Rhea

I am seeing a lot of xians claim this book as the reason for their belief. I'm going to have to get it to read, but I thought I'd go for an overview/review from folks here, while I wait for it...




OPinions?

Biff the unclean

The book is only "preaching to the choir." I don't think Atheists were ever meant to be it's audience. You'll find yourself stopping on almost every page and declaring "No, wait a minute, that isn't right, that isn't true." It left me with a very low opinion of Lewis' intellectual honesty

Rhea

That was my impression from the quotes I've read. (This might be quite a chore to read under those circumstances!)

They keep saying "CS Lewis, who was an atheist and became a christian" If the intellectual depth is that shallow, does this seem true?

Biff the unclean

No, it doesn't seem true. From reading Mere Christianity (you must pardon me for not citing it as the copy I read was at the insistence of a Christian friend 10 or 12 years ago and I returned it to her when I had finished-who says we have no morals?) and seeing a bio of Lewis on PBS (made by members of his family and those collecting royalties from his books) I got the feeling that he was just another in a long line of Christian Apologists who make that same claim falsely.
You catch these people saying that they used intellect to shun Atheism and accept Christianity. But when they explain their thought processes (and there's nothing Lewis loves to do more) you find that they have made leaps in logic while they were Atheists that are based solely on religious belief rather than observable facts. This indicates, to me at least, that they weren't Atheists by any definition I have ever heard of the word.

lpetrich

I wonder if such "former atheists" ever feel ashamed of their alleged past atheism. If one views atheism as the moral equivalent of being a mad dog, then ought one to feel ashamed of once having been such a moral equivalent?

I've seen several atheists, agnostics, and freethinkers here be ashamed of their former religiosity, and one might expect it to work the other way.

And when such "former atheists" indulge in crude stereotypes of atheists and freethinkers in general, one has to wonder about what they had once been. Had they simply been indifferent to religion or something like that?

Biff the unclean

I hesitate to express doubt about "former Atheists" like Lewis because it does sound like a No True Scotsman. It's just that, for the life of me, I can't understand how a person makes a decision based on faith before they have any faith

Charles Darwin

I read the book years ago. I believe it was adapted from a radio program series he did. As I recall he goes over two or three arguments for theism in general and Christianity in particular. The one argument I specifically recall is the argument from the universality of morality. That is, humanity has an innate sense of right and wrong, and this implies an absolute standard, and therefore an absolute standard-giver. I am reminded of this everytime someone raises the problem of evil.

The last ~1/3 of the book gets pretty abstract and theoretical about, as I recall, the nature of time, space, etc. That part of the book didn't do anything for me, but I felt the first 2/3 was lucid and fairly compelling, though I suspect his arguments are not bullet-proof.

Lewis has definitely been a fairly influential apologist and the first 2/3 of the book is a pretty short, easy read. You might, therefore, want to check it out. On the other hand (OTH), my understanding is Lewis was not totally orthodox (can't recall the details). Regarding Lewis's claim of once being an atheist, I can honestly make the same claim so I don't discount the claim when others make it.

Regarding the quality of Lewis's arguments, I wouldn't look for an argument that is going to *prove* God. Christian apologetics, I think, is less about proving God than it is about removing disproofs. Religious belief and disbelief is, of course, a complicated thing that I won't try to analyze here, but suffice it to say that sometimes a particular view can be expressed that gives you a whole new way of looking at things, including your own beliefs. This, I think, was Lewis's value.

Amaranth

I'd love to see you back up a "universal morality". Care to provide us with a universal moral?

Peter Kirby just did a thread in biblical history on Lewis. You might want to check it out.

http://www.iidb.org/vbb/showthread.p...threadid=59721

Everyone can make the claim - We are born atheists.

Which is humorous, as the burden of proof is strictly on the theist.

Speaking of religous belief - Do you plan on going back to your thread on how atheist's are religous, or do you accept BBT's interpretation of what seems to be your admission of defeat?

Amaranth

atheist_in_foxhole

Mere Assertions

Cretinist

Basically, one half of the book basically attempts to prove theism and Christianity by the old Moral Argument ("How can there be morals without God?"). The other half assumes you have converted, and goes into how Christians should behave. The chapter on sex is hysterical.

Pure crap.