Before we can talk about man, I'd like to say a few words of how man was able to be on this planet at all. I will attempt to show that this world is not all there is. I am not a naturalist, but I do believe in, if I may say it like this, Theistic Evolution. You see I do not have a problem with religion and science working together. But I also believe that there was something bringing about evolution. You see, something had to be the first cause to start the process. There has to be an unmovable first cause. Impersonal + chance + time does not equal the cosmos.
Furthermore, I would not even be able to trust my own brain if everything that happened in the world was just time and chance. Let me summarize what I wrote in my essay named Miracles, "For our brains to be trusted, reason must come from outside itself. Rational thought cannot come from irrational causes." If Naturalism is true saying the words "I ought" is the same thing as "I itch." I can never say you ought not do that. My opinion is greatest. There is nothing outside people's opinion of right and wrong.
Just a quick note, in Pantheism, you would have no way of distinguishing right from wrong. There can be morals this way. If God is in everything, then you have no basis for right and wrong.
Here is a question for you, if you are a Naturalist. Why do humans imagine a transcendent God outside of ourselves? If we get hungry, we could imagine food to quench this hunger. That doesn't mean there is such a thing as food, but it does make it more probable. if we can have a hunger for something beyond ourselves, there is probably such thing as God.
I made a mistake on my first post saying I only worked for Oxford, chalk it up to old age. I did work at Cambridge for awhile. In 1954 the university made up a post for me named Medieval and Renaissance Literature. My first lecture was named, "Describing the Times", I wrote the following, "The gap between those which worship different Gods is not as wide as those that worship Gods and those which do not. Many people through time have worshiped some type of God. This also leads to me as to believe there is a God. This is not just a belief, but a hunger. I would say this God has left a God shaped whole in our hearts that he made for him to fill. This God would ten be outside our time, space, and I might even say loving. It cannot be impersonal force +time + chance. The universe, logic, and even the cosmos itself would not exist.
So, I am to say the Christian God must be the real God. The Bible tells us he made us in his own image. So, logically, people should want to image God. With the Christian God, we find logic, reasons for life and death, and love itself. Man is made in the image of God, and we get to mirror him. Without God, let me say again, there is no such thing as morals, basis for knowledge, or life itself.
Conclusion...what do we do?
Although some people who are told exactly what the Christian Doctrine is, will fight it, and deny it. I do think there are those whom will come to the table of Christ as a starving man before a hearty meal. When I write, my life is evangelism, not just apologetic. In my book "God in the Dock," I quote, "Most of my books are evangelistic...It would have been inept of me to preach forgiveness and a Savior to those who did not know they needed either." It is more important to bring one lost soul to salvation than to save all the books of medieval past. Humans are made Christians to pass on God's love to others. That is what humanity was created for.
What do you say? Agree...Disagree
Please let me know your feelings, I love to discuss Theology with others.
Mr. Lewis I might say that your excerpt from miracles reminds me allot of what Alvin Plantinga has to say on this topic. He even rational suggest that to believe in Evolution you HAVE to be Theist! I know you have been hiding out a while but I think you guys would get along!
ReplyDeleteMr. Lewis I am wondering if you could clear some things up. If man is a product of evolution where and why does man get to be greater than other creation. If we share a common ancestry would it be logical to conclude then all creation is made in God's image? Your blog seems to suggest that "reason" is the source, is this what you think. Is it possible for another animal to evolve to be in God's image as well. What if we were to create something in our image, what would stop it from evolving a soul?
I am glad you are writing again Mr. Lewis. I am very excited what you have to say about soteriology after the semi recent Rob Bell Love wins storm, especially because Great Divorce is one of my favorite works of all time.
I have to say Clay, your questions are very tough. I cannot remember if i wrote exact answers to these questions. They sound more philosophical. I think these questions are outside normal scientific inquiry. As you know, evolution takes a long time, and cannot be studied by science. Only the effects of evolution, or the effects of the natural laws, can be studied. But I can say that the Bible spoke of humans being made in the image of God, of course in Genesis 1. Could you please explain what you mean by reason is the source of evolution. Also Clay, you know I'm a huge fan of animals. Could any other animal evolve to being made in God's image? Again that's outside of science, so I would say no. But I am thinking if there are animals in Heaven, there is something going on there.
DeleteThe only thing I could image humans creating in our image (which is also in God's image) is another human through pregnancy. I'm not sure about taking DNA and cloning it to make a human. That's a scary though, men playing God. That cannot end well.
Thank you for informing me of Mr. Alvin Plantinga. I will check him out soon. As far as Rob Bell, never read him, I have just heard about his books. Thank you for reading my books, I am glad they are helping you grow in Christ.
I was wondering why you found humans to be special. The post seemed to suggest that it was because of reason but your clarified with God's image being the source, thank you.
DeleteAs a Methodist I am a fan of John Wesley. Mr Wesley assumes animal to have souls because according to passages about the new heaven and earth they are still around, and they were around and multiplying the earth before man and sin.
I am also a fan of science fiction and in the show Battle Star Galactica (the 2003 reboot), one of themes of the show's is if AI robots get souls from God. In irony they preach a monotheistic God while humans are polytheistic. It super good show. The reason I asked was.
a.) I assumed you thought reason was the source of a soul
b.) Humans could develop the ability to create something with reason
c.) would that give it a soul
But based on your reply to the first post I was wrong about point A, so the other questions are irrelevant.
Thank you.
Hello Jack,
ReplyDeleteProfessor Horton referred me to this blog. He said I would find it interesting and that I would be able to participate in some lively debate.
I have a question about something you wrote in the first paragraph of this post. Why can impersonal + chance + time not equal the cosmos? I agree with you that it cannot, but why? The fact that the laws of nature have produced the universe, stars, planets, and us is enough to satisfy many people. Furthermore, whether our brains are trustworthy or not seems to be an irrelevant question. Maybe we can trust the logic of our minds, or maybe we cannot. But our minds are the only way we have to interact with the universe. We must come up with a better argument than, "we think rationally therefore God exists and is a rational being" because it is not enough for some non-believers.
Thanks for your post. I look forward to reading more in the future.
Imagine you are sitting in a field and notice a beautiful tree. It's beauty is striking to you. Some men think that beauty in the world could mean there is a God. My friend Arthur Greeves was one of them. But that tree you are looking at and every other thing there is is made up of colorless atoms. The way our brains take in the reflected light of the colorless atoms and to our brains our eyes see colors. Amazing. When you call the tree Beautiful, you are speaking of something other than the atoms. Beauty is the sensations we feel when we look at a tree. You could study the tree for a decade and not learn the tree was beautiful. Beauty must then come from a non-material relationship between the tree and me. I can look back and see God was starting to work on my heart ever so slightly.
DeleteI do believe I am more of an Evangelist, rather than an Apologist. So my thoughts are that you can explain that there is a God, but without them seeing the beauty for themselves, they will never understand God.
Clay, I think its important to note that theistic evolution differs from directed evolution in that if God were to use evolution as a means to bring about self-aware human beings who possess as soul that would be theistic evolution, whereas random natural selection (darwinian evolution) would be the other. In the case of theistic evolution, which I do not hold, God would decide what objects would be endowed with a soul. Additionally, we do not have the ability to create an object out of nothing and then endow it with a free-thinking self-awareness with the ability to have free will. Finally, I think, from what Lewis wrote, that Naturalism, if true, cannot account for reason. Within the Naturalist framework there is only room for chemical reactions in the brain, which doesn't account for sound reasoning and lends itself to a purely deterministic view. Therefore, a "reasonable" conversation between two people would be the equivalent of shaking up two bottles of soda, opening them and setting themselves next to one another - purely chemical reactions. Naturalism cannot provide us with any reason to trust our reasoning processes. If it is true, then we don't know that what we are saying has any logical consistency whatsoever. Make sense?
ReplyDeleteThe second half of your comment directed at me seems a little brash, particular with the assumption that I am a naturalist. I mentioned the philosopher Alvin Plantinga, whom articulate what you are saying but you cared to inform me again. If you take not in my first comment Plantaga argues that you "have to be a theist to believe in evolution".
DeleteI knowing that Mr. Lewis is a Christian, and I mentioning another philosopher whom is a Christian Evolutionist, and I being a Christian would assume I want the question within a Theistic view, not a naturalistic view.
So yes your comments makes sense, it is what I mentioned before. I was simply asking Lewis to brush out a few details from the assumed framework and ideas mentioned in his post.
Also I mention the question about soul because some christian thinkers (John Wesley for Instance) and writers assume all animals have a soul based on prophesies in Isiah and there state of being in Genesis.
Clay, my intention was not to call you a naturalist. If I were addressing you personally I would've been explicit. Although I don't know you personally, I deduced from your comment that you're a Christian. My apologies if I seemed brash or too direct. I assure you that my intention was to further the conversation in a hospitable manner.
DeleteUnderstood my friend, Grace and Peace
DeleteMatthew, time + matter + chance doesn't account for the universe because, as many cosmologists would agree, it give no sufficient reason as to why those things came into being at all. As mathematician and philosopher Leibniz put it, "Out of nothing, nothing comes." Additionally, reason has no grounding outside of God, philosophically speaking. There must be a source, a grounding, a standard, by which to make judgements of reason that is objective in nature in order for it to work. Without that grounding there can be no objective reasoning, in which case the laws of logic would be relative, leading to our conversations being merely gobbly goop and having no meaning whatsoever. If that were the case, nothing that we're discussing has no meaning and should be abandoned.
ReplyDeleteMatt, can you expound on what you mean by directed evolution? Also, why are language and reasoning only explained by an intelligent creator? Research is being done showing how marine mammals are using language to communicate. Also, primates show signs of abstract thinking to solve problems. Language and reason might just be evolutionary mechanisms. You mentioned logic. Logic seems to be nothing more than a set of assumptions or "ifs" that we agree on. In mathematics for example, if I want to prove something to you, you have to accept my axioms or my "ifs" for us to get anywhere. The beauty of math is that I can make up whatever axioms I want. Why can't logic just be a set of man-made assumptions that we can all agree on because they are useful to us?
DeleteI wrote this in my essay "Miracles," "To think and act in the natural world we have to assume something beyond it. and even assume something beyond it and even assume partly we partly belong to something. In order to think we must claim for us our own reasoning a validity which is not credible if our own thought is merely a function of our brain by-product of irrational physical processes. " Beyond this is a philosophical argument in which both sides can argue. But the atheist side must give reasons to trust their own brain. They must tell us why it's not just fine to think I evolved to believe in god, and they didn't. The burden of proof is on them (on this issue) on why we should trust in a blind non-rational brain.
DeleteMatthew, to the latter part of your comment: Did we have to agree to particular logical axioms before we entered into this conversation?
DeleteI am enjoying this discussion. It is making me think about and struggle with different ideas. I hope it is uplifting to you and to those reading. I don't want to disagree for sport but try and understand a little more how God decided to do things. To answer your question, yes I think we had to agree on certain things before we started this conversation. We had to agree about the law of identity or the law of non-contradiction. One could refute these laws and subsequently could not have a logical conversation with us or anyone. We accept the laws of logic because they allow us to make definite conclusions about a lot of different things. My point is not to say that logical thought does not come from God because I agree with you that it does. But I do not think it is a convincing argument to say that because we reason, God is the cause. I have met many people who do not need God to understand where the logical thought comes from. I thought my arguments about the moral law or laws of logic were so strong in the past, but then they were unconvincing to the people I talked to. When someone claims that reason or morals have no grounding outside of God, I think more explanation is needed.
DeleteMatthew, I am glad you are enjoying the discussions. I am also. Studying Lewis is a pretty awesome thing. let me reply as myself this time and not Lewis. I think the way aploogetics is done today is different from evangelism. Everybody has suppositions they bring into a discussion, as much as we hear that,I think we forget this. Also, Christians and non have more than just presuppositions they bring, they bring entirely different world view and a different heart and mind. Mind and heart have been redeemed.
DeleteSo since we cannot prove God empirically, we must use words. This is where presuppositions come in. We say logic and reason work because our brains were made with purpose and a plan from God. Naturalists will reject this, because they presuppose there is no God. Even Ravi Zacharias said it's hard to convince somebody there is a God by purely a means of logic, and he's one of the best. You wrote, "I have met many people who do not need God to understand where the logical thought comes from. I thought my arguments about the moral law or laws of logic were so strong in the past, but then they were unconvincing to the people I talked to." And unfortunately they will continue to be unconvincing to people because they are not changed. If God is not working on their heart, not only will they not understand, but they cannot understand. I'm not saying don't stop trying to use logic and reason, but God must interfere in order for there to be real significant change. The Apostle Paul tells us over and over to use our brains, so of course keep struggling and figuring things out. But these are philosophical questions from the heart and mind. So keep up the great questions.
Great comments Casey. You made some very good points. I look forward to Mr. Lewis's next post.
DeleteMatt, Matthew, and Clay Thank you all for joining in the conversation. These are great comments, and i must do some thinking in order to give an intelligent response, not one from the top of my head, so expect tomorrow to have some new comments from me.
ReplyDelete