GakuseiDon

Lewis never coined the word "Trilemma". He didn't say, "now I'll use the Trilemma argument". He used it to *frame* part of his argument. He said that anyone who claimed to be God could only be (in effect) "lord, liar or lunatic". I think that part of it is valid.

He then gives his opinion that a great moral teacher couldn't be a lunatic. He never rules out "liar".

I've rarely seen the Trilemma brought up by theists, so if it is being abused, I'd say (in my opinion) that it's mostly being done by atheists.

Any complaints?

Vorkosigan

GD! The Trilemma is one of the most common quotes on websites around the web. Googling lord liar lunatic lewis can bring up thousands of websites where this low-level stuff is taken for having great depth. Of course, Infidels will be one of the first ones you hit. We're the best!

Vorkosigan

Clutch

Of course it isn't.

What's true is that anyone claiming to be divine or descended from divinity is either correct or incorrect. So the trilemma you list (please, please don't say again that Lewis didn't call it a trilemma; the point is that it's a trilemma) is absurd, since it equates being incorrect with being a liar or a lunatic or both.

That one can be mistaken without being a liar or a lunatic is too obvious to bear emphasis to anyone save a Lewis apologist!

There is no circumscription of the argument's aims on which it comes off better than crashingly invalid.

Calzaer

Perhaps it should be a "quadlimma"... "Liar, Lunatic, Lord, or LEGEND."

DMB

Perhaps some of the problem is the idea that "lunatic" implies "off his trolley the whole time".

I know someone whom I respect as a thinker and activist who nonetheless appears to be extremely paranoid and to misjudge the world around him as a result and to such a degree that he risks undoing all the good he has achieved rationally.

There's no rule that says that, if human beings are spectacularly right and insightful about A, they can't simultaneously be spectacularly wrong and wacky about B. So Jesus could have been a great moral teacher and at the same time erroneously convinced that he was the son of god.

Mind you, I don't see how we can know reliably what Jesus claimed for himself or what he said in any context. And I agree that it's at least arguable that on the basis of what is reported in the gospels he wasn't a great moral teacher

-DM-

The so-called Trilemma "argument" (Jesus was either Lord, liar, or lunatic) is fallacious for at least this one reason: it is not exhaustive, it doesn't cover the possibilities.

Here are some of the possibilities (there may or may not be other possibilities):
1) Jesus was Lord.
2) Jesus was a liar.
3) Jesus was a lunatic.
4) Jesus was both Lord and a liar.
5) Jesus was both Lord and a lunatic.
6) Jesus was both a liar and a lunatic.
7) Jesus was Lord as well as a liar and an lunatic.
8) Jesus was neither Lord, liar, nor lunatic, or any combination thereof. He was simply mistaken about himself.
9) His "biographers" lied.
10) His "biographers" were lunatics.
11) His "biographers" were lunatics who lied.
12) His "biographers" neither lied, nor were they lunatics. They were simply mistaken in what they wrote.

-Don-

Apikorus

13) Jesus was a jelly doughnut.

Or was that JFK?

Tharmas

:notworthy

Every now and then I'm reminded of why I read all the way through these threads...

premjan

evidently every individual person is entitled to an individual perception of who they are within the larger scheme of things. Krishna said he was the Lord. Jesus said he was the son of God. Buddha said he was beyond all Gods. This was their individual perception of their state at the time when they made the statement. You have to ask yourself what implications they believed the statement had. It may not have been the same as those of other people who ascribed beliefs to them.