Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy

I'm reading Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy right now. Anyone read this book? I became more interested in philosophy a year ago, tried reading Aristotle's Ethica, but it was way too difficult. So I bought this book, it deals with philosophy from ancient Greece to modern times with detailed but also easy-readable information (though it's quite difficult sometimes) about philosophy.

Didn't Russel say that communism was a religion or something like that?

I don't know anything about him, to be honest, other than that he was British, a philosopher, and an atheist. They have a book on him in my school library (they also have a collection of Nietszche essays too, and I go to a Catholic school), I might read some of it to see what he thought.

I recall something about a teapot orbiting the sun.

Basically religious people often argue on the basis of how their opinions cannot be refuted. Russell answered that no one could prove that there was not a teapot orbitting the sun, too small for telescopes to see. The only different, for him, between God and the teapot was that God has the benefit of ancient hallowed belief.

Many orthodox people speak as though it were the business of sceptics to disprove received dogmas rather than of dogmatists to prove them. This is, of course, a mistake. If I were to suggest that between the Earth and Mars there is a china teapot revolving about the sun in an elliptical orbit, nobody would be able to disprove my assertion provided I were careful to add that the teapot is too small to be revealed even by our most powerful telescopes. But if I were to go on to say that, since my assertion cannot be disproved, it is intolerable presumption on the part of human reason to doubt it, I should rightly be thought to be talking nonsense. If, however, the existence of such a teapot were affirmed in ancient books, taught as the sacred truth every Sunday, and instilled into the minds of children at school, hesitation to believe in its existence would become a mark of eccentricity and entitle the doubter to the attentions of the psychiatrist in an enlightened age or of the Inquisitor in an earlier time.