C.S. Lewis is one of the most popular of modern Christian apologists, but his popularity is based upon a reputation that isn’t entirely deserved. His arguments in defense of Christianity are largely superficial and unconvincing to anyone except those who are already believers or who aren’t especially skilled when it comes to critical thinking.
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We have to be continually reminded of what we believe. Neither this belief nor any other will automatically remain alive in the mind. It must be fed. And as a matter of fact, if you examined a hundred people who had lost their faith in Christianity, I wonder how many of them would turn out to have reasoned out of it by honest argument? Do not most people simply drift away?
- C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
This is a conclusion to an argument about why it is important to consciously hold on to one’s faith. According to Lewis, it is important to think about one's religious doctrines every day because nonbelievers didn’t stop believing through rational arguments but, rather, by “drifting away” — not bothering with their beliefs and letting them slip through their fingers.
“Faith” for Lewis is an unusual type of belief if it can be lost through a lack of regular, deliberate reinforcement. We’re not talking about forgetting something but instead the loss of a belief. I doubt that once most people’s reason accepts the sex of their child, the existence of Paris, and the color of the sky, they need to deliberately hold those propositions before themselves every day lest “changing moods” cause them to think that their son is a daughter, Paris is a province in Bolivia, or the sky is orange.
It’s not a defense of “faith” if one has to depict it as being so weak. If I have to consciously work on a belief every day in order to avoid losing it, what’s the value in having it in the first place? Perhaps there are good reasons to let slip away a belief with so little justification. Here, faith sounds less like a type of belief then a type of skill. Skills require practice to maintain; at most, beliefs require something to jog our memory.
Another problem is the juxtaposition of “moods” with one’s “real self.” Why is it a “mood” that Christianity is improbable, a mood that has to be fought so that your “real self” can reassert dominance? Perhaps doubting about Christianity is one’s “real self” that should be given free rein. We must wonder about the value of a belief if maintaining it requires fighting “moods” that cause question and doubt.
Finally, there is an implicit criticism of atheists in saying that most haven’t reasoned their way to atheism but, rather, drifted away from a theistic religion. Lewis has a fair point and I agree that most atheists probably haven’t spent a lot of of time reading religious philosophy and atheistic critiques of religion. Most are, instead, apathetic about the whole thing and have stopped caring.
The problem lies in how Lewis limits this to nonbelievers. We can turn it around and ask: if you examined a hundred people who had faith in Christianity, how many of them would turn out to have been reasoned into it by honest arguments? Do not most people simply drift in? Indeed, because most people are raised to believe rather than question their religion, it is entirely possible that we’ll hit a higher percentage in this group than in the group described by Lewis.
This is not to say that people who “drift into” theism are less rational than those who “drift out,” but it is important to think about the consequences of both. If a person simply “drifts out” of Christianity or theism, it would be easier to bring them back via poorly constructed arguments (like Lewis’) than it would with people who had reasoned their way out. It is perhaps for this group that the bulk of bad apologetics is designed.
As for those who “drift into” theism, you can’t reason a person out of a position they didn’t reason their way into. If you encounter a person who is a theist by default and who never having undertook a serious study of religion or philosophy, you shouldn’t get your hopes up that a debate about religion or theism will lead them to seriously reexamine their position. If their current beliefs aren’t grounded in reason and logic, it’s unreasonable to expect reason and logic to prompt a reexamination of those beliefs.
