Bertrand Russell debated the Jesuit Frederick Copleston on the existence of God in 1948 on the BBC. Bertrand, although he would win a Nobel Prize in literature in 1950, had a pessimistic view of the universe, since he had found out that according to entropy (see one of my other blogs) the universe will end in death. Russell felt no god he could worship had that kind of purpose. Yet scientists still don’t know how life brought growth and order into an entropic universe.
Bertrand Russell said in that debate, “the universe has crawled (toward) a condition of universal death.” He had learned about entropy, and was using it to buttress his pessimistic view, as quoted by Brian Greene in Until the End of Time.
Did not Fr. Frederick Copleston convince him that a Father who would raise his obedient Son from the dead and who made good on all the Son’s promises would let that Son appear to bring the End Times to a glorious finish? And Russell got a Nobel for literature? I have a more dramatic sense, (Nobel Committee take note) and I believe its source is the mysterious source of Life on Earth. Sure, the universe will end, but it’ll be a glorious one.
Civilization 