Category: Quotes & Commentary

Remember, as you read these Bertrand Russell quotes, that R2K insists that it is of no concern from a Christian point of view should parents, who confess Christ as individuals, (I don’t say “Christian Parents” because I don’t think R2K believes that Parents can be Christian) place their children in Government schools. After all, education belongs to the common realm and so, can not be Christian.

“Scientific societies are as yet in their infancy. . . . It is to be expected that advances in physiology and psychology will give governments much more control over individual mentality than they now have even in totalitarian countries. Fitche laid it down that education should aim at destroying free will, so that, after pupils have left school, they shall be incapable, throughout the rest of their lives, of thinking or acting otherwise than as their schoolmasters would have wished. . . . Diet, injections, and injunctions will combine, from a very early age, to produce the sort of character and the sort of beliefs that the authorities consider desirable, and any serious criticism of the powers that be will become psychologically impossible. . . .”

Bertrand Russell
Impact of Science on Society, 1953

“Education in a scientific society may, I think, be best conceived after the analogy of the education provided by the Jesuits. The Jesuits provided one sort of education for the boys who were to become ordinary men of the world, and another for those who were to become members of the Society of Jesus. In like manner, the scientific rulers will provide one kind of education for ordinary men and women, and another for those who are to become holders of scientific power. Ordinary men and women will be expected to be docile, industrious, punctual, thoughtless, and contented. Of these qualities probably contentment will be considered the most important. In order to produce it, all the researches of psycho-analysis, behaviourism, and biochemistry will be brought into play.”

Bertrand Russell
part 3, XIV, Education in a Scientific Society p.251

“Education should aim at destroying free will so that after pupils are thus schooled they will be incapable throughout the rest of their lives of thinking or acting otherwise than as their school masters would have wished … The social psychologist of the future will have a number of classes of school children on whom they will try different methods of producing an unshakable conviction that snow is black. When the technique has been perfected, every government that has been in charge of education for more than one generation will be able to control its subjects securely without the need of armies or policemen.”

Bertrand Russell quoting Johann Gottlieb Fichte,
Fichte was the head of philosophy & psychology
Influenced Hegel and others
Russell is quoting from a Fichte Lecture, Prussian University in Berlin, 1810

“Pietism no doubt, expressed the religious reaction of devout evangelicals agaisnt orthodox formalism, and it tendend to concentrate upon the doctrine of salvation and to develop Arminian rather than a Reformed doctrine of Grace. God’s offer of salvation was supposed to be made to all men and it was believed that Christ died for all mankind. Given such a doctrine of grace it is not surprising that pietists have tended, with a few notable exceptions, to think of religion as being mainly concerned with the salvation of the individual and with his spiritual state of mind and feelings. As a consequence Pietism has greatly assisted the secularization of Western Society as a whole, since its religious individualism takes for granted or ignores the structures of Church and State, seeking within society to build up significant religious cells. The main concern of Dutch pietists, as of Wesleyan pietists in England and America, became the salvation of one’s individual soul rather than of society as a whole. Instead of thinking that Christians should be concerned with the whole of life—business, political, educational and cultural, pietism demands the segregation of a certain sphere of life as peculiarly religious and teaches that the believer should concentrate his entire efforts upon cultivating subjective religious states of mind and feeling, as well as various personal devotional and ascetic disciplines. The larger questions of church and state and culture tend to become discounted, sometimes because of apocalyptic expectations, or because they are considered to be religiously neutral. As a result, the attention of the evangelical pietist tended to become concentrated upon personal rather than social morals, and the sins of the flesh have been more often feared than the spiritual sins, such as selfishness, pride, envy and jealousy.”

E. L. Hebden Taylor
The Christian Philosophy of Law, Politics and the State, p. 29f.

What modern current Reformed movement are you reminded of when you read this quote?