Mailbag: C.S. Lewis, Part 2
Subject: A RATIONALLY calm dismissal of atheism...
C.S. Lewis asks the atheist to explain himself on rational grounds. He argues thus:
(1) Why, he wonders, does man have a sense of Right and Wrong, even though he does not properly follow it?
(2) Why does anything exist to begin with?
(3) Is not atheism too simplistic to be true?
Note: the first part of this discussion appeared yesterday.
First, our sense of right and wrong is not a great mystery to anyone with an understanding of evolution and who has some knowledge of the behavior of other social animals, especially primates. Many animals that exist in social groups exhibit the early signs of a sense of right and wrong. What is "morality" other than the social rules we need in order to exist socially?
Second, the question of why anything exists to begin with is matched by the question of why "God" exists to begin with. The theist who asks questions like this is not really looking for an answer because the question itself is merely pushed back to a different point in a continuum: from the universe to the theist's god. If this question is supposed to be an argument against atheism, the corresponding question serves equally well as an argument against theism.
Finally, the concepts of "true" or "false" do not apply to atheism. Why? Because atheism is simply the disbelief in the existence of gods - and so long as some people disbelieve one might perhaps argue that atheism is "true," but not in the conventional sense. Rather, one should ask whether atheism is reasonable given what we know about the world - and it manifestly is reasonable. Theists have, at no point, produced an unambiguously successful argument demonstrating that any gods definitely exist.
But Lewis has here gently offered Christianity in so rational a light, without anger. He himself was a atheist. And now he has changed. There will be no jumping to conclusions, or quoting from the Bible for "proof" of an argument. He will surpise you.
What surprises me is that there are Christians who try to use C.S. Lewis as a "rational" defense of Christianity, given just how poor his arguments really are. He may indeed have been an atheist at one point himself, but since he doesn't seem to have converted to Christianity for rational reasons, I rather doubt that he was ever an atheist for rational reasons in the first place. This may have colored his understanding of atheism and led him to deliver such atrocious arguments in defense of his religion. It's a pity, really, because he ultimately did such a disservice to Christians.
Every atheist MUST read this work, as it will remind them that religion, whether for them true or not, is not easily dismissed as is commonly supposed. It has uncanny depth. C.S. Lewis has something to say, ladies and gentlemen. Every theist, every atheist, every deist must own this book.
Religion may not always be easy to dismiss, but that is not demonstrated in the works of C.S. Lewis. If Lewis' arguments were the best that could be provided in defense of religion generally or Christianity specifically, then dismissing either could be accomplished with little difficulty at all. I own numerous books by C.S. Lewis, none of which proved especially edifying after I had learned some real philosophy and theology - and learned about logical arguments in particular.
More selections from the Agnosticism / Atheism Mailbag...
Comments
“Is not atheism too simplistic to be true?”
Austin’s previous counter seems to be applicable here too: isn’t theism too simplistic to be true?
(What surprises me is that there are Christians who try to use C.S. Lewis as a “rational” defense of Christianity)
When one considers the fact of biological evolution, there is no rational defense of Christianity. It’s that simple.
Theories are not Facts.
“Theories are not Facts.”
True – but it could also be argued that there is no such thing as a “fact”. ISTM that a person who argues that evolution is not a fact must also accept that the nose on the end of his face is also just a “theory”.
There are strong theories and less strong theories. Evolution is a very “strong” theory because there have been no observations that contradict it. In this way it approaches the status of “fact” as closely as anything ever can. On the other hand, the “God” theory,amongst others, has no reliably known observations that support it at all. (Nor, if I’m any judge, will it ever have – given that the concept itself has yet, AFAIK, to be defined in any way which is not either incoherent or fatuous.)
“The world”
“Is not atheism too simplistic to be true?”
WtF does this question mean? “Not” always confuses sentences, especially questions. This isn’t a question at all. It should read “Atheism is too simplistic to be true”. A genuine question would be “Is atheism too simplistic to be true?”.
Paul Martin (3) says: “Theories are not Facts.”
No Paul, they are not. In the scientific sense, a “theory” is a hypothesis which has been tested successfully, and shown to be a reliable and useful explanation of how the world works. A theory is an explanation of reality.
A successful scientific theory, like Atomic Theory, Germ Theory, Tectonic Plate Theory, or Evolutionary Theory is supported by thousands, millions, even billions of facts. Just one instance where a theory fails to explain reality causes that theory to be downgraded back to a working hypothesis again, until and unless the anomoly is explained through an update or addition to the theory.
So to suggest that theories are mere facts would be a glaring disservice to just how powerful and important theories are.
You weren’t talking about the average ignorant person, were you Paul? You know, the kind of person who thinks “theory” means “some crazy, untested idea I’m just throwing out there”? Because that would be an untested or failed hypothesis – not a theory.
On our ’sense’ of right and wrong. The idea that we have a ’sense’ of right and wrong is wrong. Right and wrong only have meaning within the parameters of any particular set of rules. It is right to abide by the rules and wrong to act otherwise. Right and wrong have no other mystical status – they do not arise from an evolved ’sense’ at all. These notions have not developed through evolution as history amply demonstrates because they vary so widely from place to place, time to time and species to species.
The objection that it is always possible to ask whether a specific rule is ‘right’ does not destroy this argument – it just demonstrates that rules are always subject to dispute. Apart from just disagreeing about the best way to achieve an end (e.g. a healthy civilised society) there are different codes of rules and criticism of one rule as being ‘wrong’ merely demonstrates that the rule base from which the criticism emanates is different.
I have never understood the esteem in which many Christians hold C.S. Lewis, Josh McDowell, and Lee Strobel.
I dated a fundamentalist Christian years ago, when I was an undergraduate. At her urging, I read a stack of books by these writers and others of their ilk, even though I told her I had already read most of them and found them unpersuasive.
She found this hard to believe and one evening she started flipping through the books and quoting me excerpts that she considered especially devastating. It took her about five minutes to find out that, yes, I had indeed read her authors, and, no, they were not especially persuasive.
After that, her interest in quoting Josh McDowell diminished appreciably, and our conversations moved on to topics of more genuine interest.
Drew (6) please permit an old atheist to say “AMEN” to your comments. To use a trite expression “You hit the nail right on the head!!”
A theory not only comprises facts, it explains and makes predictions. I will give one example of which most of us are familiar with the result. Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity of 1905 said, among other things, that the energy of the rest mass of any physical object is equivalent to its mass multiplied by the square of the speed of light. In 1933, Leo Szilard somewat accidentally realized that if atoms could be split and continue in a chain reaction, this would be a source of abundant energt (our nuclear power plants), so he patented the idea. In 1938, if I remember correctly, Otto Hahn accidentally split uranium atoms. Neils Bohr realized that this made an atomic bomb possible, and knew Werner Heisenberg (who
was working with the Germans)knew of Hahn’s result, and knew its meaning. Bohr escaped to the United States, and he and Szilard convinced Einstein to write a letter to Roosevelt, suggesting that it would be to our advantage to produce the bomb first. Roosevelt agreed. The A-bomb was another conformation, of many, of the Theory of General Relativity.
result
Please excuse my typos; spellcheck missed them.