Although C.S. Lewis was a medievalist, among other things, I encountered only The Discarded Image among his writings in the field. He was a scholar of the high and later medieval periods, and I concentrated on the Anglo-Saxon material, so I would have had to pursue him on my own for a fuller familiarity. I'm certain I read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe when I was a kid. Although I don't remember much of that book itself, I do remember that the fantasy was pretty good.
Lewis is today considered a big deal in Christian evangelical and apologetic circles. A quick glance through notable quotes by Lewis, or a more extended reading through works such as Mere Christianity, reveals why he is held in high esteem by defenders of the faith. He sounds good. He gives a sharp impression of even-handed questioning and reasoning--and of course he comes to the right conclusions that atheism is untenable and that Jesus is God (or isn't not-God).
One brief argument of Lewis's bothers me particularly:
If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents -- the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts -- i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy -- are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It’s like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.This bit comes from "Answers to Questions on Christianity," which can be found in God in the Dock. The main problem is Lewis's unfortunate choice of the word "accident" and its variants--used here an astonishing 9 times in a passage of only 149 words (6%).
Now, "accident" has several senses, including one that invokes chance and the lack of apparent or deliberate cause. So it's a legitimate word for Lewis to use. The unfortunate part is that it's not really accurate in the context of how the solar system was brought about. A more judicious word to use would have been "natural," like so:
If the solar system was brought about by a natural collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also natural, and the whole evolution of Man was natural too. If so, then all our present thoughts are natural -- the natural by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else’s. But if their thoughts -- i.e., of Materialism and Astronomy -- are merely natural by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one natural by-product should be able to give me a correct account of all the other natural by-products. It’s like expecting that the natural shape taken by the splash when you upset a milk-jug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.How different Lewis's argument appears with the words substituted! Yes, precisely, the solar system was well within the purview of natural forces in the universe. Yes, the physical parameters of the universe and both the relations and reactions of objects to one another made organic life possible. Yes, the evolution of creatures such as humanity were potential paths allowed by nature. And yes, thinking is natural too.
Lewis really starts to err when he denigrates human thought as being untrustworthy unless it has been given by God. We of course use not only thought but also tools, and tools are artificial--not natural, not accidental. So, even if our thoughts are untrustworthy by themselves--and they are--we have been good enough to develop tools that enhance the depth and breadth of our thought. These tools also augment our abilities to apprehend and understand the universe. From our math and logic to our telecommunications and telescopes, we've been able to grope our way to discriminating reliable from specious thinking.
The milk-splash crack doesn't work either because the shape, positioning, speed, and other factors of a milk splash will provide us lots of information from which to establish hypothesis on the jug's composition and movements.
Obviously, Lewis's apologetic ouvere should not be dismissed on one brief and lousy answer of his. Nevertheless, his answer is quite poor on several levels. It's biased, narrow, and surprisingly unimaginative. Were I a Christian apologist with Lewis's works in my hand, I might invoke the rule of "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
I have not seen the essay from which you quote, but I wonder if the occasion for which it was written has some bearing on the wretched quality of the reasoning. Perhaps it was dumbed down for a particular audience? Or perhaps I have simply presumed Lewis's argumentative abilities to be better than they in fact are. (I have not yet read his apologetical writings.)
ReplyDeleteAnother way of exposing the inanity of his argument, by the way, is to embrace the alternative that he presumably intends and put "by the will of God" in place of "by accident" in the passage. You then get the argument that if everything that has happened from the origins of the solar system to the thoughts of human beings happens by the will of God then those thoughts are predetermined by-products of God's will and there is no reason to believe that any of them are true.
I've read all of Lewis' theological works, as well as his letters when he was a so-called atheist, and I must say... his reasoning is usually poor.
ReplyDeleteHis writing, however, is always excellent.
An oxymoron is I ever saw one, that one should write so well yet reason so poorly. He was no Thomas Paine, that's for sure. People were afraid to even challenge Paine's reasoning while he was alive, because he could crucify his critics with the might of his pen, which is why so many slandered Paine after his death.
Poor Lewis on the other hand, became a legend for his mediocre reasoning, because it caters to the same delusions as all the Christians he was writing for. He never seriously questioned his faith, he merely questioned his beliefs. There is a difference there. Subtle, yet there none-the-less.
Can you explain what do you mean by natural?
ReplyDeleteLewis uses the word "accident" with the meaning of chance, because is the concept that atheist/materialis uses to describe the cause of the universe.
Seems you understand that the cause of universe is the nature. But what is it?
>Now, "accident" has several senses, including one that invokes chance and the lack of apparent or deliberate cause.
ReplyDeleteI think the problem is also that these are two separate meanings, and Lewis conflates the two.
It is true that the existence of humans is "an accident" in the cosmic sense that there was no intentional, deliberate act behind it.
It is not true that the evolution of humans occurred by chance: it occurred by a very systematic mechanism, i.e., natural selection, which in part relies on chance. That systematic mechanism allows for a well-designed cognitive apparatus that can apprehend reality.
Something can be very complex and systematic without being intentionally created.
"I discovered randomness by accident ..."
ReplyDelete“Everywhere you turn in my theory you find incompleteness. Why? Because the very first question you ask in my theory gets you into trouble. You measure the complexity of something by the size of the smallest computer program for calculating it. But how can you be sure that you have the smallest computer program possible? .. you can't! ... In a nutshell, Godel discovered incompleteness, Turing discovered uncomputability, and I discovered randomness .. by accident” (Chaitin in, Randomness and Complexity, Christian Claude, ed., 2007, p. 338-39)
Randomness here means that some mathematical statements are true for no reason.
Lewis treating his own work as axiomatic and then investing faith in incompletely justified axioms isn’t new.
Maybe mediocre, as you say.
As to God in the dock (a major question of my post-grad research – religious rules suffering mathematical catastrophe in case judgments), I don’t think Lewis appreciated our incompetence to ask a Quantum Computer (“God,” not God) intelligent questions.
But then again, you lit/crits! I ain’t forgivin’ you, Tanner, for calling Voltaire a rat bastard! Good call, but I ain’t forgivin’ for it ..
Cheers,
Jim
Here's why Lewis is wrong:
ReplyDeleteLewis claims that unless we have a good reason to trust our human ability to reason, we should not trust our ability to reason. That is a decent point.
Then, Lewis argues, we have no good reason to trust human reasoning, if our brains are the result of accidents. That, too, is a decent point.
Now, we must ask Lewis: if the burden is upon us humans to use reasoning to prove that our reasoning is reliable, we can never achieve that goal. Merely offering proofs and reasoning which shows that God exists -- and that we aren't the product of accident -- isn't sufficient. How do we know that we can trust our reasoning which tells us that God exists? At the end of the day, Lewis is just running in circles.
Abele, I don't think that you get the point of the argument. The passage is not a positive argument for the truth of theism. It is merely an attempt to show that atheistic naturalism is self-undermining, because it supposedly entails that our reasoning powers are completely untrustworthy. Theism, by contrast (at least according to a plausible assumption on Lewis's part), does not have this implication, and is therefore not self-undermining. The argument, if successful, shows the superiority of theism to atheistic naturalism.
ReplyDeleteThe weak point in the argument is one that you grant to be a "decent point," namely the argument that "we have no good reason to trust human reasoning, if our brains are the result of accidents." Lewis takes the hypothesis (1) that our brains are accidental products of nature to entail (2) that the products of our brains, that is, our reasonings, are themselves accidental products of nature; this in turn he takes to entail (3) that those reasonings are completely untrustworthy. The inference from (1) to (2) commits the fallacy of composition. From the fact that our brains are accidental products of nature it simply does not follow that the products of our brains are also accidental products of nature. This is analogous to reasoning that, because no citizen is a sovereign state, no body of citizens can form a sovereign state.
Dear MKR,
ReplyDeleteI think you may be confusing the existence of God with the BELIEF in the existence of God. Yes, of course, the existence of God would imply that our brains are reliable and the inexistence of God MAY imply that our brains are unreliable (since, at least according to Lewis, we have the burden of proving that our brains are reliable). So, yes, Lewis' argument is that IF GOD EXISTS, then we are in good shape to make judgements about the world.
The problem with Lewis' argument is that according to its underlying assumption -- that we must have a reason to trust human reasoning (i.e., God) -- it is impossible to ever show that God exists. If so, of what use is his argument? Is he claiming that we should believe in God simply because it allows us to trust our reasoning? I hope Lewis isn't that silly.
No. Lewis is wrong. We start with the unprovable premise and postulate that we are capable of reasoning, whether God exists or whether he does not exist. Now, I happen to believe, as Lewis does, that our reasoning does point to the existence of God. But I don't know why Lewis, a skeptic of the ability of humans to reason, should trust his reasoning when it happens to point to the existence of God.