Sorry for your loss, but it appears that your faith was in your mother’s faith and was not your own faith. Please go back to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John and know Jesus for yourself. Do not take anyone else’s word for who Jesus is.
Do not build back something that was not right in the first place. Know Him for yourself and build anew.
In all honesty you are right, I have always felt that my faith was my mother’s faith not my own and frankly I can already tell trying to find it, if at all is going to be challenging.
It’s another of Jack’s typical nested fallacies. Broadcast '41-44 on the BBC of all things, with no interlocutor I’m sure, published in '52. His peers at Oxford would have torn him shreds but that would never have gone in to the public domain. It needed the democratization of knowledge and more, the restoration of the commons of discourse, afforded by the internet for the common man to see the emperor naked.
For any much-remembered words of some past author, there will always be the eager detractors eagerly proclaiming their protest. Meanwhile, a couple generations later, there may be good reason why it’s Lewis’ wit and wisdom that is getting remembered and repeated, pithy and proximal to human experience and the transcendant that it is. As to the words of his detractors … well … feel free to prove me wrong. Let’s totter their wisdom out from the dark corners and into the light; set it beside Lewis’ observations to examine it and see how it fares.
There weren’t at the time as it suited the establishment. Lewis’ second rate logic, i.e. rhetoric, is used in apologetics as the gold standard still. In the Alpha course. Better than specious dross like Lane Craig’s and even Platinga’s.
So, I have an idea what you’re getting at here, but here, like usual on this forum, you only make vague jibes. Is there something you would like to say or ascribe to, that is articulated in sufficient detail to engender worthwhile discussion, or even, be subject to worthwhile scrutiny? Don’t get me wrong. Probably you have devoted a lot more thought to these topics than me, and I would not withstand a debate, but still I think, scoffing is cheap, and explanation is better.
I think what he’s saying is that while we would expect a lawgiver to be present if we have a law, it’s not necessarily a proof. Alistair McGrath, a Christian intellectual who also critiqued Dawkins, does agree that there is a bit of excess confidence in this argument if we take it too strictly. That’s not to say there isn’t a good argument, but this is not a strong one.
Lewis’ area of expertise was in literature, though he had a strong liberal arts education. A Catholic Oxbridge scholar once pointed out an error in his arguments for God, and he had to agree she was right.
He makes me think, but I agree that his philosophical arguments are not perfect. I’ve not had any formal philosophical study, but I’m finding some of the books for kids interesting. 
One by Sharon kay from a Jesuit university in the Midwest is teaching me. I can comment more by PM, if you like.
It’s good to critique ourselves; I’m trying to do that with my kids. I have to admit that my own Christian teachers didn’t know what they were saying when they critiqued evolution, and that sort of extends to the area of philosophy–an area I wish I had more training. Thanks.
I’m glad you feel that way. It seems many people look at philosophy as a body of knowledge as if knowing who said what was what mattered. I feel lucky to have had an undergraduate experience at least with philosophy. I feel the same way as you toward what Christy shares about linguistics. There is a lot to be garnered from many fields of study. I also sometimes wish I’d studied literature at school sometimes. But you know who I find hates the field of philosophy by far the most? Atheists.
I find that claim most peculiar… My first guess is that this is only a facet of the “new atheists.” For I don’t see much reason to believe this regarding atheists in the past.
A pattern which I have noticed in the history of philosophy (excluding ancient Greek philosophy), is some new philosophical paradigm produced by the efforts to defend theism and Christianity which is then adapted by atheists and then dominated by them. At least that is the pattern I see in existentialism and pragmatism.
As long as atheists are in the minority I would expect them to be the most thoughtful and analytical, questioning assumptions, which is the bread and butter of philosophy. It is only among the majority way of thinking that such things become unpopular.
There is so much more than I had thought there was to philosophy! Metaphysics (the study of reality), epistemology (knowledge), ethics, and logic. It’s a great way to humility, and assessing what we really don’t know (which is far greater than I had realized).
I find it interesting why atheists would sometimes find philosophy distasteful. I have heard of Michael Ruse, a professor in the philosophy of biology, an ex-Quaker atheist who interacts very kindly with theists. In this debate I haven’t watched yet, he “steel mans” the theism side against Randal Rauser, who argues for atheism. I just finished debating Michael Ruse and… - Randal Rauser
Michael Ruse - Wikipedia
From my experience online, they certainly have no problem questioning other people’s assumptions but can be entirely unaware of their own.
Ah! Well I think you will find the same true of most religious forums. When you have a community founded on a particular point of view, then challenging the presumptions of that point of view is not very appreciated in that community. I think this community is unique in many ways. Which is not say that there are no presumptions which we do not appreciate being challenged here.
We stand on the shoulders of giants. And we can see their tracks. There’s nothing vague about Lewis’s intellectual limitations. Seen from that height. A height that existed at the time. The height of the Ivory Tower. Now any of us can see the flaws, can realise that the emperor’s rhetoric is transparent. The scrutiny has been done.
Do I really have to deconstruct Lewis’ 40s rhetoric? It’s going to be painful. As it’s so obvious, therefore the reasons for not seeing it are because something else is getting in the way, as it did even for the Christian-literary-giant Lewis. As it does for all apologists. That’s all. Even great physicists (and it’s always physicists, never biologists), and not so great Christian philosophers, the best being Platinga.
OK. And no I’m not happy with my tone. But it is what it is. I despair of honest, humble apologetics.
This is bad rhetoric. Really bad, very dated rhetoric. Mine’s just really bad. What is this desire of which Lewis speaks which no experience in this world can satisfy? What about the desire of addicts? It is never satisfied. And we’re all addicted to something. Oxygen at least. Even when it is. It isn’t. Satisfied. And being intentional creatures we can think about what we have and what we don’t have. We don’t have eternal youth let alone eternal life. So? Like the gambler who wins a million dollars, we have youth and we have life. And we lose it. So? We see that we lose. That we die. And on the way we’re, as Will said, sans everything. So? That means we’re made to have our entirely physical desires fulfilled in the transcendent, beyond death does it? That is utterly pathetic. Fallacious. As is his argument for the divinity of Christ. We are utterly pathetic. So? That’s OK. Evolution has got us to do our job. Breed. If we’re lucky. Be a contributory part of a successfully breeding species. Be a good herd animal. Our intentionality is for that ‘purpose’. All art, all religion, all ‘morality’, all politics, all work, all science, all philosophy, the search for happiness, meaning, love is for that same, dysteleological ‘purpose’, or a by product of it. None of this makes transcendence, life after death, ‘probable’ or even possible. Nothing about existence requires it. We yearn. So? Wolves howl. Elephants mourn. Crows stand vigil. So? We just can’t deal with the cognitive dissonance of being intentional animals. Do octopi go to heaven? Red kneed tarantulas?
And Lewis was not a literary giant among his contemporaries. Not even the man who died on the same day as he. Aldous Huxley. He was a good storyteller, a very good storyteller. Better than many actual literary giants as far as white Anglo-Saxon middle class kids are concerned. But the ideas are actually mediocre. Have no substance at all. When he wrote of his suffering, in A Grief Observed, he did achieve greatness. I find it immensely moving. Because of its honesty. I have yet to read Till We Have Faces, his final and most mature work. We’ll see.
It’s never satisfied, but also, it is indeed an addiction to something that actually exists.
Like life. Until it doesn’t. What is it that Lewis wanted? What do you want?
I highly recommend it. I am listening to it again (have read it 2 or 3 times) while studying currently. He started it as an earnest demand against God’s injustice as an unbeliever, and then finished it (with Joy Davidman’s help, I think) when he was a believer. I still jive with the unbeliever part most, and don’t completely agree with or understand Orual’s acceptance of the gods, but it still brings me to tears.
“A Grief Observed” helped me with the loss of my father. I recommend it to some who are similarly grieving. Some do well with it, and some do not. I think it depends greatly on whether they can empathize with the sound of doors slamming to, and being bolted, and double bolted, on the inside.
MacDonald thought so.
A way to understand the existence of mind, as more than an epiphenomenon of a nervous system. An antidote to nihilism.
Well put.
I am not sure of the answer, but I think humans do need an abstract. God does provide a reference point. My dad concluded it could only be a Kierkegaardian leap of faith. He was one of the most godly folks I knew (after his mother).
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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