He opposed Copleston in the debate, and questioned why people thought the universe needed to have a first cause - "I should say that the universe is just there, and that is all". He said that its existence is a "brute fact".
He argues that the concept of a 'necessary being' had no meaning for him as the term 'necessary' cannot be applied to things, only to logical statements where B necessarily follows from A as it part of the definition (for example if someone is a bachelor, they are necessarily an unmarried man as that is the definition of a bachelor).
Copleston was trying to make sense of the universe, but Russell argued that this was pointless and that the universe did not have to make sense.
In response to Copleston's chess analogy, he said that it was "skewed towards the theist" as in order to engage with Copleston, he would have to work within his logic, which Russell denied.
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