Interviewing Jeff Schweitzer soon!

I feel sort of bad, because it took me about 4 months to read Jeff Schweitzer's awesome book, Beyond Cosmic Dice: Moral Life in a Random World. During that time, he actually took time out of his busy life to email me and ask if I had finished it – and I had to tell him that my internship was taking up all of my free reading time.

However, I have officially, finally, finished Mr. Schweitzer's book, and so you will find, in the coming weeks, an e-terview between he and I.

Beyond Cosmic Dice is perhaps not the book you would expect from the title. To me, the title suggests that the book is primarily about morality and ethics in a world in which there is no ultimate purpose or absolute morality. In a very real way, this is what this book is about, but not in the way you'd think.

Chapter 1 is an extremely compelling description of the difficulties in defining life. Schweitzer explains quite convincingly that life is not an either-or proposition. Rather, the difference between life and non-life is a gradation. Instead of life being white and nonlife being black, life is closer to blue and nonlife is closer to green, with gradual shades in between. One can look at a dog and say, "this dog is definitely alive" and one can look at a rock and say, "this is definitely not alive", but not all things are so easily classified. As he puts it, "Nobody would deny the existence of green or blue, yet nobody can define when one color becomes the other. That inability to draw a clear line between them does not diminish the reality of the two colors" (pp 46). This is important to understand because when people ask, "how did life arise out of nonlife" they imagine life and nonlife as binary constructs, when in fact they are constructs on a spectrum. "Life" is nothing more than "an arbitrary label we apply to distinguish extremes of complexity along a continuum" (pp 47).

After explaining that life is an arbitrary label, Schweitzer goes on to briefly explain evolution. What I find most spectacular about this chapter is that while I am a seasoned reader of explanations and treatises on evolution, he offered a very unique perspective. He explains that evolution has no direction, purpose or drive toward complexity. Humans, in all of their complexity, are not abnormal in the grand scheme of evolution. In the grand scheme of evolution, simple, single-celled organisms are much more favored by natural selection than complex beings such as us. As Schweitzer puts it, "bacteria can easily live without us, but we would die quickly without them" (pp 65). Bacteria and other simple organisms outnumber us by both sheer numbers and mass – we are the latecomers, a "biological aberration", and when humanity is gone, the bacteria will go on living, having for all intents and purposes not noticed our coming and going at all. If there is a god and he designed the earth for any type of organism, it is not for complex humans but for the single-celled. The earth is far more suited to their kind, and they can survive where we absolutely cannot.

Chapter 3 deals specifically with humans, and the fact that most of the cells in our bodies are not ours (they are the cells of microorganisms using our body as a convenient apartment complex) and most of our DNA is not human either. We are they, and they are us. The other characteristics that we believe make us unique and special (intelligence, tool use, self-consciousness, self-awareness, etc) are not uniquely human. They are present in other species as well, to different degrees. A cheetah could just as easily point out that they are the pinnacle of evolution because they are the fastest land animal, making our claims to superiority quite arbitrary. The only thing that really separates us from everything else is our capacity to choose to be moral.

I found the first three chapters to be the most enlightening aspects of the book. These chapters make up part I. Part II of the book (the next 3 chapters) deals briefly with how religion arose and the shortcomings of religious morality. Part III deals with cultivating a natural ethic based on part I. Schweitzer defines a natural ethic as, "based on the principal that with the ability to choose to be good comes the obligation to make that choice; Choosing to be moral is what makes us special. The act of choosing to live a good life is the foundation for all pleasure, peace and happiness" (pp 176).

All organisms exploit their environment to the maximum extent possible, and humans are the only organism capable of recognizing this and then rising above this exploitative relationship. We should do so because we can.

Schweitzer then lays out moral foundation that he feels arise out of this natural ethic, but he stresses that these are personal guidelines and not universal ones. While I absolutely understand this tack, I feel as though the loose link between the strong and insightful first half of the book and the guidelines for ethical behavior in the second half of the book leave something to be desired. I wanted the book to end as strongly as it started. It didn't, but in a way I think that reflects the reality of morality. I have yet to find a system of morality that operates prescriptively that is also based on solid foundations, and instead I am left with shades of gray and bell curves of behavior. Perhaps that means it is time for me to abandon my childish notion that moral questions can be examined in the same way that we examine other empirical facts about the universe.

Beyond Cosmic Dice is written in an accessible, almost conversational style and is an excellent read for non-theists and theists alike. It may even be a good starting point for a theist with a desire to better understand the naturalistic worldview.

Insufficient Christianity: Petter’s review

When Ziztur first began to blog about Mere Christianity, I leapt at the chance to read it. I ended up writing a review, which is rather briefer than the chapter-by-chapter dissection that she and Flimsy have posted here. I didn’t want to post it here at the time, because I felt it would be more interesting for blog readers to see the blow-by-blow account, and figured (even back in early June) that I might post my review as a sort of quasi-summary once the project was done and over with. I say “quasi-summary”, because (of course!) this is my opinion, and while it’s pretty similar to theirs, as blogged, I speak for myself, not for them. Nonetheless, it may stand on its own as a briefer review (or dismissal) of the work…

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Over the course of many a fruitless religious debate, one book that my ‘opponents’ have often urged me to read is Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis. I had never done so, but when I found out that the whole thing was available online (here), I went ahead and read it—in stolen snippets of two days, at that; it’s short and a light read. My very brief conclusion is that C.S. Lewis is an entirely different brand of apologist from the raucous, idiot, Ray Comfort kind to which I have previously been exposed. I get every impression that he was being quite sincere and honest. He may also very well have been intelligent. —I say “may” because this book provides no evidence that he was, but nor do I think that it provides strong evidence that he wasn’t.

That said, in the early chapters of Mere Christianity, comes off as honest, sincere, quite possibly intelligent, and completely unconvincing and to all appearances dead wrong. (This review originally contained a part explaining why I consider it coherent to be intelligent, honest, and completely wrong; that aside grew into this.) So unconvincing and so wrong, in fact, that while I consider it entirely possible that he was intelligent, and while some of his fans may very well be very intelligent (with the same rationale), anyone who was convinced by it must have had their critical thinking faculties shut off for the day. Much as a palæontologist accepts a single fossil or a physicist a single relativistic experiment, you may accept Mere Christianity as fitting into a worldview, but it is no more sufficient to build a complete theory upon. Unlike fossils and physical experiments, however, Mere Christianity attempts logical arguments, and—well, we shall see how it succeeded.

The book is written in a compelling way—easy, conversational language, and a structure where each chapter builds directly and explicitly on the one before it. Thus, he starts off by establishing a universal moral law; shows that the universal law must reflect some underlying reality; shows that this underlying reality must be an Intelligence; shows that it must be an Intelligence rather like the Christian God—and so forth. He is not mealy-mouthed, nor needlessly offensive, nor does he sound insincere. All of this gives me a rather favourable view of him as a person.

As a logician and persuader, however, I can’t give him much respect. My initial reaction to the first few chapters was that, with some minor restructuring, they could easily be retitled according to which logical fallacy he built each chapter’s claim upon. Thus one early chapter took St. Anselm’s failed Ontological Argument and applied it to moral law: We can conceive of a moral law better than our own; therefore there must be a Perfect moral law. (Not true: We might have and fully grasp the ultimate moral law but fail to recognise that it’s perfect.) Another was based on Equivocation (descriptive natural laws with prescriptive moral laws). Another, while not a formal fallacy that I’m aware of, was based on equivocating percepts with objects: That is, he went from All humans feel that there is something rather like X to Therefore, there exists an X with some sort of independent reaction. (Nonsense! If we find that all humans feel X we have indeed discovered a fact, but it’s a fact about human brains, not about the world outside them.) These percepts, once reified, were deified in short order.

Unfortunately, the book went rather downhill from this point. In the early chapters, I can really respect what Lewis was trying to do. Of course, I find that his arguments were not in fact valid, but he clearly believed the premises were true, he obviously believed in his conclusion, and as I have said before and will gladly repeat, it is often very difficult to find flaws in your own inferences when they make a path whereby, as far as you can tell, you get from the right starting point to the right end point. And in these early chapters, I am inclined to agree that if his arguments had been valid and sound, as he believed, then he had some very right and very valuable things to say; and he does lay out his arguments, however flawed, clearly and lucidly.

But this, alas, was not to last. Having once established (in his mind) that there must be a deity that shares some important, basic traits with the god of Judeo-Christian mythology, he went on to implicitly assume a whole slew of Christian dogma, and he did it so suddenly and unselfconsciously that it took me a chapter or two before I went Hang on a minute…! It is as though, once you accept a good, omnipotent creator deity, Moses, the Ten Commandments, Jesus, Judas, and the whole cabaret just followed naturally. This was a huge disappointment—he didn’t even try to show his work in this part of the examination.

The redeeming aspect of this part of the work was that if you once accept his assumptions, a lot of the things he says are very cogent and sensible. But that is not much help if you haven’t accepted those assumptions! He also argues an awful lot by metaphor. This is fine—he manages to explain a number of very weird things in Christian dogma in a way that made a lot of sense to me. So far, so good. However, a critical feature of an explanation by metaphor is that you have to be able to show how it reduces back to the real issue. Again, Lewis doesn’t fail to do this—he never even attempts it. It felt very much as if it never occurred to him that this had to be explained.

And I found this very peculiar, because C.S. Lewis was by all accounts an atheist, and he was brought to believe in all these things. How did this happen? I feel as though he must have had more of a story to tell, because the argument he lays out is completely insufficient to take an intelligent person from atheism to Christianity. Even if his initial arguments had been sound, there just wasn’t a chain of logic available to bring an atheist any further than a sort of nebulous proto-Judeo-Christian monotheism with no specifics of ritual or dogma, let alone such esoteric notions as the Trinity (which, by the way, he explains in lucid, wonderful metaphor that he completely neglects to show to be equivalent to any underlying reality). I supppose Lewis, if he was an atheist before, must not have reached that point by skepticism so much as more specific disappointment with points of dogma.

The part of the entire book that I found the most rewarding to read was, and this might surprise you, the two chapters on Faith. Now, I make it no secret that I regard the concept of faith with derision and contempt—faith, as I generally see it used and defined, refers to belief without evidence, and in some circles (particularly US fundamentalists) even belief in spite of evidence, which is lunacy and the least ethical and virtuous thing you can possibly do without involving others. However, C.S. Lewis defines faith very differently. I can do the concept no better justice than to quote him:

Roughly speaking, the word Faith seems to be used by Christians in two senses or on two levels, and I will take them in turn. In the first sense it means simply Belief—accepting or regarding as true the doctrines of Christianity. That is fairly simple. But what does puzzle people-at least it used to puzzle me—is the fact that Christians regard faith in this sense as a virtue. I used to ask how on earth it can be a virtue—what is there moral or immoral about believing or not believing a set of statements? Obviously, I used to say, a sane man accepts or rejects any statement, not because he wants to or does not want to, but because the evidence seems to him good or bad. If he were mistaken about the goodness or badness of the evidence that would not mean he was a bad man, but only that he was not very clever. And if he thought the evidence bad but tried to force himself to believe in spite of it, that would be merely stupid.

Well, I think I still take that view. But what I did not see then—and a good many people do not see still—was this. I was assuming that if the human mind once accepts a thing as true it will automatically go on regarding it as true, until some real reason for reconsidering it turns up. In fact, I was assuming that the human mind is completely ruled by reason. But that is not so. For example, my reason is perfectly convinced by good evidence that anaesthetics do not smother me and that properly trained surgeons do not start operating until I am unconscious. But that does not alter the fact that when they have me down on the table and clap their horrible mask over my face, a mere childish panic begins inside me. I start thinking I am going to choke, and I am afraid they will start cutting me up before I am properly under. In other words, I lose my faith in anaesthetics. It is not reason that is taking away my faith: on the contrary, my faith is based on reason. It is my imagination and emotions. The battle is between faith and reason on one side and emotion and imagination on the other.

With this second definition of the word faith, it actually makes sense. What this teaches me is that when I next meet someone extolling the virtues of faith, I need to explicitly establish what, precisely, this person means, because he or she may not be referring to it in the sense that I am used to encountering it. If someone believes in the virtues of faith¹, they are beneath being reasoned with. Faith², on the other hand, is in fact a positive thing! I do not need to be persuaded of its virtue; I agree with it! On the other hand, faith² is not a way in which religion can be reached. If somebody tells me that You won’t find God by evidence; you just have to have faith, they are using faith¹ and I will continue to dismiss them. If they take offence at this, I can now not only explain why, but also point out that C.S. Lewis regarded that claim as stupid.

Insufficient Christianity: Done!

This is it! The last Chapter of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity.

In the last chapter I compared Christ's work of making New Men to the process of turning a horse into a winged creature. I used that extreme example in order to emphasize the point that it is not mere improvement but Transformation. The nearest parallel to it in the world of nature is to be found in the remarkable transformations we can make in insects by applying certain rays to them. Some people think this is how Evolution worked. The alterations in creatures on which it all depends may have been produced by rays coming from outer space. (Of course once the alterations are there, what they call 'Natural Selection' gets to work on them: i.e. the useful alterations survive and the other ones get weeded out.)

I don't know about you guys, but I honestly have no idea what Lewis is talking about here. Some people think evolution worked by applying rays from outer space to animals to transform them? What the hell? Is he talking about mutations caused by UV light? Did people think this in 1944? Lewis goes on to explain that most people know about evolution (as an aside, he mentions that some educated people disbelieve it. I wonder why he specified that some educated people disbelieve it, especially given that he seems to accept evolution) and that some people wonder what the "next step" in evolution is. Clearly, even though we can speculate, we really cannot say for sure what the "next step" might be in a general sense, because natural selection is so complex and our capacity to predict the path of evolution is limited by our imaginations and knowledge of future events. If we were to guess the trajectory of an evolutionary path, we could easily be wrong. Lewis claims that we're missing the point of evolutionary paths entirely because the "next step" has already taken place, going in a direction we could not have imagined to the point that some of us don't even realize that it is the "next step" at all. That next step is Christianity:

Now, if you care to talk in these terms, the Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is really new. It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change that goes off in a totally different direction - a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago. In a sense, the change is not 'Evolution' at all, because it is not something arising out of the natural process of events but something coming-into nature from outside. But that is what I should expect. We arrived at our idea of 'Evolution' from studying the past. If there are real novelties in store then of course our idea, based on the past, will not really cover them. And in fact this New Step differs from all previous ones not only in coming from outside nature but in several other ways as well.

So Lewis believes Christians are essentially more evolved than non-Christians. They are the "next step". They are the "new humanity". Clearly, from the paragraph above, this is supposed to mean that Christians are "better" than non-Christians. They are humans 2.0. They are akin to "superman" or "having more armor" or in general being greater. Lewis goes on to say that this spiritual evolution to the new humanity of Christianity is not quite the same as evolution by natural selection for several reasons:


1. It doesn't happen via sexual reproduction. You can't pass Christianity down genetically.


2. Organisms do not have a choice to "evolve", but people can chose to become spiritually evolved. "Progress was, in the main, something that happened to them, not something that they did. But the new step, the step from being creatures to being sons, is voluntary. We can, if we please, shrink back; we can dig in our heels and let the new Humanity go on without us."


So people who are not Christians are being left behind while humanity goes on without them. This certainly sounds a lot like the Indigo and Crystal children movement. It must be nice to feel like you're on a higher plane and have such a bright and awesome light compared to the dim and less worthy life of a nonbeliever. People who aren't Christians are lower creatures simply by choice. We choose not to have "progress".


3. Jesus was the first human who was a spiritually evolved version of the new humanity. 


4. Evolution to the new humanity of Christianity took place really quickly. Two thousand years is nothing compared to the entirety of the history of the universe. Every time it looks like Christianity is dying, it's not: "(Never forget that we are all still 'the early Christians.' The present wicked and wasteful divisions between us are, let us hope, a disease of infancy: we are still teething. The outer world, no doubt, thinks just the' opposite. It thinks we are dying of old age. But it has thought that very often before. Again and again it has thought Christianity was dying, dying by persecutions from without and corruptions from within, by the rise of Mohammedanism, the rise of the physical sciences, the rise of great anti-Christian revolutionary movements. But every time the world has been disappointed. Its first disappointment was over the crucifixion. The Man came to life again. In a sense - and I quite realise how frightfully unfair it must seem to them -that has been happening ever since. They keep on killing the thing that He started and each time, just as they are patting down the earth on its grave, they suddenly hear that it is still alive and has even broken out in some new place. No wonder they hate us.)"


To say that "they" hate Christianity simply because it is popular is an incredibly simplistic and naive understanding of how the world works. Lewis sounds like a hockey fan cheering for his favorite team. Raa raa raa we're #1! They hate us because we are so awesome! We can't be beat! Look how they try to knock us down but we just spring right back up! Also, Christianity would be nowhere without the crucifixion! The crucifixion is supposed to be the whole reason Christianity is so cool – because Jesus died for our sins. That was supposedly god's plan all along. 


5. The stakes of new humanity are higher because if an organism "falls back on earlier steps", the maximum it can lose is life, but if we fail to be Christians we will lose our eternal life which is infinite.

On this view the thing has happened: the new step has been taken and is being taken. Already the new men are dotted here and there all over the earth. Some, as I have admitted, are still hardly recognisable: but others can be recognised. Every now and then one meets them. Their very voices and faces are different from ours; stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant. They begin where most of us leave off. They are, I say, recognisable; but you must know what to look for. They will not be very like the idea of 'religious people' which you have formed from your general reading. They do not draw attention to themselves. You tend to think that you are being kind to them when they are really being kind to you. They love you more than other men do, but they need you less. … They will usually seem to have a lot of time: you will wonder where it comes from. When you have recognised one of them, you will recognise the next one much more easily. And I strongly suspect (but how should I know?) that they recognise one another immediately and infallibly, across every barrier of colour, sex, class, age, and even of creeds. In that way, to become holy is rather like joining a secret society. To put it at the very lowest, it must be great fun.

This sounds a lot like the Indigo and Crystal child movement. Christians are recognizable by their stronger, quieter, happier, more radiant voices and faces. This whole paragraph is simply ridiculous: imagine if I said this about atheists, or gay people, or any other group for whom I wanted to explain my favor for. Lewis goes on to explain that even though these superior Christians are easy to recognize by their obvious awesomeness, they are not all the "same". They are all totally unique, unlike non-Christians who all fade into the background of sameness and dullness. As an illustration, he says

I will try two very imperfect illustrations which may give a hint of the truth. Imagine a lot of people who have always lived in the dark. You come and try to describe to them what light is like. You might tell them that if they come into the light that same light would fall on them all and they would all reflect it and thus become what we call visible. Is it not quite possible that they would imagine that, since they were all receiving the same light, and all reacting to it in the same way (i.e. all reflecting it), they would all look alike? Whereas you and I know that the light will in fact bring out, or show up, how different they are. Or again, suppose a person who knew nothing about salt. You give him a pinch to taste and he experiences a particular strong, sharp taste. You then tell him that in your country people use salt in all their cookery. Might he not reply 'In that case I suppose all your dishes taste exactly the same: because the taste of that stuff you have just given me is so strong that it will kill the taste of everything else.' But you and I know that the real effect of salt is exactly the opposite. So far from killing the taste of the egg and the tripe and the cabbage, it actually brings it out. They do not show their real taste till you have added the salt. (Of course, as I warned you, this is not really a very good illustration, because you can, after all, kill the other tastes by putting in too much salt, whereas you cannot kill the taste of a human personality by putting in too much Christ. I am doing the best I can.)

He goes on to say that Christians are super unique and awesome and they got that way by letting go of their pitiful selves and letting Christ overcome them:

It is when I turn to Christ, when I give myself up to His Personality, that I first begin to have a real personality of my own.

Oh, so non Christians don't have personalities of their own. I hope I don't need to explain why I think this idea is filthy, bigoted, and dangerous. Dehumanization 101.

At the beginning I said there were Personalities in God. I will go further now. There are no real personalities anywhere else. Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most 'natural' men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.

The bigotry at this point is almost pouring out of Lewis' ears. To Lewis, I have no real self. I am a monotonous sheep, not unique and different and awesome like Christians. 


Lewis spends the rest of the chapter talking about how we have to completely give ourselves up to Christ in order to find our real selves. In order to save our life, we have to lose our own live, our personal ambitions, our favorite wishes. Here is his last thought:

Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.

THE END

Basically, a Christian can look at an atheist and see, "only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin and decay" if he really believes the same things Lewis believes. It really makes me sad that my life could be summed up in this way regardless of the evidence to the contrary that my life is fulfilling and meaningful. It makes me sad that people can believe things like this about another human being, simply because of their lack of a belief in Jesus. I am a human being, and I am not living a less worthy life because I don't believe in Jesus. 


I hope that Flimsy and my analysis of Mere Christianity has been helpful to you, whether you're an atheist, a theist, or something in between. If you're a theist, please read Lewis' words from the perspective of an atheist. If you cannot possibly see that Lewis is advocating a bigoted version of Christianity that is unsupported by evidence or logic, pretend he is an atheist explaining "Mere atheism" and telling you that your life is meaningless unless you give up your belief in god. Pretend that every time I have pointed out a bigoted statement, Lewis is making that claim about you or your beliefs. Perhaps then you might come to understand our perspective. When people start to believe that they are better than everyone around them, it can and has easily lead to the mistreatment of others. Really, we're all the same people. We all have a story to tell. These divisions brought about by religious belief might make people in a particular religion feel better about themselves. People should not view themselves are more evolved, more enlightened, closer to perfection, and unfathomably more awesome than those around them due to their religion or the connection they think they have to god. This belief does not make the world a better place – it serves to divide and to justify treating people as less than equal. Not only can this line of thinking lead to injustice and inequality, but it has led to injustice and inequality. 


Mere Christianity Online

Insufficient Christianity 31.1

Holey smokes, after a week-long hiatus from our refutation of C.S. Lewis (so near the end of his book, too) we're finally back. For those of you not in the know, Flimsy and I have been training our skeptical eye on C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity, a book heralded by many Christians as a great example of Christian apologetics. If you'd like to read our previous chapters, click on the "C.S. Lewis" label at the bottom of the page.

This is chapter 31 of Mere Christianity, in which Lewis writes about how when you become a Christian, the Christian god will help you become a better person. According to Lewis, god does say that he will not help you unless you're perfect – he will help you all right, and by helping you he will bring you closer to perfection. The Christian god only intends to help you become perfect and he will help you with nothing else.

Because of this, Lewis says his god is like a dentist – fixing all of your mouth when you've only got a toothache in one tooth:

Now, if I may put it that way, Our Lord is like the dentists. If you give Him an inch, He will take an ell. Dozens of people go to Him to be cured of some one particular sin which they are ashamed of (like masturbation or physical cowardice) or which is obviously spoiling daily life (like bad temper or drunkenness). Well, He will cure it all right: but He will not stop there. That may be all you asked; but if once you call Him in, He will give you the full treatment.

So, god gives you the "full treatment" for things like masturbation, and as such you cannot be expected to get away with any bad things – even if you think you're getting away with it, god intends to fix you. Because of this Christianity is really difficult and also has the associated cost of letting god "get this job through". God does not care what kind of suffering you have in life – the goal is perfection in heaven, and so if you let him, god will do everything he can even if it makes your life miserable at times.

What bothers me about this is that life in this case ends up not being particularly important for life's sake – life is important because your behaviors during life will result in eternal glory or eternal punishment. This reminds me of all the educational opportunities denied to Flimsy when he was a child for the goal of hiding him from reality to increase his chances of remaining "saved".

I know I have a lot of Christians who read this blog, so let me put it this way: You're not a Muslim. In many Muslim societies, women are treated like chattel and forced to cover almost their entire bodies in order to keep them pure. To a Muslim, eternal life is more important than being able to freely dress and converse with men with whom you are not related. Should women be denied these rights in favor of the "life" after death? If the answer is some variation of, "no", then you understand how I feel when children are denied any opportunity at knowledge, intellectual pursuit or ethical freedom.

The rest of this chapter is about how god will be pleased with your feeble attempts at perfection and so the goal of perfection should not discourage you. God, however, wants us to desire to be like saints, because even if we cannot actually achieve that goal, the desire can help motivate us to behave. No particular arguments are given, rather we're simply told that whenever illness, money troubles, or new types of temptation come along, it is because god is disappointed with us and wants to "force us up to a higher level". If we don't understand why god is doing this to us, it is our fault for not understanding things:

That is why we must not be surprised if we are in for a rough time. When a man turns to Christ and seems to be getting on pretty well (in the sense that some of his bad habits are now corrected), he often feels that it would now be natural if things went fairly smoothly. When troubles come along - illnesses, money troubles, new kinds of temptation - he is disappointed. These things, he feels, might have been necessary to rouse him and make him repent in his bad old days; but why now? Because God is forcing him on, or up, to a higher level: putting him into situations where he will have to be very much braver, or more patient, or more loving, than he ever dreamed of being before. It seems to us all unnecessary: but that is because we have not yet had the slightest notion of the tremendous thing He means to make of us.

In the end, if we really let him, God will make us awesome:

The command Be ye perfect is not idealistic gas. Nor is it a command to do the impossible. He is going to make us into creatures that can obey that command. He said (in the Bible) that we were 'gods' and He is going to make good His words. If we let Him - for we can prevent Him, if we choose - He will make the feeblest and filthiest of us into a god or goddess, a dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness. The process will be long and in parts very painful; but that is what we are in for. Nothing less. He meant what He said.

This last paragraph reminds me of that movie and social movement The Secret. If a Christian sees someone having illness or money troubles, can't they conclude that their troubles are not due to circumstance but due to god being angry at them? Is this why my friends who use wheelchairs have all had the experience where a Christian approached them and told them that if they just believed hard enough, prayed the right ways, or acted in a way that pleased god/Jesus, they would be able to walk again? Are there people who walk around and think that those who are unfortunate are unfortunate due to their own sinfulness and immorality?

Lest you think I am jumping to conclusions where no conclusions are warranted, here is a quote from a very famous Youtube Christian, VenomFangX:

"Many people have been bringing to my attention, they feel somehow considered by amputees. You're gonna run into a lot of these, and you gotta be aware of them, and you gotta be able to call it for what it is. So if you don't recognize them as amputees, they could probably throw you for a loop. But when you recognize them for what they are, they're just like, 'Are you joking?' Okay, let me show you an example. I can grab a box: I don't deserve to die. You've been separated from your arm in the first place. You deserve death and the loss of your arms. Amputees don't deserve their arms, they deserve to die; that's what the Bible teaches. Why should God heal amputees? He's the one who allowed you to lose your arm in the first place! So here's the real question: Why do people lose their arms? I'm just gonna take a stab at it and see what I can do. Now, I cut off my arm. So why doesn't God heal amputees? 'Cause they don't deserve their arms. They deserve to die; that's what the Bible teaches. Sorry if you don't like that! Jesus said if you're even angry with someone, you're a murderer in your heart!"

Now, obviously many theists do not believe that people who are ill or having troubles in their life are having those troubles because they deserve them. But, this kind of thinking presented by Lewis can easily cause people to excuse human injustice or other negative situations under the rationalization that those situations are in place because god is disappointed. Think hurricane Katrina.

Mere Christianity online

Insufficient Christianity 29.1

 After this chapter, there are only four more chapters of Mere Christianity! I think Flimsy and I have decided to either tackle a Lee Strobel book that has not previously been tackled excessively, or Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview, a book recommended by a commenter. Our other option of interest is the Alcoholic's Anonymous Handbook. We're still waiting for the philosophy book to come in the mail before we decide which we'd like to do next. Anyway, onward to C.S. Lewis!

Lewis spends the first part of this chapter explaining that one of the things his god wants us to do is pretend to be Christ-like, despite the fact that we realize Chris is utterly amazing and we are but pieces of trash in comparison. He says that this pretending will make us more Christlike, much in the same way that smiling when you are unhappy might make your unhappiness fizzle away. Children do this all the time – though they are not adults, they play games of pretend where they imagine that they are adults, and this is fodder for future adulthood. Lewis insists that when you do this, the real god will be at your side to show you the right way to be Christian and to turn you into a Christlike being. The reader is told again that Christians who are very faithful are so real and alive whereas non-Christians are shallow, hollow "tin" versions of real people.

It seems to me that this is a version of dehumanization, only instead, non-Christians are mere humans while Christians are a sort of spiritual superhuman. According to Lewis, Christians are "coming alive", they have a life that non-Christians do not have. Non-Christians are but a shadowy and symbolic resemblance to Christians. Christians are like a place, whereas non-Christians are like a photo of that place. Christians are like men, and non-Christians are like statues of those men.

To be fair, what Lewis actually says is that the "spiritual life" is the higher life. The spiritual life, obviously, is the life you get when you're a Christian. But the implication is clear. Lewis believes that when you become a Christian, you go from being a shadow and symbolic representation of real people, to a real and alive person. Of course, perhaps some Christians will say that they really aren't better. I call doublespeak. If you claim that one subset of humans are on a higher plane of existence than another subset of humans, than you are dehumanizing – not in the literal sense of the word but with the same effect – you are asserting the superiority of one group over another and thus asserting that one group s inferior to the other. When people become things, they become dispensable.

Similarly, if I were to assert that when one becomes an atheist, one's mind becomes open to freely think and freely question, my unstated assertion is that people who are not atheists do not have the ability to think openly, freely think and freely question. If I were to assert that when a Christian deconverts and becomes an atheist, it is like turning a stone sculpture of a person into a real, in the flesh person, my unstated assertion is that Christians are mere representations of real people.

To Lewis, even the good works done by humans are only by the power of Jesus. He encourages us to dismiss all of the help we have received from humans as not due to their pure unselfishness but due to Christ:

"You may say `I've never had the sense of being helped by an invisible Christ, but I often have been helped by other human beings.' That is rather like the woman in the first war who said that if there were a bread shortage it would not bother her house because they always ate toast. If there is no bread there will be no toast. If there were no help from Christ, there would be no help from other human beings. He works on us in all sorts of ways: not only through what we think is our 'religious life'. He works through Nature, through our own bodies, through books, sometimes through experiences which seem (at the time) anti-Christian. When a young man who has been going to church in a routine way honestly realises that he does not believe in Christianity and stops going-provided he does it for honesty's sake and not just to annoy his parents-the spirit of Christ is probably nearer to him then than it ever was before. But above all, He works on us through each other."

Apparently Jesus is all around us, mirroring himself whether we are Christians or not, so that we may at times unconsciously leads other people to Christ. This is especially true if you're a Christian, such that "you might say that when two Christians are following Christ together there is not twice as much Christianity as when they are apart, but sixteen times as much." Dude. Christianity can be measured in units! Let's call one unit of Christianity a CU and one Christian a ©. One © following Christ together is 1 CU, but two © following Christ together are 16 CU!

Doing a little math, it seems that Clearly a CU is ©⁴. So one © is 1⁴ CU. Two © are 2⁴ CU = 16CU. Clearly then, three © are 3⁴ = 81CU. A whole congregation of 300 members sitting in pews for Sunday services are a whopping 8,100,000,000 units of Christianity. I wonder what a unit of atheist (AU) is per atheist?

Okay, fine, I'm digressing again. Lewis finishes the chapter by waxing poetically about how when people become Christians they kill that tired old, shadowy natural self and are literally reborn into a new special Christlike person. After this, of course, we start to notice just how sinful and bad we are, which of course means that non-Christians are simply blind and ignorant to how terrible they are. It all sounds very nice and wonderful to someone who is a Christian but I can completely understand how this type of thinking has been used in the past to commit terrible atrocities against non-Christians. If you think you have the spiritual highground because you "realize" how sinful and bad you are, you believe you can reduce your sinfulness of your own accord. Someone who you believe is unaware of how sinful they are cannot reduce their sinfulness of their own accord, because they do not "realize" how sinful they are. If you believe someone's eternal soul is on the line here, then you can be justified in oppressing them in the name of saving their souls and diminishing their efforts at finding the truth as efforts of blind Chihuahua's to climb Mount Everest. The problem is, that there is no reason for me to believe that Lewis, or anyone else, has found the spiritual highground.

To put it another way: Muslims believe they have the spiritual highground too. It is not that they are "evil islamofascists who just hate freedom".

Mere Christianity online

Insufficient Christianity 28.1

Admittedly, I did not so much as analyze the last chapter of Mere Christianity as read it and go off on a random tangent about how our lives really are worth living even if the universe does not have a purpose. Lewis basically spent all of the last chapter (chapter 27) comparing humans to tin soldiers and saying that god created us as tin soldiers who would eventually become "real flesh" and that this was akin to humans becoming Christians.

In this chapter, Lewis answers two questions from his critics. One individual asks Lewis, "why, if God wanted sons instead of 'toy soldiers,' He did not beget many sons at the outset instead of first making toy soldiers and then bringing them to life by such a difficult and painful process."

Lewis says that there are two answers to this question: one is easy to understand, and the other is not. Let's look at the first, easy answer:

"The process of being turned from a creature into a son would not have been difficult or painful if the human race had not turned away from God centuries ago. They were able to do this because He gave them free will: He gave them free will because a world of mere automata could never love and therefore never know infinite happiness."

Now, I often wonder why a perfect god would punish his creation for behaving exactly as he planned to have them behave. One could say that if I gave birth to a child, I would certainly punish my child for misbehaving, and god is doing the same thing. However this is not an appropriate analogy because though I "made" my child in the sense that I copulated and then grew and birthed him, I did not "make" him in the same sense that god supposedly made the human race. God punishing the entire human race for using their free will to sin is kind of like me punishing my child for eating with a spoon after I have taught him to eat with a spoon and repeatedly told him that it is his choice to eat with a spoon or not.

Also, since when is it just to punish people for mistakes their great great great great great great … great grandparents did? Basically, the Christian god is punishing us for being human. It's like punishing Lewis' tin soldiers for being unable to be easily oxidized in air. The tin soldier can't help but me made of Sn*, yet without Sn, the tin soldier would not be tin at all.

And the difficult answer:

"All Christians are agreed that there is, in the full and original sense, only one 'Son of God'. If we insist on asking 'But could there have been many?' we find ourselves in very deep water. Have the words 'Could have been' any sense at all when applied to God? You can say that one particular finite thing 'could have been' different from what it is, because it would have been different if something else had been different, and the something else would have been different if some third thing had been different, and so on. (The letters on this page would have been red if the printer had used red ink, and he would have used red ink if he had been instructed to, and so on.) But when you are talking about God i.e. about the rock bottom, irreducible Fact on which all other facts depend-it is nonsensical to ask if It could have been otherwise. "

Well that's fine, but when people say, "Could god have done things X way" they are asking for the individual on the other end of the conversation to imagine a hypothetical situation. It is not nonsensical to ask people to imagine a hypothetical situation that is contrary to fact and then take that hypothetical situation to some conclusion. Similarly, even though it is a "fact" that I have been living with Flimsy for about a year, I can easily imagine a hypothetical situation in which that did not occur. That and, Lewis has still failed to establish that his god is an irreducible brute fact.

He goes on to say that it does not make sense of god begetting more than one son, because if he did then we would have to invent some sort of space or distance in order to say that the two are separate things. I don't see how this is a particular problem given that Lewis and other creationists have already invented some sort of eternal time in which god resides in order for the universe to have not existed and then began to exist. There had to, then, be a time before the universe was made. So basically, he is coming up with an ac hoc justification for why there can't be more than one son of god. I think the whole paragraph is pretty silly:

"I find a difficulty about the very idea of the Father begetting many sons from all eternity. In order to be many they would have to be somehow different from one another. Two pennies have the same shape. How are they two? By occupying different places and containing different atoms. In other words, to think of them as different, we have had to bring in space and matter; in fact we have had to bring in 'Nature' or the created universe. I can understand the distinction between the Father and the Son without bringing in space or matter, because the one begets and the other is begotten. The Father's relation to the Son is not the same as the Son's relation to the Father. But if there were several sons they would all be related to one another and to the Father in the same way. How would they differ from one another? One does not notice the difficulty at first, of course. One thinks one can form the idea of several 'sons'. But when I think closely, I find that the idea seemed possible only because I was vaguely imagining them as human forms standing about together in some kind of space. In other words, though I pretended to be thinking about something that exists before any universe was made, I was really smuggling in the picture of a universe and putting that something inside it. When I stop doing that and still try to think of the Father begetting many sons `before all worlds' I find I am not really thinking of anything. The idea fades away into mere words. (Was Nature-space and time and matter - created precisely in order to make many-ness possible? Is there perhaps no other way of getting many eternal spirits except by first making many natural creatures, in a universe, and then spiritualising them? But of course all this is guesswork.)

So what Lewis is saying is that imagining the idea of more than one son creates more questions than it answers and so the idea of multiple sons does not solve any problems or make much sense. But Lewis' god is the same way, as that god brings up tons of questions in order to solve a painful few.

The second criticism Lewis addresses is the idea of individuality. He says that we must remember that we are both part of the human race: "You and they are different organs, intended to do different things. On the other hand when you are tempted not to bother about someone else's troubles because they are 'no business of yours,' remember that though he is different from you he is part of the same organism as you. If you forget that he belongs to the same organism as yourself you will become an individualist. If you forget that he is a different organ from you, if you want to suppress differences and make people all alike, you will become a Totalitarian. But a Christian must not be either a Totalitarian or an Individualist."

He goes on to say that the devil will get us if we decide that we dislike one of these two errors in thinking worse than the other, because the devil will lead us to be drawn gradually away from the one we dislike and into the one we don't mind so much. I realize at this point that Lewis is running with Christianity and largely speaking to the converted, but if he wants to provide a more compelling argument as to why dislike of totalitarianism over individualism or vice-versa might lead one to become a totalitarianist or an individualist, a justification other than "the devil will lead you to do this" might make a wee bit more sense. There really isn't any evidence that dislike of individualism will lead you on a slippery slope to totalitarianism.

*Okay, this joke may be a little too obscure for some people. Tin's symbol is Sn, and it is a metal that does not easily oxidize in air.

Insufficient Christianity: 27.1

Lewis spends all of chapter 27 talking about how Jesus died for our sins, and to be honest I don't really feel as though I have anything insightful or profound to say about most of the chapter. He writes again about how dirty and filthy and worthless people are unless they are real Christians and imbued with the Holy Spirit. Suffice to say, Lewis echoes typical Christian theology about not being able to understand or be a part of god without Jesus, though he makes no mention of being unable to be drawn into the Holy Spirit unless you profess belief. I suppose that is coming though.


Lewis says that the "Natural life" which is the type of life that nonchristians necessarily have, "is something self-centred, something that wants to be petted and admired, to take advantage of other lives, to exploit the whole universe. And especially it wants to be left to itself: to keep well away from anything better or stronger or higher than it, anything that might make it feel small. It is afraid of the light and air of the spiritual world, just as people who have been brought up to be dirty are afraid of a bath. And in a sense it is quite right. It knows that if the spiritual life gets hold of it, all its self-centredness and self-will are going to be killed and it is ready to fight tooth and nail to avoid that."


Couldn't we say the same thing Lewis says of "dirty people" of "clean people"? That is, people who are brought up unexposed to dirt and always kept clean are afraid to get dirty.


I can see here why some anti-evolutionists get offended at the idea that humans and other animals are descended from a common ancestor. To say that we are descended from a common ancestor is to say that we have the "natural life". It is to say that we are selfish exploiters of everything including fellow humans, that we hate things stronger than we are, that we want to be petted and admired. Perhaps it would be better to show that Lewis and others who think the way he does are mistaken about what the "natural life" means.


To me, the implications of there being no god are that no one is special or chosen above anyone else by an ultimate power. It means that this life is the only life we have and that this life is not a stepping stone on the way to eternity or a switch that leads us to either damnation and destruction or eternal life. Because this life is the only one we have and other people's lives are the only lives they have, exploiting people or infringing on their rights is one of the highest offenses imaginable. Because this earth was not tailor-made with us in mind by a god with infinite power, we have to take care of it as best we can so that those who are born after we are long gone continue to have the best means at a fulfilling life. It means realizing we won the genetic lottery, given that so many possible combinations of DNA will never get the chance at life. It means realizing just how insignificant we are, realizing that there is no ultimate purpose in this universe and then saying, "So what? I'll make my life have a purpose even though one day all of humanity will be gone and the universe will go on ticking perfectly fine without us" rather than expecting something else to hand us some purpose that was decided for us before we were born. Being given a purpose is easy – just find out what it is and do it. Giving yourself a purpose is something I will probably wrestle with my entire life. Making a decision about my own purpose is made more difficult by people who insist that without their god life is meaningless.


Sometimes I look at something beautiful – my relationship with Flimsy, for example – and I realize that in all likelihood, relationships like that have a maximum length of 80 years or less. After that, something beautiful is lost forever. It does not return. It does not live on. We are intricate, complex, amazing creatures, and each one of us is a finite, tiny piece of the world that will one day just… cease. Even things that are more permanent cannot last forever. I look at the city I live in, and I realize that most of these buildings, these roads, these communities – will go on without me. They will stay. A building has more permanence than a human being but is still so temporary. One day, all of those buildings and streets will be gone.


If the earth is to become an inhospitable ball of charred rock, does it really matter if something is there to cry over the annihilation of life and every last visage of human existence? Honestly, I'd love to be there rather than nowhere at all, but wanting something does not make it real, so I intend to make the best of the things I know for certain that I have.


Impermanence is not grounds for exploitation. It is grounds for ensuring that in our impermanence we do not take away the ability for anyone else to make the most of their own impermanence.

Insufficient Christianity: 26.1

I'm trying out using Word 2007 to create blog posts. I have no idea how well this is going to work out, but we shall see!

In chapter 25 of Mere Christianity, Lewis writes about "Good Infection", which is his explanation of the Holy Spirit.

"I begin this chapter by asking you to get a certain picture clear in your minds. Imagine two books lying on a table one on top of the other. Obviously the bottom book is keeping the other one up-supporting it. It is because of the underneath book that the top one is resting, say, two inches from the surface of the table instead of touching the table. Let us call the underneath book A and the top one B. The position of A is causing the position of B. That is clear? Now let us imagine - it could not really happen, of course, but it will do for an illustration -let us imagine that both books have been in that position for ever and ever. In that case B's position would always have been resulting from A's position. But all the same, A's position would not have existed before B's position. In other words the result does not come after the cause. Of course, results usually do: you eat the cucumber first and have the indigestion afterwards. But it is not so with all causes and results. You will see in a moment why I think this important.

Apparently Lewis thinks that "eternal" things (which he has failed to establish the existence of) are immune from a cause occurring before an effect. He does this to explain how none of the elements of the trinity came "first". I really don't have a problem with the causality some elements of some nonexistent god, just as I have no problem with the causality of the big bang – cause and effect break down in a singularity, as there is no such thing as time. Which came first: the id, the ego or the superego? Who knows. I don't think this is particularly important or relevant. If one can accept that god exists causelessly, it is not a far cry to accept that god is a causeless trinity either. 


Lewis says that the point of seeing god as an eternal causeless trinity is that "god is love" is meaningless unless you have at least two entities: 

"Notice the practical importance of this. All sorts of people are fond of repeating the Christian statement that 'God is love.' But they seem not to notice that the words 'God is love' have no real meaning unless God contains at least two Persons. Love is something that one person has for another person. If God was a single person, then before the world was made, He was not love. Of course, what these people mean when they say that God is love is often something quite different: they really mean 'Love is God.' They really mean that our feelings of love, however and wherever they arise, and whatever results they produce, are to be treated with great respect. Perhaps they are: but that is something quite different from what Christians mean by the statement 'God is love.' They believe that the living, dynamic activity of love has been going on in God forever and has created everything else.

I am one person. I love myself. I think Lewis is actually trying to us this love thing as an argument: 


Love is a thing that occurs between two or more people.

God is love

Therefore god is at least two people

Therefore we have support for the trinity being necessary


Of course, if we accept his argument (which I don't) then we only have support for a trinity and the necessity of dualism. 


Lewis goes on to say that this is a really important difference between Christianity and other religions – god is a "dynamic, pulsating activity, a life, almost a kind of drama. Almost, if you will not think me irreverent, a kind of dance." Once again, Lewis is displaying his ignorance of other religions, as if other religions are mere dead shadows of his religion. He basically spends the rest of the chapter waxing poetically about how stupendous his religion is. He explains that the union of god and Jesus is so concrete that the union itself is a person, and that this person is the Holy Spirit. He says that the Holy Spirit is akin to the "spirit" felt at a community gathering or in a family except that it is much more real and awesome. He says that we all have to enter the Holy Spirit (or have it enter us) in order to have any happiness at all or live forever. Once we enter into the Holy Spirit we become "sons of god" and thus we are "begat" by god instead of just "made". This is what Lewis considers the "good infection" and the whole purpose of becoming a Christian. This is what he means when he says that nonChristians are like mere shadows compared to Christians. 


I actually like Lewis' little description of the Holy Spirit, because I can honestly say that before I read it, I really didn't know what on earth Christians were talking about when they spoke of "having the Holy Spirit in me". I actually learned something from Lewis about Christianity! I still think his description of the difference between the two is rather bigoted, but at least I'll know what people are talking about when they praise the Holy Spirit.

Mere Christianity Online 

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.

“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

Insufficient Christianity: 23.1

We’re in the home stretch of our review of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis: This chapter is the first of the last of the four books contained within Mere Christianity: on to theology!

Lewis begins his book by telling his reader that lots of people advised him not to include theology in his book, but to simply give the reader the plain practical religion of Christianity. He is ignoring their advice because he thinks that if people want to be Christian they should know something about Theology, defined by Lewis as “The science of God”

In a way, I can see why many Christians reject theology: they feel god, but they don’t want to get caught up in the particulars of religion: like Emily Dickinson, they believe attempts to dogmatize god places the infinite in a finite little box.

Yet, Lewis says, theology is important because many people have “confirmed” it, in the same way that a man experiencing an island feels that in a sense a map of the island he experiences is less real than the island itself, yet the map is based on the experiences of many people who confirmed its accuracy. Lewis believes that theology fits individual experience with collective experience; much like the map of the island fits an individual experience of the island with a collective experience of the island.

This would be a great analogy if god were a thing we could measure as we do an island, but god is not like this. If god were an island, he would be an island that took on different qualities depending on one’s preconceived ideas about it.

Lewis  says:

“Now, Theology is like the map. Merely learning and thinking about the Christian doctrines, if you stop there, is less real and less exciting than the sort of thing my friend got in the desert. Doctrines are not God: they are only a kind of map. But that map is based on the experience of hundreds of people who really were in touch with God-experiences compared with which any thrills or pious feelings you and I are likely to get on our own are very elementary and very confused. And secondly, if you want to get any further, you must use the map. You see, what happened to that man in the desert may have been real, and was certainly exciting, but nothing comes of it. It leads nowhere. There is nothing to do about it. In fact, that is just why a vague religion-all about feeling God in nature, and so on-is so attractive. It is all thrills and no work; like watching the waves from the beach. But you will not get to Newfoundland by studying the Atlantic that way, and you will not get eternal life by simply feeling the presence of God in flowers or music. Neither will you get anywhere by looking at maps without going to sea. Nor will you be very safe if you go to sea without a map.”

If theology is like a map and god is like an island, then what we have in the world are a bunch of contradictory and conflicting maps of an island along with a small number of people who contend there isn’t any evidence for the island because they don’t have a map or have looked at the maps and determined that none of them seem to lead to or describe the island. What’s more, people with map A think that people with map B have got it all wrong, some people think maps A,  B and C both have nuggets of truth about the island so they follow all three maps, people with map A occasionally kill people with map C for having the wrong map, people with map A insist that their map is the only way to the island, people with map D think their revised map is more accurate and that no one should be killing anyone, while still more people think all maps lead to the island. Mapholders insist that their island is somewhere even though it is actually located outside the world and cannot be tested; rather we must have faith that the island really exists. Meanwhile, the world looks exactly as it would look if there were no island at all to people without a map, while mapholders insist that the island has a profound effect on every aspect of the world.

I really don’t see this map analogy working out too well *for Lewis*, but I digress…

Lewis goes on to say that theology is best based on history rather than new religious fads, because a new religious fad might be one that theologeans “tried centuries ago and rejected”. He then goes on to explain some basic theology, starting with the theology of “begetting”

“One of the creeds says that Christ is the Son of God 'begotten, not created'; and it adds `begotten by his Father before all worlds'. Will you please get it quite clear that this has .nothing to do with the fact that when Christ was born on earth as a man, that man was the son of a virgin? We are not now thinking about the Virgin Birth. We are thinking about something that happened before Nature was created at all, before time began. `Before all worlds' Christ is begotten, not created. What does it mean?

We don't use the words begetting or begotten much in modern English, but everyone still knows what they mean. To beget is to become the father of: to create is to make. And the difference is this. When you beget, you beget something of the same kind as yourself. A man begets human babies, a beaver begets little beavers and a bird begets eggs which turn into little birds. But when you make, you make something of a different kind from yourself. A bird makes a nest, a beaver builds a dam, a man makes a wireless set-or he may make something more like himself than a wireless set : say, a statue. If he is a clever enough carver he may make a statue which is very like a man indeed. But, of course, it is not a real man; it only looks like one. It cannot breathe or think. It is not alive.

“Now that is the first thing to get clear. What God begets is God; just as what man begets is man. What God creates is not God; just as what man makes is not man. That is why men are not Sons of God in the sense that Christ is. They may be like God in certain ways, but they are not things of the same kind. They are more like statues or pictures of God.

I’d also like to (randomly) point out that evolutionary biology says the same thing. It really annoys me to no end when silly creationists say, “evolution says a dog can give birth to a cat” or “evolution says that if you put a seed of corn on a shelf for 75 years, if you plant it you could grow a fern” which is the same thing as saying, “evolution says a man can beget little beavers”.  Evolution does not say that. Anyway, the point Lewis is making is that Jesus was different from humans because Jesus was begat and not made. All of the other stuff in the universe is also made by god and not begat by god.

There is also, Lewis says, a different between “spiritual life’ and “biological life”, and once we become Christians, we are like statues coming to life. This is a very interesting, if not bigoted, metaphor. What Lewis is saying is that people who are not Christians are like representations of real, living things: we heathens are like statues or photographs, while Christians are like living people. We non-Christians are merely shadowy and symbolic representations of real things.

Do Christians really believe this? Is this really, “The Science of God?” To say that Christians are the only ones fully alive is to say that non-Christians are... not fully alive.

Insufficient Christianity: 20.1

Chapter 20 of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis is about hope. Specifically, Lewis states that hope is a theological value defined as “continual looking forward to the eternal world is not (as some modern people think) a form of escapism or wishful thinking, but one of the things a Christian is meant to do.”

He claims that, “If you read history you will find that the Christians who did most for the present world were just those who thought most of the next. The Apostles themselves, who set on foot the conversion of the Roman Empire, the great men who built up the Middle Ages, the English Evangelicals who abolished the Slave Trade, all left their mark on Earth, precisely because their minds were occupied with Heaven.”

Actually, the Quakers began the abolitionist movement, convincing the rest of the Christian world (who often used the Bible as justification for slavery) through various means that slavery was wrong. I wonder if in 200 years, Christians will claim that Christianity is responsible for gays being granted equal civil rights.

When I read history, I recognize that the majority of people in the world have been religious, and thus the majority of good marks left on earth will be due to people who happened to also be religious. Here though, Lewis is claiming that those who hoped the most for heaven are the ones who had the greatest positive impact on society now directly because they had so much hope about heaven. No evidence or justification is given for this whatsoever.  He goes on to say that since Christians don’t hope for heaven as much anymore, they are no longer effective at bringing about positive change on earth. Again, this is stated without any evidence. Apparently if we hope for heaven all the time, goodness will come to the earth as an indirect consequence, but if we hope to change the world, we won’t be able to change the world or get to heaven. As an example he writes about health, stating that if we think about improving our health all the time we’ll become hypochondriacs, but if we focus instead on good food, fun, and open air, then good health will follow. Why heaven is immune from this type of reasoning is not really explained but apparently if our goal is to save civilization, we can’t do it if we make civilization our main object.

All I can say is that the Quakers didn’t seem to be focused on heaven with the goal of indirectly abolishing slavery. They worked directly to abolish slavery, by writing persuading literature, forming organizations in which abolition was the direct goal, forming and supporting the Underground Railroad, and so on. They did not abolish slavery indirectly.

If I donate blood, my donation can have a measurable effect on the life of another human being. If I sit at home and hope for heaven or pray, I don’t. It’s that simple.

Lewis goes on to wax poetically about longing for heaven, saying that we often have difficulty hoping for heaven because we’re trained to think about that which is happening in this world, in this life. He also says we sometimes do not recognize our want for heaven and gives three examples of this:

“(I) The Fool's Way. - He puts the blame on the things themselves. He goes on all his life thinking that if only he tried another woman, or went for a more expensive holiday, or whatever it is, then, this time, he really would catch the mysterious something we are all after. Most of the bored, discontented, rich people in the world are of this type. They spend their whole lives trotting from woman to woman (through the divorce courts), from continent to continent, from hobby to hobby, always thinking that the latest is 'the Real Thing' at last, and always disappointed.

So this guy thinks that the things will make him happy, and does not recognize that the happiness he continually seeks is actually heaven.

“(2) The Way of the Disillusioned 'Sensible Man'.-He soon decides that the whole thing was moonshine. 'Of course,' he says, 'one feels like that when one's young. But by the time you get to my age you've given up chasing the rainbow's end.' And so he settles down and learns not to expect too much and represses the part of himself which used, as he would say, 'to cry for the moon'. This is, of course, a much better way than the first, and makes a man much happier, and less of a nuisance to society. It tends to make him a prig (he is apt to be rather superior towards what he calls 'adolescents'), but, on the whole, he rubs along fairly comfortably. It would be the best line we could take if man did not live for ever. But supposing infinite happiness really is there, waiting for us? Supposing one really can reach the rainbow's end? In that case it would be a pity to find out too late (a moment after death) that by our supposed 'common sense' we had stifled in ourselves the faculty of enjoying it.

Oooo, a minor Pascals wager shows up here. Suppose that the earth is actually the only life we have, and all of this wishing for heaven is pining away at something that does not exist? We will have missed out on the grandness that is earth, and the wonder that is life, Much like the fool who can never find happiness in his women or holidays.

(3) The Christian Way.-The Christian says, 'Creatures are not born with desires unless satisfaction for those desires exists. A baby feels hunger: well, there is such a thing as food. A duckling wants to swim: well, then; is such a thing as water. Men feel sexual desire: well, there is such a thing as sex. If I find in myself a desire which no experience in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that I was made for another world. If none of my earthly pleasures satisfy it, that does not prove that the universe is a fraud. Probably earthly pleasures were never meant to satisfy it, but only to arouse it, to suggest the real thing. If that is so, I must take care, on the one hand, never to despise, or be unthankful for, these earthly blessings, and on the other, never to mistake them for the something else of which they are only a kind of copy, or echo, or mirage. I must keep alive in myself the desire for my true country, which I shall not find till after death; I must never let it get snowed under or turned aside; I must make it the main object of life to press on to that other country and to help others to do the same.'

So what Lewis is saying is that the fact that we long for something not here proves that the thing we are longing for actually exists.

There is no need to be worried by facetious people who try to make the Christian hope of 'Heaven' ridiculous by saying they do not want 'to spend eternity playing harps'. The answer to such people is that if they cannot understand books written for grown-ups, they should not talk about them.

 Oh I see, so if we’re not Christian, we can’t understand Christianity. Yet another unfalsifiable hypothesis that makes Lewis’ religion immune to criticism.

Insufficient Christianity: 19.1

I really have very little to say about Chapter 19 of Mere Christianity. Lewis talks about charity, saying that charity is not just “giving stuff to the poor” but also love in the “Christian Sense”. The Christian Love does not mean “having a fondness for” or “adoring”, so much as wanting what is right and best for people, regardless of whether or not you personally like them.
Lewis says that we should not bother wondering if we like someone. Rather, we should just act like we do, and this act will contribute to actually loving them.

Lewis also offers up another hallmark of the True Christian™ brand of Christian:

“The difference between a Christian and a worldly man is not that the worldly man has only affections or 'likings' and the Christian has only `charity'. The worldly man treats certain people kindly because he 'likes' them: the Christian, trying to treat every one kindly, finds himself liking more and more people as he goes on -- including people he could not even have imagined himself liking at the beginning.

Huh… So nonchristians don’t treat people kindly for the sake of charity? They “only” treat people kindly because they like him? Lewis, that’s a very bigoted thing for you to say. It’s as if he somehow knows the inner motivations of everyone, and anyone who treats people kindly because they like them is labeled as “worldly” and anyone who treats people kindly for the sake of kindness is labeled “Christian”, and then he goes on to say how wonderful Christians are.

I’d like to also point out that Lewis himself warned against this in the preface of his book:

“Far deeper objections may be felt - and have been expressed - against my use of the word Christian to mean one who accepts the common doctrines of Christianity. People ask: 'Who are you, to lay down who is, and who is not a Christian?': or 'May not many a man who cannot believe these doctrines be far more truly a Christian, far closer to the spirit of Christ, than some who do?' Now this objection is in one sense very right, very charitable, very spiritual, very sensitive. It has every available quality except that of being useful. We simply cannot, without disaster, use language as these objectors want us to use it. I will try to make this clear by the history of another, and very much less important, word.

“The word gentleman 'originally meant something recognisable; one who had a coat of arms and some landed property. When you called someone 'a gentleman' you were not paying him a compliment, but merely stating a fact. If you said he was not 'a gentleman' you were not insulting him, but giving information. There was no contradiction in saying that John was a liar and a gentleman; any more than there now is in saying that James is a fool and an M.A. But then there came people who said - so rightly, charitably, spiritually, sensitively, so anything but usefully - 'Ah but surely the important thing about a gentleman is not the coat of arms and the land, but the behaviour? Surely he is the true gentleman who behaves as a gentleman should? Surely in that sense Edward is far more truly a gentleman than John?' They meant well. To be honourable and courteous and brave is of course a far better thing than to have a coat of arms. But it is not the same thing. Worse still, it is not a thing everyone will agree about. To call a man 'a gentleman' in this new, refined sense, becomes, in fact, not a way of giving information about him, but a way of praising him: to deny that he is 'a gentleman' becomes simply a way of insulting him. When a word ceases to be a term of description and becomes merely a term of praise, it no longer tells you facts about the object: it only tells you about the speaker's attitude to that object. (A 'nice' meal only means a meal the speaker likes.) A gentleman, once it has been spiritualised and refined out of its old coarse, objective sense, means hardly more than a man whom the speaker likes. As a result, gentleman is now a useless word. We had lots of terms of approval already, so it was not needed for that use; on the other hand if anyone (say, in a historical work) wants to use it in its old sense, he cannot do so without explanations. It has been spoiled for that purpose.

“Now if once we allow people to start spiritualising and refining, or as they might say 'deepening', the sense of the word Christian, it too will speedily become a useless word. In the first place, Christians themselves will never be able to apply it to anyone. It is not for us to say who, in the deepest sense, is or is not close to the spirit of Christ. We do not see into men's hearts. We' cannot judge, and are indeed forbidden to judge. It would be wicked arrogance for us to say that any man is, or is not, a Christian in this refined sense. And obviously a word which we can never apply is not going to be a very useful word. As for the unbelievers, they will no doubt cheerfully use the word in the refined sense. It will become in their mouths simply a term of praise. In calling anyone a Christian they will mean that they think him a good man. But that way of using the word will be no enrichment of the language, for we already have the word good. Meanwhile, the word Christian will have been spoiled for any really useful purpose it might have served.We must therefore stick to the original, obvious meaning. The name Christians was first given at Antioch (Acts xi. 26) to 'the disciples', to those who accepted the teaching of the apostles. There is no question of its being restricted to those who profited by that teaching as much as they should have. There is no question of its being extended to those who in some refined, spiritual, inward fashion were 'far closer to the spirit of Christ' than the less satisfactory of the disciples. The point is not a theological or moral one. It is only a question of using words so that we can all understand what is being said. When a man who accepts the Christian doctrine lives unworthily of it, it is much clearer to say he is a bad Christian than to say he is not a Christian.

He goes on to say that if you treat people badly, you’ll hate them even more after doing so: “The more cruel you are, the more you will hate; and the more you hate, the more cruel you will become-and so on in a vicious circle for ever.” Apparently this works in reverse as well – the more loving you are, the more you’ll love, and the more you love, the more loving you’ll be, etc.

Lewis ends the chapter by claiming that chastity also means loving god and god loving man, but some people don’t really feel as though they love god. The solution is to simply act as if you do love god, and then you will love god.

Insufficient Christianity: 18.2

For those of you just joining us, Flimsy and I have been reading Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and writing up a thorough critique of it in near-daily blog posts. If you want to find all of the posts we have written on this subject thus far, go to the bottom of this post and click the “C.S. Lewis” label. This is part II of my critique of chapter 18, which deals with pride/self-conceit.
For the second half of Chapter 18, Lewis provides us with a lovely little bit of unfalsifiability. I’ve heard variations of it before:

“In God you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know God as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison -you do not know God at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

In other words, if we question god (which is what I think Lewis means by “come up against”), we are being prideful in questioning the Great Superior One. Thus, questioning god shows that we are full of pride and therefore do not know god.

This line of reasoning frustrates me to no end, partly because the people who typically employ it are so smug in their imagined airtightness. This argument specifically sets up the Christian god’s awesomeness as unfalsifiable. 

This argument can be used to nullify criticism of anyone:

In Flimsy/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Allah/This Doorknob you come up against something which is in every respect immeasurably superior to yourself. Unless you know Flimsy/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Allah/This Doorknob as that - and, therefore, know yourself as nothing in comparison -you do not know Flimsy/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Allah/This Doorknob at all. As long as you are proud you cannot know Flimsy/Flying Spaghetti Monster/Allah/This Doorknob. A proud man is always looking down on things and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down, you cannot see something that is above you.

In other words, Lewis is plugging his ears and shouting that being critical of his god proves that we just don’t know his god at all and are proving just how prideful we are.

I’d kind of like to lay this argument out more formally:
P: God is immeasurably superior to humans.
C: Humans are immeasurably inferior to god.
C: If a person is unaware of god’s status as immeasurably superior then the person does not know god
P: Proud people are those who see themselves as superior to other things and people
1: proud people cannot know god.
C: People who cannot know god have no business questioning him.

Now, there is an unstated premise in Lewis’ argument that proud people think they are superior to god, though he does not say this directly. Seeing yourself as superior to “people” or “things” does not necessarily mean you see yourself as superior to god, unless by “prideful” Lewis means, “seeing oneself as superior to everything, including god.” Of course, merely questioning god’s actions could be seen as seeing oneself as superior to god, and thus we skip merrily off into the flaming circle of unfalsifiability.

“That raises a terrible question. How is it that people who are quite obviously eaten up with Pride can say they believe in God and appear to themselves very religious? I am afraid it means they are worshipping an imaginary God. They theoretically admit themselves to be nothing in the presence of this phantom God, but are really all the time imagining how He approves of them and thinks them far better than ordinary people: that is, they pay a pennyworth of imaginary humility to Him and get out of it a pound's worth of Pride towards their fellowmen.

What exactly is the difference between this kind of pride and the kind of pride you get when you believe god has a special plan for your life? Can a Christian explain this to me please? It’s okay though, Lewis has a test:

 I suppose it was of those people Christ was thinking when He said that some would preach about Him and cast out devils in His name, only to be told at the end of the world that He had never known them. And any of us may at any moment be in this death-trap. Luckily, we have a test. Whenever we find that our religious life is making us feel that we are good --above all, that we are better than someone else -- I think we may be sure that we are being acted on, not by God, but by the devil. The real test of being in presence of God is, that you either forget about yourself altogether or see yourself as a small, dirty object. It is better to forget about yourself altogether.

This seems like one of those moral virtues a lot of Christians don’t follow, so how can I be sure that it really is a Christian virtue? This is, after all, supposed to be “mere” Christianity, that is, Christianity whittled down to its most basic parts. This virtue seems very hard for people to follow.

Lewis ends the chapter with a few points he wants his reader to be aware of, to guard against misunderstandings. Namely that pleasure in being praised is not pride, pride in your son is not the same as the vice pride, god is not worried about your pride due to his own pride in himself, and if you think you are not conceited, it means you are very conceited indeed.