Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Absolutely Alien

OK... So I've decided that Mere Christianity is so deeply flawed it doesn't really make any sense to continue this blow-by-blow. This first half of this book, which is supposed to be his intellectual argument for belief is just riddled with appallingly poor logic. At virtually every step he tends to make one of three fatal mistakes: (a) artificially narrowing the available options to just 2 or 3 possibilities, (b) proof by fiat, or (c) just introducing a new conclusion without any explanation at all.

Basically, his argument boils down to something like this: human beings have a notion of ethical behavior, therefore there must be a perfect moral force outside the universe which acts on us, and this is the Christian God who created all things. The bible tells us that there was this man called Jesus, who died to that God could forgive us for being human. Because the Bible says he claimed to be both humble and the son of God, he was either (a) the son of God, (b) he was crazy or (c) he was Satan. (Apparently (d) he never existed in the first place or (e) he was an earthly opportunist and con artist or (f) he was misquoted and appropriated by the organized church who was afraid of the message the God and Man are one, are not viable options). Lewis' solution to determining between these options?
Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.
A classic proof by "It's bloody obvious! What are you, some sort of moron?"

Oh well...

There are a few sort of interesting ideas in the book here and there, but mostly this book is reinforcing my notion that Christianity is a bizarre cult full of people whose thought processes are utterly alien.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah...the logic on that one is less than adequate. Looks like begging the question to me! Which is unfortunate, because I'm sure there are much better arguments out there. Ah well.

clgerardy said...

Yep... I pretty much agree, though I am becoming more skeptical of any arguments that try to 'prove' or or nail down spirit to any one particular flavor. I think that many times these things get hung up trying to prove that Spirit = Jehovah or Spirit = Jesus (or as one thoroughly unconvicning lecturer once described it to me "Jesus Christ plus or minus an increasingly small errorbar.")

The thing is that once you start having to justify a very concrete single practice, then you end up obscuring the point under too many unimportant details, many of which aren't really defenseable as important to spiritual development but are probably historical artifacts. For example, the Bible contains not only directions for living a spiritual and holy existence, but also contains lots of geneologies, various bits of histories, 4000 year old legal procedures, and other practical information. The various complicated food issues in the biblical religions for example are probably based on trying not to die of food poisoning. Is it really an offense to God to eat a pork chop, or was it just really a bad idea because it tended to give you trichinosis?

Actually I do sometimes come across compelling ideas in Christianity, but tellingly, I find that those that speak to me most are those bits that sound rather a lot more like mysticism. Among other things, I don't think the absolutist uber-reality of the Judeo-Christian mythology apeals to me. I don't think I'm likely to convert to Catholocism of Islam. But maybe Zen, or Gnosticism, or Sufism or Kaballah or some such could be more attractive. Something that stresses more the direct personal experience of Spirituality, rather than all the extraneous dogma which comes with mainstream Religion.