XPost: alt.books.cs-lewis, rec.arts.books
From: spamtrap@spambouncer.org
On 2/18/2015 7:39 AM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> [alt.usage.english removed, I hope]
Looks like it stuck. I followed your example and removed it from my
reply to Wayne, as well. This thread has left the "English usage"
category and shows no signs of returning, so that's the right thing to do.
On 2/16/2015 8:15 PM, Jerry Friedman wrote:
> 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.
Another friend of mine reacted this way to those books as well. Tolkien
might have too; he really did NOT like allegory and I've long thought
that the reason was that he thought it contained a "gotcha" at its very
heart. I don't mind allegory. I usually can see it, and feel free to
accept or reject the allergorical "meaning" assigned to a work and just
enjoy the story if that's what I want to do. ;)
>> 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.
It wouldn't to me on another subject. I'm the odd humanities person who
loves science, though: to me, the stories that come out of the discovery
of the natural world are among the best stories of all. I *love* SF for
telling stories about the implications of science. When an SF story has
outdated or incorrect science, it tends to feel like fingernails on a
blackboard to me -- I keep wanting to rewrite the thing to fix the
flaws. :/
Fantasy is a different beast. As long as the implications of any given
system are developed intelligently and well, I don't care whether I
believe the underlying propositions or not. Take Perelandra. The
"science" of Perelandra is ridiculous; not only is Venus not as
described (at all), but more to the point, no such planet could exist in
light of our current knowledge of astronomy and biology. Read the same
book as fantasy, though, and it tells a wonderful story that develops
from a background that I can just accept as I would accept the Tarot for
Zelazny's Amber series.
>> 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.
I get what Lewis was driving at, but I would say it differently. As I
see it, if the universe does not have God behind it, there's no reason
to trust any part of it as "true" rather than simply as useful in the
current context. Reason itself would become just an expedient method of
understanding what lies around me, even if a good method that works well
in my life. I'd find the whole concept of an underlying truth
problematic without an intelligent creator.
Which is a frightening idea, now that I think of 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'm not sure that I'd say evolution gives a better explanation simply
because evolution doesn't explain itself. At some point, Christian or
not, religious or not, you have to pick a starting place to reason from.
The old "first principles" conundrum.
> (I hope I'm stating his argument correctly. I can't find it in /Mere
> Christianity/ at Google Books.)
I think you are, but I'm not sure that Lewis makes this argument in Mere
Christianity. He does elsewhere, though.
> 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.
The other possibility that Lewis must have thought of but doesn't
ever discuss in detail is to treat the Gospel as myth. That doesn't
work for me, obviously, but I've known people who did. I had a college
professor who insisted that we lacked any proof that a person that meets
the general description of Jesus of Nazareth existed at all.
The thing is, for those who find the Gospel stories credible (and I do),
Lewis's argument makes sense. If Christ did say what He is reported as
having said and did what He is reported as having done, treating him as
yet another moral or spiritual leader ignores most of His life.
--
Catherine Jefferson
Blog/Personal: http://www.ergosphere.net
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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