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Bertrand Russell on You Tube
A 1959 BBC interview with Earl Russell on You Tube. Bertrand Russell (1871-1970) has been a strong influence on humanist thinking. His autobiography began, “Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the sufferings of mankind.”
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How interesting that these two contributions are contiguous, the excellent one headed 'Blast blasphemy', about belief in god being a variant of childhood 'imaginary friends', and the one that quotes Bertrand Russell as saying that three passions dominated his life, the first being a longing for love. If we examine many religious and mystical statements closely, we often find that they are imbued with a longing for love - that is, to BE loved, rather than to give love with all the costs that involves! Bertrand Russell was intelligent and rational enough not to translate his own longing for love into the notion of a deity or saint who unconditionally and passionately loved him, but for some that idea is all too tempting, apparently compensating for the lack of human love in their life and helping them avoid awkward questions such as; 'But why is it that nobody seems to love me?'
The "love" that God gives, according to its believers, is unconditional - like parental love. I've heard people say of a badly-behaved child that only its mother could love it. Believers, especially the badly-behaved ones, seem ultra-needy.
It's a pity that more people don't read Erich Fromm's 'Art of Loving', which explains that love is an activity. If you don't do it, you won't get it.
Thanks for this - I wish more people would read Erich Fromm then. I can think of people who are very sad because they have somehow assumed that the unconditional love, care and support (in every sense) which they got from their parents would just continue to flow to them for the rest of their lives, and don't seem able to figure out what has gone wrong when their life is lonely and unsuccessful. Perhaps no parent should 'give too much' or they produce a dysfunctional individual??
I suppose some believers would argue, however, that once people have experienced the 'love of god', they do start to give some out themselves?