5 - Mill on religion

Summary

In his Autobiography Mill declares himself to be “one of the very few examples, in this country, of one who has, not thrown off religious belief, but never had it” (CW I:45). Yet Mill could hardly avoid engaging with religion in pursuit of his main concerns. It is no surprise that he does so in setting out the utilitarian morality, in defending liberal principles in the face of restrictions on free speech and discussion, and in assessing the quality of current University education. But only in the posthumously published Three Essays on Religion (1874) was religion itself the focal point of his analysis. In these essays Mill attacks orthodox theology on both epistemological and moral grounds. He argues, however, that there is some evidence that the universe was created by an intelligent being and he takes seriously the possibility that something important might be missing from a life in which religion had no place.