Ethical Philosophy. Thinking Clearly in a World of Nonsense. Topic for Examination on February 9, 2014 (last revised February 3, 2014)

Transcription

1 Ethical Philosophy Thinking Clearly in a World of Nonsense Topic for Examination on February 9, 2014 (last revised February 3, 2014) Christian Apologetics in the form of C.S. Lewis very popular book entitled Mere Christianity Summary Published in 1952, Mere Christianity came from C.S. Lewis s radio broadcasts during WWII. He was an English lit professor, former atheist but not a theologian. Nonetheless, his book is hugely influential and very popular. Apologetics means to defend a religion, here Christian beliefs. He is YES on virgin birth, wives must obey husbands, capital punishment; NO on the monstrosity of sex outside of marriage, perverted desires, divorce, etc. (See page 3 for some of the surprising moral laws.) To this reader, it s familiar debate tricks (bad analogies, false choices, etc.) to justify old-school Christian beliefs. But of course, beliefs always come first, reasons follow. 1

2 What The Book Is Like In his lengthy preface, Lewis claims humility. On marriage he admits no experience, and then holds forth with certainty. He says that if you aren t already a Christian, you will not be persuaded. He does not take sides in doctrinal disputes between denominations. He says that all other religions may not be 100% wrong, but they are not right. Only Christianity is right. He accepts his own ideas as right and others as wrong and nonsense. Some times he is harsh, condescending, even insulting and spiteful towards other people about their beliefs. Christianity is not simple. It is a fact of the universe like E=mc 2. It is the only accurate explanation of creation and like E=mc 2, something that no ordinary person (not a theologian) would expect. (p. 41) Atheists are uneducated and child-like in their simple mindedness, while theology is an experimental science. (Lewis doesn t say it that clearly, but that is clearly what he says and means.) Like a roadmap, theology is a rational guide to taking a journey. You can travel without a map, but you ll probably not get where you want to go. He admits that his opinions are not found in the scriptures. But they are widely held by theologians as a result of their research. Other scientists use instruments such as microscopes, while theologians use their entire selves. He says every argument against God s existence leads instead (once reason is applied) to proof of God s being. He sees himself as a scientist, like Galileo. Like Galileo he has discovered odd and unexpected (see left) aspects of God. Like Neo-Platonists, he intuits, calls it reason and then feels certain of what he concludes. He states that he rejects his own human nature and foibles; and turns to God to be completely remade. He wants basic parts of himself removed. His ideas are plentiful and carefully explained through poor analogies, false choices and unexplained assertions. Well, you judge for yourself. 2

3 The Law Of (Human) Nature 1 All human moral codes in history are alike, sort of. All over the world and at all times, moral codes have differed, but not by much. What they have in common is God speaking to us. (Natural Law) On a very basic level, people do not need to be educated into a sense of right-and-wrong, it is inborn in them. (p. 41) For example, if you compare the British moral code to the Nazi moral code and say that one is better than the other, you are actually comparing them both to some other standard. That other standard is God s Real Morality. (p. 25) Some Examples of God s Real Morality (A) fair-play, courage, unselfishness; honesty, kindness and helpfulness (p. 72) (B) prudence, temperance, justice, fortitude, (p. 74) charity, obedience, respect (p. 81) (C) capital punishment for murder (p. 106) (D) go to war with gaiety and wholeheartedness (E) burn a witch at the stake, if you believe she really is a witch (p. 26) (F) just leave her alone. If you see a woman you find attractive, you should not engage her, just leave her alone.. ) Women are not interested in men or sex. (Yes, he wrote that.) (G) do not masturbate, act cowardly or lend money at interest (H) do not get divorced because that would be breaking a promise (I) wives should obey husbands because women don t want to control their own lives Arguments Against God s Existence Really Support It For Lewis, atheism once thought about rationally, forces us into theism. Atheists often complain that the universe is cruelly indifferent. If god exists, he would not allow that. Therefore, atheists conclude, God does NOT exist. But Lewis points out that a fish does not have the idea of dryness because it has always been wet. (So where does a fish get 1 The Law of Human Nature used to be a generally accepted. Differences between moral codes are caused by differing views of reality. For example, we don t burn witches today because we no longer believe they exist. If we did believe they exist, burning them would be appropriate. (p. 26) 3

4 the idea of dryness? From God!) So where in a cruel universe can the idea of cruelty (or not-cruelty) come from? It must come from God, therefore Lewis concludes, God MUST exist. He goes on if the universe had no meaning, we would not know what meaning is. We are however, aware of meaning. The fact that we have the concept of meaning proves that it exists in the mind of God. Therefore, God exists. (p. 39) Values, meaning etc. are like unicorns. No one has ever seen a unicorn, but we still have the idea of a unicorn therefore they must exist. Case closed, unicorns and gods exist. It s not like people can just make stuff up. It s not like a species could evolve new senses, like radar in bats or geo-positioning in migrating birds. That can t happen. Lewis allows three types of world views. My God Is Better Than Your God 1. materialism the universe has no meaning, it just is or just happened 2. Religion-ism what lies beneath the universe is like a mind, conscious and with preferences, some things it likes and some it doesn t 3. Life-force philosophy we evolved not because of god, but from a life-force or perhaps a will-to-live Among religionists, there are two types. 1. God is Beyond Good and Evil - Some religionist (Neo-Platonists, Pagans, Spinoza) say God is beyond good and evil. The UNIVERSE IS God. Our ideas of good and evil are only our preferences based upon our perspective. 2. God is Like A Person - Christianity, Judaism and Islam say that God created the universe and is therefore outside of it. Their god IS GOOD. He is a fighting god. He has preferences and wants us to act in certain ways. 4

5 Logic: If God is not like a person, who instilled these ideas in our heads? A transcendent god (beyond good-and-evil and uninvolved) would not bother to put such ideas into our minds. Therefore, God must be like a human being. What He and Real Christians Believe, and Why Christians believe Satan is now Prince of the World. (p. 52) Atheists ask how can an all powerful God let that happen? Answer: God had to give people free-will because that is the only way love, goodwill and joy is worth having 2. (p. 53) But freewill cuts both ways. Even God cannot give people freedom and also keep them from using it wrongly. (In this, he contradicts Augustine in several ways.) What s more, you cannot argue with God because your ability to argue comes from Him. (What? 3 In this he is assuming that these ideas are God s ideas. But earlier he stated that they are not in the scriptures. Therefore, he is really saying that you cannot argue with C.S. Lewis. He also says that the greatest sin is arrogance but doesn t seem to notice it in himself.) Having settled that thorny issue, he moves on. What Christ said 4 was (p. 55) simply the most shocking shocking thing that has ever been uttered by human lips. Lewis Most Famous Assertion (so here it is verbatim) I was trying here to prevent anyone the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I am ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don t accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level of a man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil. 2 He does not say how he knows that. 3 Can we not fly because God made gravity or swim because he didn t give us gills? 4 Lewis says that Jesus claimed (A) to be God, (B) he had always existed and (C) could forgive sins. I cannot find that in my Bible. I find contradicting and ambiguous statements. 5

6 You must make your choice. Either this man was and is the son of God or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool or you can spit at him or kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (p.56) And then the coup de grace: It seems to me obvious that he was neither a lunatic nor a fiend; and consequently I have to accept that view that He was and is God. (p. 57) Case closed, matter settled. Why Did Christ Have To Die? Christ death has somehow put us right with God and given us a fresh start. (p. 58) But why? Why would a god kill his own son in exchange for not punishing people for doing the things He designed them to do? It doesn t matter Lewis explains. There are many theories and it s not yet settled by theological research. You don t need to worry about it. Problem solved. There is a lot more such stuff in Mere Christianity, but I think you get the drift. 6

7 C.S. Lewis Life (mostly from Wikipedia at Born in Belfast in 1898, Lewis father was a lawyer and his mother the daughter of an Anglican priest. During the First World War, he was commissioned into the Third Battalion of the Somerset Light Infantry. He was in trench warfare at the Somme Valley on his 19 th birthday. In April 1918, Lewis was wounded and two of his fellows were killed by a British shell falling short of its target. Lewis suffered from depression and homesickness during his convalescence. He fell away from his faith during his adolescence but One evening in September of 1929, Lewis had a long talk on Christianity with J.R.R. Tolkien (a devout Roman Catholic.) I gave in, and admitted that God was God, and knelt and prayed. He returned to the Anglican Communion, becoming "a very ordinary layman of the Church of England". His faith had a profound effect on his work, and his wartime radio broadcasts on Christianity brought him wide acclaim. Lewis himself was a fellow and tutor of English literature at Oxford and the author of several famous books including the Screwtape Letters (1941) and the Tales of Marnia. In 1956, he married the American writer Joy Davidman, a Jewish American writer and convert from atheism to Christianity. Their marriage was for the purpose of allowing her to legally reside in England. She was 17 years his junior and died four years later at the age of 45. He had no other marriages, no children and no known sexual relationships. There were speculations about his long relationship with the mother of his best friend Paddy, who was killed in the war. Paddy s mother was 27 years older than Lewis. Apparently there was no hint of dishonesty or insincerity in him. But he was an educated person. How could he write such stuff? On the other hand he was a literature professor and fiction writer. Maybe he was simply on that page. Lewis died three years after his wife one week before his 65th birthday. Media coverage of his death was minimal; he died on 22 November 1963 the same day that U.S. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. 7

8 On Later Reflection Lewis was academically gifted. Upon graduating from Oxford, he was offered a teaching position. So how did he miss all that information about logical fallacies and cheap debate tricks? He certainly uses them a lot? Was it intentional trickery? What is the preternatural appeal of his work to believers? I ve known very educated people who recommended, even gave me copies of Mere Christianity to read. Somewhere in the book he defined psychological repression (accurately as I understand it.) Thoughts and feelings coming up from repressed sexuality that the individual would never guess were coming from repressed feelings. Then he dismisses that as the source of his Christian beliefs. He does not say why. I have to admit that Mere Christianity is one of the most enlightening books I ve read. It reveals the man behind the curtain or more specifically, the THINKING inside the man wearing the backwards collar. Yet millions of people swear by it. If that is what Christianity is based upon, I better understand what Jeremy Bentham meant by nonsense on stilts. 8

9 D+ On a grading system from A to F, I give Mere Christianity a grade of D+ He did apply thought to matters religious; that is no small thing. On the other hand, he did it very poorly. His book insults the Universe and degrades human beings. How could he miss the entire 20 th Century? He was a smart guy with access to education; he worked at Oxford for God s sake! How could he do that? Richard Dawkins said of Lewis he should have known better. It had to be an intentional oversight motivated by non-rational psychological forces, ( crazy as I mean the word.) He wasn t much crazier than most, he just wrote it down and inflicted it upon lots of people. To his credit, he wasn t trying to psychologically harm people, he just did. The best conclusion I can offer to Lewis s cartoon version of all creation is Sebastian Twit February 3,