XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books   
   From: jerry_friedman@yahoo.com   
      
   [alt.usage.english removed, I hope]   
      
   On 2/16/15 10:10 PM, Catherine Jefferson wrote:   
   > On 2/16/2015 8:15 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:   
   >>> C. S. Lewis was no determinist, fortunately. I missed the early part of   
   >>> this thread.  Are you a Lewis fan?   
   >>   
   >> I've had many happy hours reading and rereading the Narnia books and the   
   >> Space Trilogy.   
   >   
   > :)  My grandfather bought a set of the Chronicles of Narnia for me and   
   > my younger sister and brothers (four of us) for Christmas when I was   
   > fifteen.  I loved them.  At the time, I had no idea who Lewis was or   
   > that he was a famous Christian writer: I was raised non-religious and   
   > was newly Christian.   
      
   I might add that I read the Narnia books when I was younger than that,   
   and I didn't know the Christian story of sin and Jesus' atonement.  When   
   I learned it and put it together with TLTW&TW, I felt rather betrayed.   
   Nothing I couldn't get over, though.   
      
   > It took me a bit longer to get into the Space trilogy, especially the   
   > last book of it.  I'd been reading science fiction (more than fantasy)   
   > since I was eight and a school librarian had introduced me to Andre   
   > Norton.  A year later, another school librarian at a different school   
   > shoved one of Ursula Le Guin's books in my hands.  Lewis's Space Trilogy   
   > was sold as SF, but it was too dated as SF for me at that time.   
   >   
   > Later, when I figured out that reading it as fantasy worked beautifully,   
   > I became a fan.   
      
   Interesting.  That kind of distinction in reading a book never mattered   
   to me.   
      
   >>> What about his books do you like best?   
   >>   
   >> The fantasy and the uncompromisingness, even though I disagree with a   
   >> lot of his views, starting with Christianity.  And I like his writing.   
   >> Especially in his non-fiction, he writes so clearly that you can see   
   >> just where the fallacies are.   
   >   
   > There are some, but not that many, I find.  Just disagreements with   
   > David Hume, for the most part.   
   ...   
      
   One was that he said that if our reasoning ability came about from   
   natural processes such as evolution, rather than as a gift from God, we   
   had no reason to trust it.   
      
   But we'd expect reasoning ability that evolved to be reliable enough to   
   be useful for survival. Also, God might not have given us reliable   
   reasoning ability either.  In fact, we know our intelligence isn't   
   perfect, and most Christians say there are things in Christianity that   
   we're incapable of understanding.  So the argument is pointless; both   
   evolution and creation can explain why our reasoning ability is the way   
   it is, with evolution being the one that can give a better explanation   
   than "Because God happened to want it that way."   
      
   (I hope I'm stating his argument correctly.  I can't find it in /Mere   
   Christianity/ at Google Books.)   
      
   Another is his criticism of some people's position that Jesus was a   
   great moral or spiritual teacher, but not God.  Lewis says that some   
   passages can be understood only as coming from a divine being or a total   
   madman, "on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg". (/Mere   
   Christianity/, Book 2, Chapter 3.)  Wayne Brown quoted some of these in   
   a.u.e.  But as people are saying in a.u.e., there's no reason to believe   
   Jesus said all the things he's supposed to have said.   
      
   --   
   Jerry Friedman   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)