Insufficient Christianity: Chapter 3.1

In this chapter, Lewis makes a distinction between physical laws by which material objects operate and moral laws by which humans tend to operate. He comes to the conclusion that these differences are such that it defies simple “natural” explanation and requires, instead, that something “above and beyond the ordinary facts of men's behaviour, and yet quite definitely real--a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us”.

Lewis begins by saying that objects behave according to certain laws – a rock will fall due to the Law of Gravity, and a tree will grow and be shaped by the environment due to physical laws. When we say that a stone is the “wrong shape”, we do not mean that a stone can be blamed for being the shape that it is because we understand the processes that gave the stone its shape.  A rock shaped for our purposes obeyed the same laws as a rock unsuited for our purposes.

In this way, a “Law” means, “an observation of what things always do”. I.E. a rock always obeys gravity. Lewis says that this is different from the “Moral Law” as people do not always obey moral laws. Lewis believes this is unnatural.

    The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave.

Lewis says this, and while I agree that the “Moral Law” is not the same as a Law of Gravitation”, that does not mean that the moral law is not a fact about how humans behave. I believe that this distinction Lewis makes between some laws being “natural” and morality being “unnatural” is entirely arbitrary. Human interactions, thoughts and ideas are incredibly complex and there is no reason to assume that this complexity is somehow unnatural simply because it is different from the “Law of Gravity”. Lewis is essentially pointing out that physical laws and moral laws are different from one another, and that this difference must mean that the more complicated moral law is unnatural.

Let us compare a simpler law with the Law of Gravity. Let’s pretend that in my home city of St. Louis, it is illegal to own tomatoes. It is possible for me to own tomatoes, but I ought not to own tomatoes. Perhaps I really enjoy tomatoes and feel I would greatly benefit from owning some, but feel that for the greater benefit of society, I should refrain from owning them. My ability to act in a manner which is not entirely selfish is, according to Lewis, unnatural and thus requires explanation:

And that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, not that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be. The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behaveAnd that is where I do stop. Men ought to be unselfish, ought to be fair. Not that men are unselfish, not that they like being unselfish, but that they ought to be.”

No, it is not the same as these facts, but that does not meant that it is not a fact that human as a species survive because they are capable and driven to behave unselfishly. If all humans suddenly decided to behave completely selfishly tomorrow, one can imagine that our species would not last very long – just like if a species of beetle all decided to fly into the mouths of dogs, the species of beetle would not last long, either.

We don’t behave in the way we do in order to survive – rather, we survive because we behave in the way we do.

This seems to be such a common thread in the way Christian apologists think - making the assumption that the way the universe operates is a goal rather than an effect. To put it in a simpler, far more absurd way – it is like marveling at how well the legs were designed perfectly for the fitting of pants, or marveling at how the face is shaped just so to accommodate a pair of glasses.  The reason Lewis needs to postulate something beyond reality to explain the moral behavior of humans is due to the fact that he sees our species as an end product – he sees our legs as being perfectly designed for pants, and tries to explain how something extraordinary must be posited to explain how our legs got that way. There is no reason to assume that our social morals are not naturally what we do, that the ever increasing complexity of our social morals is a product of fitting into the environment that we were handed.

Reference: Mere christianity Online