Insufficient Christianity: 24.1
Moving on to Chapter 24 of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis, we’re going to discuss, refute and offer criticism for the idea of the trinity in Christian theology.If you'd like to see all of the critical analysis of Mere Christianity we have done thus far, click the "C.S. Lewis" label at the bottom of this post.
Lewis says that lots of people believe in god, but they don’t believe in a personal god as they believe god is beyond personality. Christians, however, are the “only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.”
Really. When Lewis makes statements like these, I have to wonder if he knows much of anything about religions other than Christianity. If one is looking for a transpersonal god, it is “a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas”. Brahman is a transpersonal god. Allah is a transpersonal god. Waheguru is transpersonal. Christianity is not unique in this respect.
Moving on, Lewis explains that only Christians know how human souls can be absorbed into the life of god yet remain themselves, and warns that the whole purpose to existence is so that we may one day be absorbed into the life of god, and that wrong ideas about what god is will make this more difficult, so we had better pay attention to this trinity thing. Once again, Lewis is setting up his arguments to be immune from questioning and criticism. If we ask how souls can be absorbed into god and remain themselves at the same time, he can just reply with, “well, you can only understand it if you’re special like me”.
Lewis explains the trinity with an analogy (surprise!) using other occurrences of trinities: 3 dimensions (up-down, left-right, back-forth). God is like this.
Admittedly, trinities are cool. We’ve got the Id-Ego-Superego, Past-Present-Future, Consciousness-Subconsciousness-Unconsciousness, Here-There-Inbetween, Mind-Body-Spirit (actually there is no evidence for spirit, but I digress from my digression), and more. I can get how the Christian god is a trinity, though I don’t really understand this Holy Spirit business. Is it like a piece of god that god puts into all of us?
No matter, Lewis says if we can’t quite imagine is, that’s okay as long as we know that we’re interacting with all three all the time. Lewis also argues that this is obviously not all made up because if it were made up, it would be a lot simpler. The simpler a religion, the more likely it is to have been made up. The rest of his chapter is a several paragraph diatribe about how we can’t know or understand god unless we want to understand him, insisting that god will not show himself to the unwilling or the filthy.
This is the ultimate cop-out. It is totally unfalsifiable and makes Christianity immune to Criticism. I could say that when you come to know metaphysical naturalism, the initiative lies on the side of metaphysical naturalism, and that the naturalistic rational universe shows itself much more readily to some people than others, and that this is because some people are simply thinking wrong.
Apparently though this cop-out is “why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.”
Lewis ends the chapter with this: “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.”
Anyone can be complex if he has no facts to bother about too, so I don't see why this is relevant. Complexity does not make one thing true over the other.
Mere Christianity Online
Lewis says that lots of people believe in god, but they don’t believe in a personal god as they believe god is beyond personality. Christians, however, are the “only people who offer any idea of what a being that is beyond personality could be like. All the other people, though they say that God is beyond personality, really think of Him as something impersonal: that is, as something less than personal. If you are looking for something super-personal, something more than a person, then it is not a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas. The Christian idea is the only one on the market.”
Really. When Lewis makes statements like these, I have to wonder if he knows much of anything about religions other than Christianity. If one is looking for a transpersonal god, it is “a question of choosing between the Christian idea and the other ideas”. Brahman is a transpersonal god. Allah is a transpersonal god. Waheguru is transpersonal. Christianity is not unique in this respect.
Moving on, Lewis explains that only Christians know how human souls can be absorbed into the life of god yet remain themselves, and warns that the whole purpose to existence is so that we may one day be absorbed into the life of god, and that wrong ideas about what god is will make this more difficult, so we had better pay attention to this trinity thing. Once again, Lewis is setting up his arguments to be immune from questioning and criticism. If we ask how souls can be absorbed into god and remain themselves at the same time, he can just reply with, “well, you can only understand it if you’re special like me”.
Lewis explains the trinity with an analogy (surprise!) using other occurrences of trinities: 3 dimensions (up-down, left-right, back-forth). God is like this.
Admittedly, trinities are cool. We’ve got the Id-Ego-Superego, Past-Present-Future, Consciousness-Subconsciousness-Unconsciousness, Here-There-Inbetween, Mind-Body-Spirit (actually there is no evidence for spirit, but I digress from my digression), and more. I can get how the Christian god is a trinity, though I don’t really understand this Holy Spirit business. Is it like a piece of god that god puts into all of us?
No matter, Lewis says if we can’t quite imagine is, that’s okay as long as we know that we’re interacting with all three all the time. Lewis also argues that this is obviously not all made up because if it were made up, it would be a lot simpler. The simpler a religion, the more likely it is to have been made up. The rest of his chapter is a several paragraph diatribe about how we can’t know or understand god unless we want to understand him, insisting that god will not show himself to the unwilling or the filthy.
“When you come to knowing God, the initiative lies on His side. If He does not show Himself, nothing you can do will enable you to find Him. And, in fact, He shows much more of Himself to some people than to others - not because He has favourites, but because it is impossible for Him to show Himself to a man whose whole mind and character are in the wrong condition. Just as sunlight, though it has no favourites, cannot be reflected in a dusty mirror as clearly as in a clean one.
This is the ultimate cop-out. It is totally unfalsifiable and makes Christianity immune to Criticism. I could say that when you come to know metaphysical naturalism, the initiative lies on the side of metaphysical naturalism, and that the naturalistic rational universe shows itself much more readily to some people than others, and that this is because some people are simply thinking wrong.
Apparently though this cop-out is “why horrible nations have horrible religions: they have been looking at God through a dirty lens.”
Lewis ends the chapter with this: “If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier. But it is not. We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about.”
Anyone can be complex if he has no facts to bother about too, so I don't see why this is relevant. Complexity does not make one thing true over the other.
Mere Christianity Online
Labels: atheism, biases, blasphemy, books, C.S. Lewis
posted by Ziztur
at
8:00 AM
4 Comments:
So, we have this concept of the Trinity that we know from it's historical development was cobbled together to 'explain' how Jesus should be considered a god while still maintaining the facade of monotheism. (I suspect, the Holy Ghost was tossed into the mix because it was frequently mentioned and it gave the magic number three.) And because this cobbled together 'explanation' is complex and incoherent that means it can't be made up!? Funny. I could always tell when my kids were making up fibs because their stories would always get very elaborate.
“Oh what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive!”
-- Sir Walter Scott
“If Christianity was something we were making up, of course we could make it easier.We cannot compete, in simplicity, with people who are inventing religions. How could we? We are dealing with Fact. Of course anyone can be simple if he has no facts to bother about."
Dr. L.R. Hubbard would disagree. With his 'engrams are in your body and are things which hold you back, which, surprise! are actually memories from your youth, which, surprise! are actually false memories planted in there, which, surprise! are actually brainwashed alien souls which you need to get rid of which, surprise! actually if you harness them right you get superpowers.
It -is- a lot more simple in terms of the exponentially increasing cost of each surprise, though theology-wise it all seems the same to me.
The bible theology is complex and contradictory for the same reason that comics are: more than one author over periods of time.
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