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Why I Am Not a Christian (1927) Bertrand Russell's criticism of Jesus Christ. Russell finds Jesus not as wise as The Buddha or Socrates and morally defective —

"It is generally taken for granted that we should all agree Christ was the best and wisest of men. I do not myself. I do not think that Christ was the best and wisest of men, although I grant him a very high degree of moral goodness.

There is a very serious defect to my mind in Christ's moral character, and that is that He believed in Hell. I do not myself feel that any person that is really profoundly humane can believe in everlasting punishment. This doctrine, that hell‐fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world, and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him as his chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible.

You will remember that He said: ‘Resist not evil, but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.’ That is not a new precept or a new principle. It was used by Lao-Tze and Buddha some five or six hundred years before Christ, but it is not a principle which as a matter of fact Christians accept.

He was not so wise as some other people have been, and He was certainly not superlatively wise. I cannot myself feel that either in the matter of wisdom or in the matter of virtue Christ stands quite as high as some other people known to history. I think I should put Buddha and Socrates above Him in those respects."

[ RUSSELL'S FULL CRITICISM AND CITATIONS: WHY I AM NOT A CHRISTIAN, 1927 ]