...

between

Frederick Copleston Frederick Charles Copleston (10 April 1907 – 3 February 1994) was an English Roman Catholic Jesuit priest, philosopher, and historian of philosophy, best known for his influential multi-volume ''A History of Philosophy'' (1946–75). Cop ...

and

Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British mathematician, philosopher, logician, and public intellectual. He had a considerable influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, linguistics, ar ...

broadcast on the

BBC Third Programme The BBC Third Programme was a national radio station produced and broadcast from 1946 until 1967, when it was replaced by Radio 3. It first went on the air on 29 September 1946 and quickly became one of the leading cultural and intellectual f ...

on 28 January 1948 and again in April 1959. The debate centers on two points: the metaphysical and moral arguments for the existence of God. According to

Graham Oppy Graham Robert Oppy (born 1960) is an Australian philosopher whose main area of research is the philosophy of religion. He currently holds the posts of Professor of Philosophy and Associate Dean of Research at Monash University and serves as C ...

and

Nick Trakakis Nick Trakakis is an Australian philosopher who is Assistant Director of the Centre for Philosophy and Phenomenology of Religion of the Australian Catholic University. He has previously taught at Monash University and Deakin University, and during ...

, the arguments used in this debate would typify the arguments presented by

theists Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of a supreme being or deities. In common parlance, or when contrasted with ''deism'', the term often describes the classical conception of God that is found in monotheism (also referred t ...

and

atheists Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

in the latter half of the 20th century, with Russell's approach often being used by atheists in the late 20th century. A text of the broadcast solicited by

Michael Polanyi Michael Polanyi (; hu, Polányi Mihály; 11 March 1891 – 22 February 1976) was a Hungarian-British polymath, who made important theoretical contributions to physical chemistry, economics, and philosophy. He argued that positivism supplie ...

appeared in the final Autumn 1948 issue of the short-lived ''Humanitas, A University Quarterly'' journal. This was reprinted in the British edition of Russell's ''Why I Am Not A Christian and Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects'' (1957) and in numerous anthologies since.

Overview

In the 1948 BBC Radio Debate between Bertrand Russell and

, Copleston's position was that God's existence could be proven philosophically. Russell's position was that of an

agnostic Agnosticism is the view or belief that the existence of God, of the divine or the supernatural is unknown or unknowable. (page 56 in 1967 edition) Another definition provided is the view that "human reason is incapable of providing sufficie ...

(in the sense in which both he and Copleston understood the term) as he thought that the non-existence of God could not be proven. Whether Russell was an agnostic or atheist is a question he had previously addressed in 1947. Speaking with fellow philosophers, he had said, he would identify himself as agnostic. But to "the ordinary man in the street" he would identify himself as an atheist as he thought the

Christian God God in Christianity is believed to be the eternal, supreme being who created and preserves all things. Christians believe in a monotheistic conception of God, which is both transcendent (wholly independent of, and removed from, the material ...

no more likely to exist than gods of Ancient Greece and he thought neither "sufficiently probable to be worth serious consideration". Copleston argued that the existence of God can be proved from

contingency Contingency or Contingent may refer to: * Contingency (philosophy), in philosophy and logic * Contingency plan, in planning * Contingency table, in statistics * Contingency theory, in organizational theory * Contingency theory (biology) in evoluti ...

, and thought that only the existence of God would make sense of human's moral and religious experience: Russell however found both arguments unconvincing. He contended that Copleston's argument from contingency is a fallacy, and that there are better explanations for our moral and religious experience:

Notes

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Copleston-Russell debate Philosophy Analytic philosophy Philosophical debates Arguments against the existence of God Arguments for the existence of God Religious controversies in radio Religious controversies in the United Kingdom