Stumble it!C.S. Lewis’ Proof of God
posted in Philosophy by themaiden |C.S. Lewis, author of the recently put on film “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, also wrote numerous works of fiction and of Christian apologetics, of which Mere Christianity is arguably his most famous. Lewis himself, for that matter, is arguably the most famous Christian apologist of the century, but famous is no measure of depth and popularity is no indication of value– just look at the fecundity of reality shows dominating what was already a mental cesspool, primetime.
Something, though, must account for Lewis’ popularity, and hence his influence. That something is his talent with words. Lewis is engaging. His writing is down to Earth, and unpretentious. He speaks to the proverbial “common man”. What he says though, is theologically shallow, if not positively inane. He speaks to the “common man” but doesn’t provide much food for thought. He hands out rice cakes and people take it for steak, though I can’t quite figure out why. His arguments are transparent, but then, people do love their cheer leaders. It is testament, I suppose, to the human ability to accept uncritically any justification for what we already believe.
For example, in Mere Christianity, Lewis constructs what is essentially an argument for the existence of God, starting first with an argument for God in general and progressing to argue for the Christian God in particular. His argument for God in general, though not conceptually original to him, has become a popular one, taking on almost cult status; and it seems to be repeated endlessly, even by those who don’t understand it or know its origin.
What Lewis does is construct a kind of moral argument for the existence of God. He notes that people worldwide appeal to a roughly similar standard of behavior. Quarrelling parties behave “as if both parties had in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.” He continues, somewhat further down in chapter one:
If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each other and to our own. … for our present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.
Critics of Mere Christianity tend to object to Lewis’ position at this point, arguing that he glosses over too many cultural variations in morality, that he oversimplifies the facts to make his case. I disagree with those critics. Human cultures do share a striking number of core values. It is how these values are expressed that varies. For example, consider stealing– the malicious taking of property for selfish ends. It is difficult to conceive of a culture where such is justified and not mitigated by some other aspect of culture. I stress the idea of mitigation by other aspects of culture because it is critically important that behavior be analyzed within the context of the culture in which the behavior is observed. A society may, for example, adopt strict property rights ideas in response to the possibility of theft, while another society may adopt loose property rights ideas. In that second society a neighbor may take what he or she needs from his neighbor without guilt, knowing that the neighbor will do the same in turn. Both systems function, though not perfectly– the latter likely works only within small and close knit communities– and neither justifies theft, but both deal with it in different ways.
As stated, I agree with Lewis that cultures share a striking similarity of moral concepts. He, however, concludes that the only reasonable explaination for this phenomenon is the presence of a God from whom this concept of morality descends. And here his argument fails. He neglects or ignores certain facts about human nature and human history. Granted, Lewis was born during a time when anthropology was still teething and he died when, in my estimation, the field was barely pubescent. Still, it is a valid charge that he neglected a great deal of what information was available to him.
Human civilizations are similar because all human civilizations must deal with the same small set of problems– the acquisition of food, protection from the elements, mating and reproduction, and defense against outside dangers, such as predators and other human populations, to make a short list. Since a society that does not solve these problems cannot survive very long, these problems serve as limits on social structure. ((For the long version of this case see Atheists are bad, bad people… The Conclusion)) The result is the similarity of culture to which Lewis appeals. In short, and as I wrote on another site long ago, “humans live in groups and have lived in groups since long before we were human. Some behaviors are more conducive to life in a group than other behaviors. Simple.”
In other words, he fails to note a very obvious alternative to his conclusion. It is a critical failure, since his argument is in many ways a proof by elimination. As uttered famously by Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”. Lewis attempts just such a process. He claims that nothing else but God can explain the presence of cross-cultural moral similarities, but rather than consider and eliminate the impossible, he seems to have simply stated the improbable and called it a day, barely considering that there are alternative solutions to his puzzle, and any reasonable alternative is enough to cause this kind of argument to collapse.
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