Then how could he write down such illogical inanity as this?
Let’s break it in two, shall we? Start with his premise.
Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought.
See, there’s his problem. Brains didn’t just happen. They aren’t merely some peculiar arrangement of atoms. They have a long contingent history in which they were shaped by selection to have particular properties that allowed bearers of slightly more functional nervous systems to outlive, outbreed bearers of cruder brains. An absence of a designer does not imply that the only other alternative is random chaos.
After that faceplant, it only gets dumber.
But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It’s like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can’t trust my own thinking, of course I can’t trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God.
First, you can’t trust your thinking to be true. You have to test and verify all the time. You can believe in thought without believing in gods: we all build empirical models of how the world works and test them constantly. From an early age, we noticed that when we dropped things they fell to the ground; when we learned to walk we stumbled and learned that we can fall to the ground, and it hurts; we learned that when we fell off the table it hurt a lot more than when we fell while standing on the ground. And now, when I look out my second floor window, I know jumping out of it would probably do me significant damage, despite never having actually tried it.
Most of what we believe isn’t derived from the pure and perfect reasoning power of our flawless brains — it’s learned by trial and error by brains that are often afflicted with stubbornly bad ideas.
Like believing in gods, for instance.
I knew that passage looked familiar:
http://freethoughtblogs.com/cuttlefish/2014/06/28/sophisticated-something/
Alvin Plantinga is still trotting out the same garbage – and pretending he came up with it all by his own self. Yet these two are constantly presented as among the great thinkers of modern Christianity.
… great thinkers of modern Christianity.
That’s an awfully low bar to set in the first place. Better than average ability to obfuscate would seem to be what sets the best apologists above the common con artist preacher.
enlightening to see what Lewis actually wrote about atheism, etc. Ignorant me only knew of his Narnia books being some kind of retelling of Jesus stories, and his intense rivalry with Tolkien. Good to be informed a little more.
—-
that bit about [paraphrased] “how could a product of natural forces, ever actually know anything ABOUT the natural forces that produced it.” I seem to recall this, (rephrased), as a huge conundrum in the AI field. (e.g.: how could a product of our intelligence be more intelligent than the mind that produced it?”). The error, of course, is the “goddidit” solution.
I wonder if Lewis ever stopped to think that the vast majority of the world’s population disagree with him about god – would he have said that only those agreed with him could be right?
That argument looks similar to Alvin Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. (If you haven’t heard of it, look it up and welcome to the world of sophisticated theology.)
When you are determined to fit a round peg into a square hole, and you think by doing so proves your point, the human mind is equipped with all kinds of mental power tools to always get this job done.
That title of your article, is that a serious question?
Your first answer isn’t very good either, though.
“They aren’t merely some peculiar arrangement of atoms.”
CSL addressed that with “in a certain way”. Reformulating his argument according to your wishes doesn’t change the content in any way.
“First, you ….”
And what is second?
Let me do it for you. Second: what CSL says is “thought is reliable, hence god, hence thought is reliable”. That’s a circular argument.
Third: CSL is guilty of bipolar thinking. To him either thought is perfectly reliable or every single thought must be rejected. That’s very common amongst apologists. They can’t handle anything less than 100% certainty. That CSL makes this mistake as well (amongst many others) shows he’s a shallow thinker.
Aronra got the identical question
http://freethoughtblogs.com/aronra/2015/07/20/loaded-question/
Is this the latest meme that going around among Christians?
– RM
bustergii
not completely apparently
uncle frogy
Lewis, like a lot of apologists, was, indeed, a ‘smart’ fellow. What he wasn’t was willing to apply his intelligence in a skeptical manner–a failing, yes, but one of integrity, not intellect. There’s a lot of his writing that, despite being filled with blind faith, still contains some pretty decent insights into human nature. the Screwtape Letters, for instance, actually do a good job of dissecting a lot of the ways humans sabotage ourselves (it errs, of course, in attributing this to us listening to some demonic spirit sent to tempt us). The passage in which Screwtape describes setting two people )who should be supporting one another) against one another by simply goading them into demanding that their own words be taken strictly at face value, while retaining the right to interpret the others’ in whatever context best suits their own mood at the moment… well, I’ve seen evidence enough of that conduct not far from here, and not very long ago at all. It’s a very human failing.
It’s that insight, in fact, that’s made him such a go-to for the apologists. They see he’s right about one thing, and assume it carries over to the god-stuff, too. We don’t do ourselves any favors as advocates for rationality when we underestimate our opponents.
1. Yeah CS Lewis is an idiot. Basically the WL Craig of his day. I’ve only read a few pages and it is all like that, really dumb stuff with logical errors that scream at you.
2. Two other overrated nonthinkers were St. Augustine, a real creepy guy. And St. Thomas Aquinas, slightly brighter and just as creepy.
Augustine said it was OK to torture heretics since that could save them. Aquinas said it was OK to kill them. Which the Catholic church took to heart and went out and slaughtered millions of people.
This is a point probably made lots of times on these threads before but every time I hear these kinds of arguments I think of it: even if you were to accept Lewis’s argument that without God thought is impossible, it does not necessarily follow that the god in question is the Christian god.
This is always what annoys me about these high-level “sophisticated theology” arguments for a divinity– a claim is made that, when taken to its logical conclusion, requires the existence of a transcendent being of a most nebulous kind… and then those making the claim hope that no-one spots that this supposedly logically necessary entity has no resemblance whatsoever to the god described in Christian scriptures; that is, a triune deity with many humanlike characteristics (expresses anger, jealousy, etc.) It’s a cheap sleight-of-hand. Please explain why a God with “back parts” is necessary for thought.
@1
Basically there are a very small number of apologists that did anything original, which modern apologists plain copy. The big ones are: Anselm, CS Lewis, and, worst of all, Van Til.
If you’ve read ‘The Case for Christianity’, ‘Mere Christianity’, and ‘Defense of the Faith’, and are familiar with Anselm’s “proofs” you’ve essentially read everything in modern Christian Apologetics modulo presentation.
@12 He’s basically William Lane Craig if William Lane Craig could write and come up with anything on his own… and didn’t lie about mathematics and our opinion on infinity.
I often wonder: how does a person whose thinking is obviously, painfully nonsensical get to be recognized as a “philosopher”? Even without bringing up the significance of experience, on the face of it, Lewis’ argument just does not work. Even if I were religious, and looking for good arguments in favor of God’s existence, this would qualify as embarrassingly bad.
I don’t get, for instance, how it logically follows that if there is no God, then you can’t trust your own thoughts. Why not? What is Lewis’ thinking here? Hell, what does trusting one’s own thoughts even MEAN? Besides, one person’s basis of trust is not the same as another’s. Also, if belief in a supernatural all-powerful being is what’s necessary to trust one’s own thoughts, then … how is believing in Jesus Christ or the God of the Hebrews any better or makes more sense than believing in the Gods of Olympus? Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Even if you believe in God, why DOES that mean you can trust your own thoughts? The Bible teaches over and over that human beings are fallible. Christianity adds that people’s thoughts are routinely messed up by Satan, and Jewish mysticism ultimately comes down to the workings of the Universe and the nature of God lying beyond human beings’ comprehension. So … why would a religious person trust his own thoughts?
I don’t get the “logic” here.
C. S. Lewis was actually smart. People can be smart and christian at the same time, they can even be smart and christian apologists at the same time. Alternately, they aren’t idiots purely for being christian, but they sure as shit can use idiotic arguments thanks to the wonders of motivated reasoning, and the resultant double standards of logic.
To add: there is a certain mentality at work here that I just can’t identify with. A man once became very upset with me because of a casual comment I made re. love being a manifestation of brain chemistry. “If you won’t believe in the magic,” he said, “then we can’t be together.” But my comment wasn’t meant to disparage love. The fact that there is a medical explanation for one’s feelings doesn’t mean those feelings aren’t real or important. He saw a giant problem with what I said, and I just couldn’t “get” what the problem was, even as he articulated it. The same thing happened with Lewis, I think, and those who embrace that quote — they believe that existence is worthless if there isn’t something supernatural behind it.
If Lewis’s straw man could only sing:
I could while away the hours, conferrin’ with the flowers
Consultin’ with the rain.
And my head I’d be scratchin’ while my thoughts were busy hatchin’
If I only had a brain.
To make that dissection complete, you have to follow through with the converse. Even supposing that a reliable brain implies god, how does god imply a reliable brain? That is, what reason is there to suppose, even if god created human brains, that our thoughts are in fact reliable? To make that claim work, you have to assume god’s intention was to produce a reliable brain, perhaps by knowing something about his motives. But of course any of that assumes you have a reliable brain to work with in making those assumptions.
As with most conundra with which theists attempt to dazzle atheists, the addition of god doesn’t actually solve the problem, even if there is a problem. It’s the same with the foundations of morality, origin of life, and so on.
Amused @ 18: yeah, I’ve seen that attitude a lot: “If we’re all just chemicals, where is the meaning?” A lot of believers seem to have “capital letter thinking”; they want Purpose with a capital P, Meaning with a capital M. I don’t need Capital-P-Purpose or Capital-M-Meaning to enjoy my life, thanks.
There’s a poem by Mervyn Peake called “To Live Is Miracle Enough”. I’m not sure what Peake’s own beliefs were but I agree with the sentiment he expresses here.
To live at all is miracle enough.
The doom of nations is another thing.
Here in my hammering blood-pulse is my proof.
Let every painter paint and poet sing
And all the sons of music ply their trade;
Machines are weaker than a beetle’s wing.
Swung out of sunlight into cosmic shade,
Come what come may the imagination’s heart
Is constellation high and can’t be weighed.
Nor greed nor fear can tear our faith apart
When every heart-beat hammers out the proof
That life itself is miracle enough.
“To live at all is miracle enough”, not the tawdry sideshow miracles of the Christian Bible.
I think I’ve related this before, but when I was a skeptical youth my parents and the minister at our church suggested I read Lewis. They obviously expected me to be bowled over by the brilliance of his arguments and come back to the fold. Instead, I remember thinking “This is the best they got? Really? REALLY?” There was simply nothing there that a reasonably bright teenager (if I do say so myself) couldn’t see through. It was a big step on the road to atheism.
I did enjoy the snark of The Screwtape Letters, but that’s about it.
I have no idea what kind of literary scholar he was, but there was no there there in his apologetics.
Amused @ 18:
I think you hit the heart of the matter. Many religious people and especially Christian apologists do not handle natural and explanatory mechanisms well. They need the certainty that there is a supernatural inexplicable something out there. They are so overwhelmed by awe and emotions that they think that these phenomena can not possibly have a chemical or physical explanation. Then their minds go into overdrive with mental gymnastics to come up with statements ala C.S. Lewis and Alvin Plantinga that ease their disconcerting thoughts.
Well, he should have stuck to literary history and literary criticism, at both of which he was brilliant. I agree about the feebleness of his apologetics–surprisingly bad, given he wasn’t an idiot.
For millennia after Euclid, mathematicians tried to prove that his Parallel Postulate followed from the others. They produced a great many efforts at proofs, none of which proved what they intended to prove. Either the proofs were fallacious, or they smuggled a version of the Parallel Postulate in as an additional assumption. The flaws in those arguments are transparent to anyone familiar with post-19th-century mathematics. Were all of those mathematicians stupid?
The idea that intelligence innoculates against poor reasoning is blatantly counterfactual, and suggesting that you must be smarter than your ideological opponents because they believed a bad argument and you did not is simply ridiculous.
mnb0 @8:
Except I would say you’re the one reformulating Lewis. Look again at the quote, but don’t whittle off the important leadup to the “in a certain way” bit:
When those atoms happen to arrange themselves in a certain way. I.e. when those atoms happen to do that by happenstance as a result of unpredictable physical or chemical processes.
C.S. Lewis is quite clearly insinuating that thought is a product of chance and contrasting that with a purposeful designer. That’s a very clear and obvious meaning of those words. Perhaps it isn’t what Lewis meant, but you certainly can’t fault PZ for reading it that way.
I’d expand further on PZ’s second point. It’s not just that we have incomplete knowledge that has to be filled in by trial and error, but that our minds make so many mistakes along the way (all the myriad cognitive biases), and even make big mistakes in remembering things that have already happened to us. It’s probably nothing new to most readers here, but take a look at the Challenger Study (http://whywereason.com/tag/the-challenger-study/) to see how mistaken our minds can be about things we think we know.
Reminds me of the Christian who showed me some easily-refutable crap. I knocked holes in it and asked it that was that author’s best. The kid said, no, the guy had saved that for another book.
So if our brains are God-designed, how can we ever lose sight of God? I mean, my phone is an Android, and it won’t run any other system, nor will it ever start hooking up with my oven timer. A god who can’t keep communication going is as bad as a Christian who believes this tripe. Seriously, God could make his existence irrefutably obvious, and we could decide whether we liked him or not, based on personal experience. And before you say that obvious existence would mess up faith, there are millions who say his existence is obvious. As it is, his goodness is irrefutable, so his existence is the only argument.
Hey, if there were no designer god, would we still be able to walk? Would we be capable of doing physical things? Or, to leave us out of it, would a cheetah be able to chase antelope? What is thought, that C S Lewis is mindful of it?
And CSL is wrong: it isn’t a product of chance, any more than H2O is a product of chance. When two atoms of hydrogen bond with one atom of oxygen, they create a stable molecule from a standpoint of electrons – the entire outer shell of each atom is filled, thus preventing reaction.
Similarly, our brains (and other animals’) are sufficient for thought. As PZ explained, they didn’t arise from nothing all of a sudden, but built upon their predecessors in complexity and function. At some point, a threshold of complexity and function was reached and thoughts were manifested, just as there is a supposed-threshhold for brains to create language.
The analogy in the last sentence describes what he’s apparently supposing,* not what an atheist is supposing. Somebody is purposefully splashing atoms around (and perhaps having hopes about it) in order to produce a certain arrangement of them, like a map of London. He doesn’t have any argument against the notion that brains are certain arrangements of atoms which physically interact with one another in predictable ways. Presumably, the idea is still that thoughts are complex processes involving those arrangements changing over time, in agreement with all physical laws, but what he thinks is supposed to guarantee their reliability (even though thoughts aren’t inherently reliable) is that somebody purposefully put them into that condition.
So, PZ’s arguments about evolutionary history aren’t really addressing the core of the problem, for a person arguing like this who thinks a god directs evolutionary history somehow (or got the ball rolling at the time of creation). Then it would be the same physical stuff doing the same physical things as they do in reality — that’s essential to what Lewis et al are saying is responsible for any given thought — but the claim is that they are that way because some intelligent thing like a god put them into that state. I have no idea how that could explain anything or be satisfactory to anyone. The difference between my brain and a rock is that they are different kinds of arrangements, not that the rock’s arrangements of atoms weren’t intentionally structured a certain way while mine were. After all, perhaps the rock would be needed at some point by the theist for “explaining” the history of why their god’s miracles worked out just so from “creation” up to now, meaning that’s it’s also purpose-built to do that, which is apparently supposed to be equivalent to saying it’s magic. You also won’t get this specific rock or that one, simply by splashing some milk on the table … but if there were a special forgery in the sky which made each rock especially to do the job it was assigned in the universe, then there must also be a magical blacksmith (or a whole guild of them) who operates it, as well as perhaps a construction crew to build the thing in the first place and a community of other deities who support this activity in numerous other ways. The question would still be why we assumed rocks were purposefully created for anything, just like it is in the case of brains or of anything else.
*I don’t think he knew how to even begin thinking about this rationally or empirically. There’s always magic, wishful thinking and story-telling underlying everything he’s doing, not facts or logic.
The interesting thing about all apologetics, is that if one doesn’t presuppose an imaginary deity, one can’t get to an imaginary deity. Take the brain. If evolution didn’t allow for prey/predators to have reliable senses, the former would be nothing but dinner, and the latter would never find dinner. So, an imaginary deity isn’t need for reliable thought. Which is why the apologetics are point at and laugh bits of unintelligent bullshit.
Lewis was a silly git, to be sure, and that was no more obvious than when he tried his hand at logic.
My favorite piece of Lewis gittery was his argument that Christianity must represent the truth because it was so hard to believe.
And then there’s this bit of special pleading twaddle:
“If God ‘foresaw’ our acts, it would be very hard to understand how we could be free not to do them. But suppose god is outside and above the Time-line… You never supposed that your actions at this moment were any less free because God knows what you are doing. Well, He know your tomorrow’s actions in just the same way–because He is already in tomorrow and can simply watch you. In a sense, He does not know your action till you have done it: but the moment at which you have done it is already ‘NOW’ for Him.”
amused @18
I once explained to my Spanish class when we were talking about words for colors that there’s a numeric system that describes all colors. They were horrified and disgusted at the idea that colors could be so circumscribed but to me, and surely to anyone willing to look into it, color theory is beautiful.
As is, for example, evolution in all its complex and gorgeous ramifications but some people insist that magic is better than knowledge. I don’t understand them either.
I may have shared this anecdote…
In Junior High, there was a girl I was semi-interested in dating, from an intensely Christian family. Some sort of weird unorthodox denomination, I don’t remember what. She asked if I had heard of C. S. Lewis, and I conflated the name with Lewis Carroll, and replied that he was a famous author of nonsense fiction.
She wasn’t amused…but apparently I was right.
Where did you think apologetics arguments originated? :)
Perhaps the answer is that “stupid” is more usefully understood to refer to something other than “lack of cognitive capacity”?
More formally known as evolutionary epistemology.
Like tbp1 @22, I was offered Lewis to strengthen my wavering faith. I read Mere Christianity and was distinctly underwhelmed. I told my father that Lewis’ trilemma (lunatic, liar, or lord) didn’t cover all the choices available. Jesus could have been mistaken or deluded or the writers of the Bible were wrong (or confused) or that Jesus could even have not existed. My father asked me: “Do you think you’re smarter than an Oxford don?” The obvious answer was “Yes!”
Since then I have not regarded CS Lewis as a particularly deep intellectual. He assumed Jesus was god and tailored his argument to support his assumption. Presupposition is a logical fallacy, even if you’re an Oxford don.
I will say, given how many people copied him and it’s more well written that most of the other stuff. If you’re curious enough to want to read christian apologetics he’s a good choice. Beyond that, I wouldn’t recommend much of his stuff other than maybe Narnia. He also wrote this bizarre monstrocity:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/That_Hideous_Strength
@34 And Lewis Carol could actually use logic, and was actually part of the joke in the two Alice books. Though his opinions of mathematics as a whole are a bit questionable.
FTFY, Lewis.
In either CSL’s version or the fixed version, the answer to the question is the one PZ gave in the article: you trust it warily, based on empiricism, not faith.
Sugarfrosted@39
I quite liked the first two books of that trilogy when I read 30 years ago; they seemed decent scifi fantasy with some different touches. But That Hideous Strength blew it. It was laughably poor.
Here’s a bunch of thorough writing by Richard Carrier about this variety of argument:
http://infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/reppert.html
Al Dente @ 38
In Lewis’ defence, the trilemma isn’t an argument intended to persuade atheists. It’s aimed at those people who say, “Jesus had a bunch of good ideas and good teachings, but I don’t believe he was divine” (Thomas Jefferson, for example).
It’s still a pretty lousy argument, and it still comes down to some kind of reverse ad hominem where the quality of Jesus’ teachings are based on his status as a person, not on their own merits.
I appreciate the breakdown of his quote. I can never get more than a sentence or two into fundie statements like these before my mind slumps to the reasoning ability of a potato.
I haven’t read his books and I didn’t really like the first Narnia movie (I didn’t even bother with the sequels), but Lewis did say the following and it’s all I need to respect the guy, regardless of his Creationist beliefs.
@slithey tove
I’ve seen tons of quotes from him posted in the “atheism” tag on tumblr. They are all facepalm worthy nonsense, often total non-sequiturs. It’s amazing.
Personally I’ve always found CS Lewis to be unbearably dull and dim-witted. I could never understand why he was so feted. Thomas Aquinas and of course Augustine of Hippo also make it into my book of popular intellectual midgets. I guess where some see “obviously and painfully stupid” others see “depth and soul”.
The Trilemma is fake.
There are at least 6 possibilities. Myth, misatribulation, or mistake.
I too tried to read Mere Christianity, and objected out loud multiple times before finishing even the first page. His very first “obviously true” statement that everything else is built upon is not obviously true to me (specifically, everybody recognizes certain absolute truths, therefore these truths must ordained externally. multiple failures in one statement)
Anyway, the type of people who think C.S. Lewis is sublime are the same people who read that Jesus was fully human and fully God and think it is a deep and mystical statement, rather than a simple contradiction.
Actually, the way we think is evidence for evolution, not god. If our brains were designed by an omniscient being, surely they would lead us to make correct conclusions about how things work even in the face of seemingly contradictory evidence. But in actuality our brains model the world for us in a way that gives us a pretty good working understanding of how things will behave at our scale and in our environment, even if our ideas are contrary to reality. As an example, our experience teaches us that objects move only when force is applied to them; remove the force and, sooner or later, the object stops moving. It took a hell of a lot of hard, counter-intuitive thinking to realize that motion doesn’t work that way; we only came to that realization very recently in our existence, and even many of us who know on an intellectual level about things like gravity and friction probably still think at a basic level in terms of Aristotelian physics.
Shorter version: our thinking is designed to help us survive, not necessarily to map the world accurately.
Since C.S. Lewis and Narnia was brought up, I feel the need to plug Ana Mardoll’s deconstruction of Narnia (there’s an index page as well, if that’s more your style, but it tends to lag behind by quite a bit; it currently only goes up through the third book). She just finished the fourth book, The Silver Chair. There is so much horrible in these books that I didn’t notice as a kid.
Also, here’s an atheist on youtube responding to a noob theist that was making similar arguments:
part 1
part 2
I’ll dig up my own responses to that theist in a while…
raven — I would add propaganda, fictions, fabrications, and lies. That gets us to a decalemma.
PZ: “So this C.S. Lewis guy was supposed to be a smart fellow?
Then how could he write down such illogical inanity as this?”
Obviously you have not read Perelandra. Forty years ago I was subjected to this snooze fest just as I turned eighteen and taking one of my very first college classes, while I was still a “born again Christian” (I grew up again in the next year). I slogged through this monstrosity and was totally let down since I had enjoyed the Narnia series.
I don’t remember much else about that class other than I was peeved it was not counted as a humanities credit for my engineering degree because it was about writing (the only writing we did were essays about what we read), and that I did get to read some good things from other sci-fi authors.
This kind of specious, watery stuff works wonders on people who don’t genuinely put any thought whatsoever into the question of why they are following a faith. Once that question is asked sincerely, skepticism creeps in and this Lewis style argument loses its shiny lustre. Someone going through that kind of self-revelation would be pretty embarrassed for being impressed by the original argument, and a thousand other arguments made by apologists. I know I was once embarrassed this way.
It took televangelism and the myriad religious scammers to knock me out of the orbit of the unquestioning. Once I caught on to the fact fraud could be perpetrated within a religion, then maybe the whole religion itself was a fraud. Stuff like this just left me shaking my head afterwards.
“But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true?”
Well, through testing it, applying it. But can you ever be absolutely certain that your thinking isn’t faulty? No.
Now, the disconnect in here is the same that presuppositionalists everywhere have: They think that their belief in god makes their thinking certain. But it would be so easy for their minds to play tricks on them in their faith, not just despite of but due to their preconceived notions and mode of thinking. Hell, it could be Satan messing with their minds, pretending to be God and inspiring them. I’ve never seen anybody who holds these beliefs properly address the uncertainty inherent in presuppositional lines of thinking. They simply claim any uncertainty vanishes.
Steve Shives has a nice series of videos, deconstructing C. S. Lewis’ Mere Christianity. He’s dealing with a lot of these arguments there. Basically, his conclusion is that Lewis’ apologetic is much better written and more stirring to the imagination than the other apologetics he’s read, but their content isn’t really any better than those are.
Shorter C.S. Lewis:
“If your brain is not designed, it’s random.
If it’s random, you’re a complete twit.
And if you’re a complete twit, you must acquit.
I rest my case”
The S F trilogy by C S Lewis -Out of the Silent Planet, Perelandra and The Hideous Strenght- was very dull reading.
I recommend Stanislaw Lem’s satirical Star Diaries. In one story, he encounter a robot civilisation that have previously met a christian missionary who was into St Aquinas. Torture and martyrdom = being certain of entering heaven. And you should do good deeds. So the robots tortured and martyred the missionary.
They were very upset about it, since they were actually gentle robots, and killing him would condemn them to hell, but the missionary had said they must be unselfish so they followed the logic of the theology to its ultimate consequence.
I read all three of his space trilogy books on my own because I had read some where that they were important, all I can recall of them was that they were very thinly disguised and very preachy. it was a very dark time which I filled up with crap, they read like they were written by priest much like the quoted text here.
uncle frogy
Clive Staples Lewis was dealt with by John Beversluis Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at Butler University Indiana.
He undertook a systematic and radical critique of Lewis’ arguments. He blew up the shrines and their supports.
The book is “C.S.Lewis and the Search for a Rational Religion (2cnd Ed)
ISBN 978-1-59102-531-3
Prometheus Books 2007.
So, Mr Lewis, according to you, a god created your brain with the power of exact thought.
So how do you explain the fact that so many people build wrong mental representations of what they observe ? or can’t reason right ? that their head is full of garbage ?
Are you going to accuse the Devil ?
But can you say it’s Satan’s fault every time someone says that the sun revolves around the earth (which many people still believe in countries where’s there’s little or no education) or that our planet is just a tfew thousand years old ?
Answer this, if you can !
(Well, apart from the fact that you’re dead, of course.)
I actually quite like this particular train track of thought.
If there is a creative being who designed our brains explicitly for the sake of reliable reasoning – a possibility that is denied in the bible, but that’s a side note – then we should expect our reasoning to be, on the whole, reliable. There might be flawed minds on occasion, and they might succumb to entropy, but, in the majority of cases, our thoughts should be reliable. This would mean that there would be broad agreement on matters of fact: opinions about global warming would be based on evidence and carefully examined statistics, rather than politics; questions on the best form of policing and criminal justice would likewise be evidence based and rational, though there would likely be far less crime to make it an issue; opinions about gods would be unified.
That’s not what we see. We see the opposite – opposing opinions over matters of fact, ideologies and wishes trumping reason, unreliable minds in all corners.
We live in a world where the concept of skepticism needs to exist. Lewis’ argument actually lends support to atheism – it’s only a counter to it if you deny the fallibility of our minds.
I started to read his book on pain. It was basically god gave us pain, so we have to endure it “because god.” God also “gave” us morphine, so screw C.S. Lewis
Athywren… @ # 62: … brains explicitly for the sake of reliable reasoning – a possibility that is denied in the bible…
So far all I can come up with to exemplify this is the “made in the image of God” schtick, but my unreliably-reasoning brain doubts you meant that. Could you please cite chapter and verse?
A response: http://vereloqui.blogspot.com/2015/08/more-new-atheist-follies-p-z-myers.html
martincothran #65
I’m not going to your website.
Do you have anything you want to say here?
A wise decision.
Many or most xian sites are filled with malware. I noticed this long ago. Studies show you are more likely to pick up malware from xian sites than porn sites.
You don’t miss much by not visiting Martin Cothran’s website: namecalling, handwaving, and a ‘defence’ of C.S. Lewis’ argument so trite we may have actually found someone more idiotic than C.S. Lewis.
@Pierce R Butler, 64
Yeah, it’s Gen 1:1 – Rev 22:21 :p
Err, but no, it’s passages like this from Corinthians:
1 Cor 1:19-25
@Raven, 67
It’s a clear case of demonic possession, if you ask me.
@Martincothran: if you ask the wrong questions you’ll never get the right answers.
“If your brain is merely an arrangement of atoms, then what can “truth” possibly mean? On what basis do we call one arrangement of atoms “true” and another “false”?”
And merely repeating what your assumption was in the first place with
“The only basis on which we could privilege one over the other is if there is something above and beyond arrangements of atoms.”
doesn’t do anything for your case either.
We have another basis.
It’s called the scientific method. Now I wouldn’t be surprised if you don’t understand how that works either, so you’re in for a free lesson. The scientific method formulates theories and hypotheses to describe empirical data. The first is called deduction (and your attempt to defend CSL is a poor example of it) and the second induction. If the two provide the same conclusions we may safely assume (though not with 100% certainty) that we are correct.
Add consistency and coherence as our standards and that assumption becomes even stronger.
No god needed. Just as scientists realized more than 200 years ago.
With ignorant defenders like you CSL doesn’t need hostile critics anymore.
Athywren… @ # 69 – Ah, thanks. So Yahweh didn’t make dysfunctional brains as such, just made the world so that it didn’t match the “wisdom” of same. (At least per Paul, who got his ass kicked by Athenian intellectuals and resented it/them for the rest of his life.)
It “pleased God” to set up a classical double-bind to make sure his creations/victims suffered no matter what they tried – the same method we can (uh-oh) discern from Genesis onward. How odd that the de facto Christian motto “Ignorance is bliss” does not come from their bible (“bliss” does not occur there even once).
You don’t. Trusting your own thinking to be true is a terrible idea that invariably leads to complete and total disaster.
It is the sort of toxic ideology that invariably leads to the “smartest man in the room” type situations that invariably end up destroying whatever that guy was supposed to be leading. It kills companies – because it invariably ends up with them being run by people with precisely zero understanding of the practicalities involved and thus being about as effective in making decisions as leaving it up to a magic 8-ball.
And for countries? Remember GW Bush, or Thabo Mbeki? They had the same weakness, they were the smartest men in the room and they trusted in their own thinking. Neither were very good leaders.
When someone trusts their own thinking they immediately start viewing their chief problem as being the “doubters” – those who do not buy into the vision, or have the temerity to point out its flaws. They become blind to the flaws, blind to the ways that they can go wrong, and inevitably blind to how to achieve anything resembling a real solution.
Mbeki never saw the rape crisis, Bush never saw America’s stagnant wages. Both acted offended by the very thought their vision might be wrong – and the net effect in Mbeki’s case was 300,000 dead South Africans, and Bush crashed the world economy.
And the Republicans never learn. They still act like if everyone believed hard enough America would be great again, like it isn’t the USA, but rather the United States of Tinkerbell.
That is the absolute last thing you should be asking. What you should be asking is “what is the flaw in my thinking?”
Because the former? Is the sort of arrogance peddled as piety called faith. It is closing your eyes and telling Jesus to take the wheel.
The latter meanwhile, is keeping your eyes open and avoiding that inconveniently placed tree.
So, Platinga is just ripping off C. S. Lewis?
Sounds about right. There hasn’t been a creative argument from an Xtian since Augustine.
A college friend of mine posted that one to Facebook a few months back. I cannot figure out why he and so many others are so enamored of Lewis. I’ve had “Mere Christianity” recommended to me many times over, and figured I’d get around to eventually, until I heard a reference that the “Trilemma” comes from there. If that’s the kind of crap that’s in that book, I’m not wasting my time.
I’m going to point out that our “thinking” is actually pretty good in the long run. Not perfect but what is? And far better than the next best, either cats or chimpanzees, based on opinion. (There are orders of magnitude more cats than chimpanzees, and one species is on the verge of extinction and the other gets canned food several times a day.)
1. On a short term basis an individual brain makes mistakes. I was, after all a xian for 45 years and lose my keys often for short periods of time.
2. On a long term and cumulative basis, our thinkiing is superb. Enough to get us from the stone age to the space age and the dominant species on the planet. More than half the large animal biomass is human and their associates, mostly cows.
3. And we know why. Human thinking is self correcting. Our actual thought envelope, the noosphere is potentially 7 billion people. If I’m wrong, someone can point it out. It’s also cumulative. We have access to the best thoughts of the last 100,000 years. Thanks to literacy, libraries, universities, schools, and now e-storage and Google.
4. We’ve also developed cognitive tools to sharpen our thinking. Empiricism which led to science. Critical thinking. Reality testing. Philosophy sometimes. Anthropology, psychology, psychiatry, neuroscience. The latter informs us just where our evolved brains can go wrong and why.
5. The result. Modern science created a Hi Tech civilization that even a few hundred years ago, no one could even imagine. US lifepans have increased 30 years in a century and we feed 7 billion people, a task thought impossible a few decades ago. We have robots on Mars and around Saturn and one just went by Pluto. Our lead in science is why the US is the last superpower.
And what has xianity accomplished lately? Nothing except sponsoring xian terrorism, assassinating MD’s, and producing reality shows about stupid white hypocrites doing stupid things.
raven @75:
Holy fuck. Is that a joke? We shit in our own nest to the detriment of the entire biosphere, including, in the probably not-so-long run, our own species. And there’s no sign of significant improvement in our behaviour. And you’re looking backwards and saying what a great trip we’ve had, just before we go over the edge of a cliff, dragging a lot of others with us.
NO!!!
Holy fuck!!! Are you drunk or stupid? Or both? Don’t bother answering, you’ve just blown up your credibility forever. While our cumulative human thought is dazzling, some brains are just along for the ride, namely yours*.
1. I can see you are an End Timer. Not a religious one, a secular one. We’ve heard this for several millennia now. You need a new act.
To take one example, in 1348-49 the Black Death went through Europe and killed 25% of the population or so. In some local places, it killed everyone. It really did look like the end for good reasons. No one knew what caused it and no one could treat it.
And how did that end? The bubonic plague is still here, not too far away from my house in Yosemite this very moment. It’s a minor nuisance compared to everything else that can kill us.
2. You don’t know that we humans are on the edge of extinction. That is basically a prediction of the future and like most dystrophic predictions, usually turns out wrong. Somehow, we just keep muddling through and our capabilities for muddling through increase every year.
3. I’m not going to repeat my points above since you weren’t able to understand them. However, just look around. Our modern Hi Tech civilization provides billions with long, healthy lives and objects that do things they couldn’t imagine. Cars and the internet would be miracles to the ancients.
* I’ve long gotten sick of the ad hominens and insults from stupid trolls on Pharyngula. It’s why I don’t post often or care much any more. Even PZ Myers seems to have caught on that this has driven many people away.
That’s you. And since you are stupid, to summarize. Fuck you, troll!!! You aren’t wasting any more of my valuable time
raven @77:
Ah, faith-based science. What are your metrics for “increase”?
Rob Grigjanis, what are your metrics for “not-so-long run”?
Will you provide a time frame for your predicted imminent human extinction?
Amphiox @79:
Population increase, climate change, continuing degradation of agricultural land, military adventurism, the problems (e.g. refugees) caused by those factors, etc. Seriously?
In what dictionary does ‘detriment’=’extinction’? A shitload of species have gone, and will go, extinct before us. We’ll cling to the edge a lot longer than many, but we made the cliff. Are you questioning that?
I hate this argument over human extinction.
It is not nor has it been for a very long time the case that we are starring at extinction. If you just go to any of the 3 world slums, refugee camps or any number of Favelas
you will see that we will survive as a species it is the interconnected international thing that is civilization that is at risk.
I also find the way what is possible and even likely is just passed off as “we got through the black death so don’t worry” to be callous and stupid.
Many of the bigger problems we are facing if they are is not caused by our action directly are exacerbated by our actions.
On a cheerful note a new plague is always as possible as is the ever present war. Survival in any of these things depends on how lucky you are, to have the right genes or be in the right place at the right time. 25% of 7 billion is a lot of death but apparently to some no big deal?
uncle frogy
Personally speaking, if someone were to drop this silly “but how can I believe my own thinking?” argument on me, I’d ask them to take a stand on the issue before engaging: which is to say, ask them if they are arguing that humans are capable of rational thought or not.
If they say humans aren’t, then obviously the conversation’s done. No point in argument if no-one can be rational.
If they say they are, then we can discuss things from there, including using reason (which they just admitted they think exists) to arrive at an atheist position.
If they say they don’t know, then I’d say they haven’t really through this one through if they haven’t even gotten that far yet, and to come back later when they’ve drawn some conclusions from their own argument.
Pivot back to answer #1 whenever they start up with “but how can I be sure?” – “The minute you’re honestly not sure if we can argue rationally at all, stop arguing, because you believe it’s futile. Your move.”
Can this Yahveh character be trusted to give us reliable brains?
! Kings 22:20
20 And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab, so that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-gilead?’ Then one said one thing, and another said another, 21 until a spirit came forward and stood before the Lord, saying, ‘I will entice him.’ 22 ‘How?’ the Lord asked him. He replied, ‘I will go out and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.’ Then the Lord[c] said, ‘You are to entice him, and you shall succeed; go out and do it.’ 23 So you see, the Lord has put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these your prophets; the Lord has decreed disaster for you.”
(The same story is told in 2 Chronicles 18)
Ezekiel 14:9
9 If a prophet is deceived and speaks a word, I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand against him, and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel.
2 Thessalonians 2
11 For this reason God sends them a powerful delusion, leading them to believe what is false, 12 so that all who have not believed the truth but took pleasure in unrighteousness will be condemned.
Ezekiel 20:25
25 Moreover I gave them statutes that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live.
@83
that sure sounds just a little paranoid to me and helps to explain why it is so hard to use reason against their faith apologetics. I have felt there was something like that implied I just never knew it was so clearly spelled out before wow!
uncle frogy
I read plenty of Lewis back when I was seriously committed to being a Christian, and when he was often referred to as being this great shining beacon of Christian rationality. And the flaws and gap and sleight-of-hands were obvious even back then to my 18-year-old self.
They have a long contingent history in which they were shaped by selection to have particular properties that allowed bearers of slightly more functional nervous systems to outlive, outbreed bearers of cruder brains. An absence of a designer does not imply that the only other alternative is random chaos.
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2015/08/24/so-this-c-s-lewis-guy-was-supposed-to-be-a-smart-fellow/#ixzz3kDPi3D2r
The writer refers to Darwinian Natural Selection as the replacement of design by God. However it is well known that Darwin based his concept of Natural Selection on husbandry practiced by agriculture in England for many years. Thus Natural Selection is modeled on rational selection by humans. Logically Natural Selection must be rational selection by Nature or failing that since Nature is able to think rational selection by God Who is the Creator of Nature.
See Darwin’s Mistake
Relates7 #86
Nope, natural selection is nothing other than the interaction between the species and their environment. That is what evolution says, there is no imaginary selctor. You are ignorant of the science.
There is no god as you have presented no conclusive physical evidence for it, just mental wankery, and it is therefore nothing but a presupposition on your part. A wish. A delusion.