COPLESTON & RUSSELL (1948) BBC RADIO DEBATE - SUMMARY
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This extract is a transcript of a radio debate between F.C. Copleston (Catholic priest and religious believer) and Bertrand Russell (philosopher and non-believer), broadcast in 1948 on the BBC.
In the first section, the Argument from Contingency, Copleston argues that God must exist because the universe requires a Necessary Being to explain it, but Russell argues that the universe is a brute fact.. In the second section, on Religious Experience, Copleston argues that the powerful influence of religious experiences on people's lives makes the existence of God more likely, but Russell argues that these are subjective experiences. |
Russell is accusing Copleston of committing the Fallacy of Composition. A similar criticism of the Cosmological Argument was made by David Hume. This is the idea that qualities of all the components are not necessarily shared by the whole. A wall made out of red bricks will be red, but a wall made out of small bricks won't necessarily be a small wall.
Therefore, just because the universe is made out of contingent things, it doesn't follow automatically that the universe is a contingent thing. Copleston doesn't have a great reply to this (because there isn't one). |
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If one refused to sit at the chess board and make a move, one cannot, of course, be checkmated - F.C. Copleston