John Piper
John Piper is the Pastor for Preaching at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Author of more than 20 books, his preaching and teaching are featured at the Desiring God website and on the daily radio program Desiring God Radio.

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Strange collocation

Bertrand Russell's 'firm foundation of unyielding despair' was tragically odd | by John Piper

Early in college I read Bertrand Russell's Why I Am Not a Christian. Russell, 93 years old when I read that book, died five years later in 1970. He was a British philosopher and one of the founders, with A.N. Whitehead, of analytic philosophy.

One great benefit of going to a good Christian college is that you read important bad books with the help of wise Christian scholars. Most 19-year-olds are not ready to navigate the sophisticated arguments of seasoned skeptics. But with the guidance of a seasoned Christian thinker, the navigation can be profitable. It was for me.

Russell stressed the absoluteness of physical matter. In other words, if you trace the origin of everything all the way back, you arrive at impersonal matter, not personal spirit: Matter, not God, is absolute. This meant, for Russell, that there is only material existence.

This produced one of the bleakest views of human life imaginable. Here, he says, is "the world which science built for our belief."

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