I do believe though that increasing scepticism, critical thinking, and the questioning of authority (whether religious, political, or corporate) could have a profoundly positive effect on the global society. Dogmas must be challenged and people should think critically about what they’re told. As scepticism is a core tenet of humanist philosophy, I do therefore think that a greater acceptance of humanism will improve society.

I encourage you to read Steve Pinker’s latest book (it’s big) “The Better Angels of Our Nature,” which first documents a continual decline in violence over the entire human history (including through the 20th century) and argues that this latest decline is due to the rise of enlightenment humanism (which is a precursor to modern secular humanism).

Thanks for your response.

Do you believe that atheism and a humanistic perspective will ultimately lead the world to a better place? Do you believe that if everyone were to become atheists and humanists that we would live in a world much better than the one we currently have?

I know that many atrocities have been commited “in the name of god” or for some similiar reason. Do you believe that those type of events would eventually disappear if we all were atheists/humanists?

Thanks

Tim

Thanks,

Tim

I myself have struggled greatly with faith, belief, Christianity, agnosticism and atheism.

I have tried to devote myself to finding the truth no matter what it turns out to be.

My best argument for faith is that when I look back on my life and really believed in the Christian God and accepted Jesus death and resurrection and how he saved me were the best times of my life. I lived a very enriched and fulfilled life during those times. I have never been able to stay in that place due to my constant struggles with believing that the Bible is truly the “Word of God” and many of the issues that most non-believers who are knowledgeable of the Christian faith but are not commited to it.

Re: Tie-breaking
Why not let the woman have the tie break? Or to be fair, alternate or flip a coin. To suggest it should automatically be the man is sexist (even if it was the prevailing attitude of his day).

Re: Sex
I still don’t see pleasure in isolation as inherently wrong.

Re: Veracity
Not sure what you mean. We know well that the Bible (New Testament) was written from second-hand (or more) accounts at least 30 years after the events were purported to occur. Further, many texts were seemingly arbitrarily left out of the final cut by the early Church; to say nothing of the internal contradictions. The Old Testament’s even less veracious.

A few quick things,

On man having the casting vote in a partnership of two, I never got the sense he means anything other than being the tie breaker. He talked about fully discussing issues and honestly being open to each other’s views and only if they cannot agree then someone has to be the majority.

On sex, he was saying that trying to get the pleasure in an isolated fashion is the problem. Christianity tends to be alot more about intent than results. The results are the easy thing, creating the right intent is the hard thing.

On the veracity of the biblical accounts, I think we can be quick to judge the bible like we would a news article from last week. The standards for ancient documents being regarded as accurate are a very different thing.

I’ll wait to discuss more until I hear back,

thanks in advance!

I found the bits about man lording over women as offensive to my sense of justice and equality that grew out of enlightenment thinking and later civil rights (including feminist) movements. The argument is very similar to how slavery was justified in the name of religion or how women are still brutally subjugated under many forms of Islam.

I’m still not convinced by his sex outside procreation argument. The gum analogy holds as far as I can tell. His argument seems to be that doing something pleasurable that has a biological purpose is only moral if its attempting to fulfil that moral purpose. Sex outside procreation is immoral to Lewis because it doesn’t help reproduction.

A better example may be sex after menopause or in cases of infertility – is it immoral for the elderly or infertile to have sex because it won’t create babies? You and I will probably agree that it’s moral and fine, but the logic Lewis presents would disagree.

Rereading it I can see a bit of a cop out if you call sex part of marriage, but in that case there’s no real reason for it to be moral other than “the bible tells me so,” which is highly unsatisfying to me (because the bible also tells me stoning adulterers and slavery are moral, but I choose to do neither).

Finally, on the 3L argument: Not all history needs to be thrown out if we apply scepticism to claims made about past figures. If we have multiple, independent and collaborating sources that verify a person and their actions (as we have with Alexander the Great), then it’s more likely that they did exist and did do the reported things. If we have just 4 books, written a hundred years after the purported events, based upon hearsay and third-hand accounts, then perhaps you can agree that there’s more reason to be sceptical of the claims being made and the false dichotomy does exist.

I hope this answers some of your questions about my point of view. Thanks for your openness.

Please excuse my previous comment, I was just testing to see if i could actually comment on here before I wrote too much.

I greatly enjoyed your post about Mere Christianity. I will start off by saying I am a Christian and grew up going to church, yet not caring or applying any “Christian Values” to my daily life. Only recently have I actaully known God and seen change in my conduct and beleifs. So it is important you know that right off the bat I am willing to believe rather than disagree with Lewis, though I feel like an open-minded person.

I read Mere Christianity last year and have leafed through it from time to time ever since. I just came across your post and wanted to throw in my two cents. (if you want it-I’m guessing you do since you have a blog.)

Regarding your thoughts on the “absurdity” of man being the leader in a marriage: in the Christian faith it is in fact held that the man is the leader and final say in marriage. The part of book 3 in which Lewis addresses this matter is the last chapter. However in the 2nd chapter of this book (‘this book’ being “Christian Behavior”) Lewis writes, “For the rest of this book I am going to assume the Christian point of view, and look at the whole picture as it will be if Christianity is true.”
You see, Lewis cannot be making an absurd statement if in a Christian marriage the man ruler and he stated that he will be holding the belief that Christianity is true.

On another topic:
Please do not sell yourself short on the comment about “chewing gum being as immoral as sex before marriage.” You and I both know that is not the point he was trying to get across and that gum is deffinately an exception and does not fit into the illustration; and so he does not use it. I do think you could make a better point and really have something there though. I’m interested in what you were trying to get across. Because from what I read it seems he does back up his “arguments for why sex outside marriage is so bad and so worrisome.”

And another thing,
In a response to someone’s comment you wrote: “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).”

If you hold this type of logic where you say, “yes there’s that, but what if it actually never happened or none of this is real?” Then any sort of logic, reasonable thinking, mathmatics, events in history, ect. can just be thrown out the window. Honestly if you hold that way of thinking then you might easily be pursuaded that Alexandar the Great never exsited, which would be untrue. do you see my point? I will agree with the misleading and possibily false dichotomy though, that is an interesting point/thought.

I realize it has been quite a few months since you wrote about your thoughts and feelings concerning Mere Christianity and that your beliefs could have shifted, or you no longer care, but anyway, I would enjoy hearing back from you.