Vorkosigan

If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning:

Indeed, if there were no such things as unicorns, we never could have imagined one.....

All Hail the IPU!

Vorkosigan

Steven Carr

It is hard to make out what Lewis is gibbering about.

Is he saying that it is a fact
the world really is unjust?

Or is he saying that the world only seems unjust
to him?

As often with Lewis, I cannot make head or tail of it.

How did Lewis discover grass was green, unless he had some idea of green to compare it with?

Therefore, green grass proves there is a God, according to Lewis's logic.

HelenM

I'm not sure C.S. Lewis was ever a decided atheist to the extent that many people are here. His upbringing was superficially Christian.

In adulthood when he came to identify the things in life that deeply moved him, with the God of Christianity, he converted. He had no logical reasoned defense to prevent him.

Whereas I think many people here, do. At least in their perception - which is what counts when it comes to making decisions. We all make our decisions based on what we think is, rather than what is. We hope they are one and the same but who knows...

love
Helen

MadMordigan

We all make our decisions based on what we think is, rather than what is. We hope they are one and the same but who knows...

Wooo HelenSL, we'll make a nihilist of you yet.

Koyaanisqatsi

What do we make of the argument or what do we make of Lewis?

Let's deconstruct:

He's setting himself up for the same presuppositional/homocentric straw man we've seen argued here ad nauseam; "I" can't know anything unless some external other has instilled in "me" the ability to know things.

Better, "I" can't piously pass judgment on anything unless some external other has legitimized "my" ability piously pass judgment on anything.

Very schizophrenic !

Nice poetry, but meaningless. A man has an "idea" of a straight line because he experienced a straight line and made a comparative definition once he then experienced a crooked line.

This analogy betrays the flaw in Lewis' entire argument, since he is assuming or implying that a straight line is somehow innate within consciousness, not experienced.

Personal experiences of "just." Same mistake. The line is the line and the universe is the universe. The subjective application of these attributes (like personifying the universe) is a literary cheat, not a serious deconstruction of the inherent nature of the entire universe. Lewis just isn't thinking very clearly about what he is saying, because he's clearly writing (as wordsmyth so eloquently put it) aesthetically. This is prose-poetry and little more.

Ironically, what Lewis is actually engaging in is an indictment of his own ego centrism, he just, apparently, can't see it.

See? This is not an argument for or against a god; this is Lewis' subconscious guilt spilling out into his philosophical musings.

Beside not being technically true (we were water breathers for nine months and are 98% water, I do believe), a man "feels" wet when he falls into water, because the first time you experience water you search for a means to explain the experience to someone else.

Does this mean that people who speak Russian must first presuppose a "God Of Russian" before being able to speak it?

Again, that is a pointless, nonsensical observation, since all he's musing about is a false analogy of what is most familiar being equivalent to preconceived.

A fish might not feel wet in water, but it would definitely feel "dry" out of water, once it experienced out of waterness, for lack of a better term. The point being that water and "waterness" are being experienced by both the fish and the man, but how does this necessarily lead to Goddidit except through the exact same erroneous assertions based once again on comparative homocentric personification;

I don't know why I experience something or why there is something there for me to experience, therefore goddidit as that justifies my existence to me.

Dripping with confused and apparently still unnoticed egocentrism. He could have given up on his idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of his own.

He's telling us (and himself) quite clearly and in no uncertain terms that it was a private idea of his own.

This fact or realization, however, is apparently causing no end of cognitive dissonance for Prof. Lewis as is evident in his next step:

Untrue. Lewis' argument (apparently) was that the world was objectively unjust, independent of his own subjective take on the matter, which he mistakenly took to be a proof against God's existence, because of the preconceived notion (implanted in his head, no doubt, from birth) that God was the only means for moral objectivity to exist.

The cognitive dissonance is that there is no such thing as moral objectivity and never has been. Instead of making that comparatively more difficult qualitative leap--acknowledging that no such thing as moral objectivity exists--Lewis instead has clung to the idea there is such a thing as moral objectivity, therefore "God."

There it is again. He's got everything reversed.

This is the (loose) syllogism of his reasoning (Clutch, old bean, please correct me if I'm wrong ):
In other words, egocentrism has forced him to delude himself into thinking his morality is based upon a moral objectivity, because, if it isn't, then his ego just can't handle it.

There it is again. Has no meaning to whom? To Lewis. That's not acceptable to his ego, therefore, God.

As others have rightly pointed out, "meaning" is a cheat of human egocentrism and has nothing to do with the universe, crooked or straight, wet or dry.

Again, only to humans.

GOD
EGO
QED

(edited for formatting - Koy)

[ May 15, 2002: Message edited by: Koyaanisqatsi ]</p>

MOJO-JOJO

I thought that too when I first looked at it. But all of their links seem to espouse their view of christian doctrine, which again points out how whacky many christians are!

MOJO-JOJO

Sheesh! You'll be posting with the airheads at the baptist board before you know it!

JB01

I think Lewis is attempting to set up a dilemma: either morality is objective, in which case our idea of justice must have come from God since it's not something we can observe in reality; or morality is subjective, in which case the argument from evil fails because it is meaningless to call the world unjust if there is no objective standard of justice.

Unfortunately, both arguments fail. As Koy pointed out, it's quite possible to develop a sense of justice based on isolated instances and then apply it to judge the world as a whole - this demolishes the "objective morality -&gt; God" side.

Although Lewis doesn't take moral subjectivism seriously, I do, so I find his second alternative more compelling. The argument from evil makes it unlikely that there exists an active, all-powerful interventionist deity whose standard of justice comports with ours, but it is weak against other types of gods.

Personally, I prefer to rest my atheism on lack of evidence.

HelenM

You might ...but if you do, you'll never have the satisfaction of knowing it because I'll never admit it!

But I suppose I shouldn't say that with such certainty...who knows about that either...

love
Helen

St. Robert

I think Lewis is arguing that when an atheist denies the existence of God, they are acknowledging God.

"If there were no God, there would be no atheists." - G.K. Chesterton