I’ve just been reading Mere Christianity and had a Google for a rebuttal of it. I’ve read a few now, and yours is the best I’ve yet come across.

I’m an agnostic but by no means a Christian-hater. The believers I know are generally nice and friendly people, even if some of them seem to be using their jolliness to suppress some deeper emotion. I was interested to see whether CS Lewis could awaken my curiosity in Christianity.

I was really suprised by the kind of arguments Lewis uses. He’s arguing by analogy the whole time, and half of the analogies are unconvincing. As you point out, he is fond of the false dichotomy and the book is replete with logical fallacies. I’m surprised that a Professor of English could write such a book; my former English teachers wouldn’t have let me get away with half the arguments Lewis uses.

If there is anything in the book that suggests to me that there might be a God, it’s this:

“I want to consider what this tells us about the universe we live in. Ever since men were able to think they have been wondering what this universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand something hit our sun and made it produce the planets, and by another tousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the living creatures developed into things like us’.

I’d be interested to your views on that.

I misspelled your name and also, “analogous.” I had just gotten off a strenuous bike ride, and was cooling down. Weariness makes for mistakes.

Blessings

Kim

I was an atheist for many years, until I EXPERIENCED CHRIST JESUS!

In my opinion, attempting to convince an atheist of the existence of God and how wonderful He is, is analogist to attempting to convince someone who has never experienced an orgasm, that it really does exist, and how wonderful it is! Although, the orgasm is very temporary, God is forever Wonderful!

Only the Holy Spirit can draw people to Christ Jesus. Serving God is a privilege, not a right!

We owe him everything. He owes us nothing!

I’ll be praying for you.

Blessings

Kim

First, I’ll say that in this post I wanted to just outline what I found in the book, there were no new arguments to me, so I didn’t provide rebuttals (sloppy I know, but I don’t like writing books when I post).

I looked to Mere Christianity for a new reason or argument for theism that I haven’t heard before. I was sadly disappointed, and by the end of the Theology chapter I was quite frustrated with the book and probably came off harsher in this post than I likely would have after a couple days, but I wanted to get it done.

The morality question I’ll deal with using a new analogy I’ve thought up (look for a new post in the next 15-30 minutes).

The Liar-Lord-Lunatic argument is a false (tri/di)chotomy. Basically, Jesus could have been misquoted, not existed, said some of the things, said all of the things but meant them differently etc. In essence just because it’s written doesn’t make it law (although I guess the Bible is different for you).

Also, I did get through Genesis-Leviticus and have read parts of the New Testament. Honestly, the Bible’s a really dry slow read. I hopefully will finish it in the future, but for now I’ll go with my sparse knowlegde – and that of my friends who’ve read it multiple times and some of whom are Biblical Scholars.

Also

“Im smart and I dont know and cant imagine anyone being smarter or having more common sense than me there cant be a God.” That is just foolishness.

I agree, it is a foolish argument, which is why I didn’t use it (I think).

Anyways, take a look through my Top Posts for what I consider the best I’ve written so far, or just search around (if you want). And if you start your own blog let me know and I’ll check it out.