“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.”
― C.S. Lewis, Surprised by Joy
I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t
for C S Lewis.
As a communicator of personal Christian experience and as an
apologist for Christian doctrine, not to mention as a novelist, I can’t recommend his work
highly enough. It was probably in relation to his ‘spiritual autobiography’ Surprised by Joy that the nugget of
intention around which this blog has taken shape first coalesced. It drove home
to me that the interesting thing about religion, once one has a sense of what
one thinks about the Big Issues, is less an accounting of the philosophical
angels on the argumentative pinhead and more the subjective and personal
meaning of religion. The Screwtape
Letters and A Pilgrim’s Regress
are eminently readable accounts of what Christianity isn’t, and drew my attention to where - in my own catalogue of
visceral reactions and philosophical biases – my modes of thought diverged from
those of a potential Believer. Mere
Christianity, Lewis’s attempt to lay out the basic doctrinal points of view
shared by most Christian denominations, illuminated the common ground I was surprised
to find I had with much of what was said. It also helped mark the exact point
at which I’m apparently able to go no further: the part of each section that
could be read ‘…therefore Christianity’. It’s in this spirit of frank
appreciation of commonalties and differences – where neither is unduly
emphasised or dismissed – I’d like to discuss my most recent C.S. Lewis
reading, by disagreeing with one of his points of departure and positing a
commonality he probably wouldn’t admit.
In Miracles Lewis lays out the argument that one must first address
whether miracles can occur on logical grounds before one can decide upon the
historicity of a specific claim of miraculous events. He proposes, probably
with some justice, that a reading of bible history in particular with the
unexamined bias that miracles necessarily cannot happen is a form of begging
the question (LINK: wiki on begging the question). So far, so good. Weird Shit
certainly seems to happen, and the mental gymnastics exhibited by some who
reflexively try to shoe-horn it into currently known categories of ‘natural’ phenomena
can seem rather unconvincing. Of course, the God hypothesis doesn’t get points
just because another hypothesis has a few failings. Its merit lies in its
ability to better explain events, and
my only quibble thus far is that in this sense it doesn’t do much better in
regards to many types of Weird Shit. You may have heard the tale that one of
the candidate miracles in the canonization proceedings of St. Thomas Aquinas
was the ‘miraculous’ transformation of pilchards to herrings in his mouth while
ill in bed. Trying to corroborate this though, I had about as much luck as this guy.
Regardless of its authenticity as a feature of the saint’s canonization, the
story serves well enough for my point. Is the magical transformation of fish any
more revealing about the ultimate nature of the world in the context of a
beneficent god than it is in the context of a godless worldview?
Lewis makes a distinction between
‘Naturalists’ and ‘Supernaturalists’. The former, by his definition, believe that
explanations of events are possible within
the ‘system’ of the Universe, while the latter believe and rely on some transcendent
‘ground’ outside of the system. He is
credited with the first formulation of the ‘Argument from Reason’,
which uses this naturalist/supernaturalist distinction in relation to our
rationality and thought processes to outline a supposed inconsistency in ‘Naturalism’.
If - as is supposed of other phenomena - our thoughts are ‘merely’ physical and
find their causes within the system, then the argument is that they are in some sense
arbitrary and cannot be trusted as a means for reaching ‘reasonable’
conclusions. A quote from J.B.S. Haldane is used to elucidate the argument:
"If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true ... and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms."
Here we reach my point of
departure with Lewis – but not in terms of arguing the validity
(not the same thing as veracity) of
his conclusion in regards to naturalism. Rather, I suggest that – as with the
general issue of miracles – supernaturalism fails to fare much better than naturalism when
considered in the light of the same argument. If we poor mortals - trapped within the system - are to rely upon a transcendent
entity outside of the system to
ground our conclusions, we have no way of knowing if the correspondence between
our reasoning and the truth is any less arbitrary than is alleged of
Naturalism. Lewis, as a Christian, posits a benevolent god who surely wouldn’t deceive
us. While one is free to posit the existence of such a god, there is no logical
reason within the argument to suppose that any transcendent, extra-universal
superbeing has the same qualities attributed to the gods of the bible. Thus, we
are left with the same quandary – can we rely on our own modes of thought as a
way of revealing reliable information about the world?
I think that both the religious
and the non-religious have to answer this question in the same way. We can’t
know for sure that our reasoning reveals the truth to us, but in the absence of
a better tool, and in order to get anywhere, we all have to assume that it is at least partially up to the job. I wouldn’t call
myself an atheist if I felt all points of view were equally true – even supposing (which I don’t)
that they were equally valid. But
credit where credit is due. We all have to suppose that the patterns we observe
in phenomena have causes, and by exercising our reason we can reveal something about those patterns. We may
disagree about the object and the rules of the game, but we each have to admit
the right of our opponents to participate.
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