Interesting Argument Against Atheism from CS Lewis

[Cirdan_XII]

But just because a person has not been convinced of a “God”, it still doesn’t meant the universe is meaningless.
This must be your description of a universe without God. You yourself must think that the universe is “meaningless” without a God.
Someone must have convinced you–or you you decided this on your own–that the universe is meaningless without a God.
But why would this necessarily be the case?
There is no reason for this line of thinking. There is no reason to limit the meaning of life and the universe and only attach it to one of many Gods we have had so far.
.

You cannot have what you call “meaning” without there being a higher measure of right or wrong by which that meaning can be declared right or wrong. Otherwise it’s not a meaning but just an opinion.

If we have justice, and can say that some laws are just and others are unjust, it is because we refer to a higher meaning of the word justice. If you don’t have that, the law is itself the highest meaning, and a law can by definition not be unjust, as it is the law. So you can appeal for the law to be changed to make things more practical for you, but you cannot appeal to higher rights and wrongs.

But if there is this higher universal concept of right or wrong, then that must come from God. If you hear an inner voice telling you, this is right and this is wrong, and that voice is in reality just an inner voice, fabriacted by your imagination, then you cannot derive morality from that. How can some neurons and synapses running amok be the basis of universal right or wrong? So the moment God-denying athesist say something is right or wrong, or worse still, say that they are right that there is no God, they are entering a state of absolute contradiction.

 

[Cirdan_XII]

And by the way, let’s not forget…there have been many Gods that people have believed in over the last few thousand years that thousands of years later have been put in the “Myth” category. These were God that were taken very seriously at the time.

CS Lewis actually deals with this as well.

You can find both in Lewis, and in his friend, Tolkien, references to incomplete revelation.

So not all pagan and pre-Judaeo-Christian religions were wrong. God revealed himself to primitive men in ways that their understanding and intellectual development permitted. So they got some things right and they got some things wrong. When critics of Christianity say, actually Christians just borrowed or stole this or that feast or tradition from pagans, maybe that isn’t true. Maybe the pagans were right in that particular point but it took Christianity to fully explain the true meaning.

While he was still an agnostic, Lewis got into an argument over this with Tolkien, in which Lewis famously said “lies breathed through silver are still lies”. Tolkien replied by writing his poem Mythopoeia for Lewis. You can read it here:

home.ccil.org/~cowan/mythopoeia.html

This is precisely the argument that Lewis himself later wove into the Silver Chair.

 

[Mike_from_NJ]

You’ll note that I never said everything must have meaning from outside itself, you are misrepresenting my argument. I said nothing that occurred randomly can have meaning

Your precise words were, “There can be no meaning in the universe or of life without God. Why? Because there must be someone who exists outside the universe to give it meaning.” You said that a universe that doesn’t have someone outside would lack meaning. The universe must have someone outside of it to have meaning. The next logical leap is that an item itself can not have meaning without something outside of it, so I naturally question if a god without something outside of it would also lack meaning.

That may not have been your argument in your head, but I certainly did not misrepresent your argument as you stated it.

For something to have meaning it must have intentionality. For it to have intentionality it must have intellect and will.

Can we agree with the actions of man have intellect and will? If so, do the actions of man have meaning? If that is also so, can man’s actions have meaning even if the universe (by your standards) doesn’t have meaning?

And I think at this point the dispute may be as to what the definition of “meaning” is. Without invoking God, how would you define “meaning”?

CS Lewis actually deals with this as well.

C.S. Lewis may deal with this as well, but I don’t think he deals with it well.

So not all pagan and pre-Judaeo-Christian religions were wrong. God revealed himself to primitive men in ways that their understanding and intellectual development permitted. So they got some things right and they got some things wrong.

C.S. Lewis is like the guy in the office that tries to credit for someone else’s work, although in this case he’s doing it by proxy for christianity. It’s foolish to lay claim on a culture’s origins well after the fact simply because there having been pre-Judeo-Christian cultures sets one off into unwanted conclusions.

 

[PietroPaolo]

Your precise words were, “There can be no meaning in the universe or of life without God. Why? Because there must be someone who exists outside the universe to give it meaning.” You said that a universe that doesn’t have someone outside would lack meaning. The universe must have someone outside of it to have meaning. The next logical leap is that an item itself can not have meaning without something outside of it, so I naturally question if a god without something outside of it would also lack meaning.

That may not have been your argument in your head, but I certainly did not misrepresent your argument as you stated it.

Your “next logical step” is an unwarranted leap in the dark. If the universe was randomly generated then 1) no one gave it meaning from outside itself and 2) it can’t give itself meaning (being without will and intellect). God (never being created) doesn’t need 1 and isn’t lacking in 2. From this, we can see you did in fact misrepresent my argument as written, not just “in my head.”

Can we agree with the actions of man have intellect and will? If so, do the actions of man have meaning? If that is also so, can man’s actions have meaning even if the universe (by your standards) doesn’t have meaning?

Man’s action, being the result of intellect and will, do have meaning because they do have intentionality. The universe has neither intellect nor will, therefore it must receive its meaning, if it has one, from outside its self - from outside the universe, by an intellect and will. This is what we call God.

Of course, intellect and will are immaterial and are therefore denied by atheists (who are also materialists). If intellect and will exist (and are not mere epiphenomena of matter, the brain in this case) then the immaterial world exists and atheistic materialism is still proven false. If intellect and will are merely the product of, and therefore determined by, chemical reactions in matter (in our brains) then they too lack intentionality and also lack meaning. Of course this is absurd and thus false.

Lastly, as I mentioned before to DaddysGirl, nothing can be in an effect than isn’t in its cause, IOW an effect cannot be greater than its cause. A meaningless universe of matter, lacking all intentionality, cannot, therefore, give rise to meaningful and intentional creatures. Thus, again, we see than meaning, in life or in the universe, cannot be squared with atheism.

And I think at this point the dispute may be as to what the definition of “meaning” is. Without invoking God, how would you define “meaning”?

For an action to have “meaning” it must have intentionality (not be random). Again, the difference between me writing these words to you (which have meaning) and my one year old daughter smacking the keyboard randomly to produce ‘words’ (which would lack meaning) is illustrative.

C.S. Lewis may deal with this as well, but I don’t think he deals with it well.

C.S. Lewis is like the guy in the office that tries to credit for someone else’s work, although in this case he’s doing it by proxy for christianity. It’s foolish to lay claim on a culture’s origins well after the fact simply because there having been pre-Judeo-Christian cultures sets one off into unwanted conclusions.

This is a non sequitur.

 

[Angela_Tate]

Discussion has strayed way off the topic of CS Lewis’s argument against atheism. The rest of this discussion belongs in another forum.