During my recent debate with her regarding the existence of God, Charity suggested that I should “read one of the well known, reasoned and logical Christian apologists, such as C.S. Lewis” before “claiming victory” in laying the Christian religion to rest in a heap of logical fallacies. I’d heard great things about Merely Christianity before, and while I was familiar with the main argument from secondary sources, I had never read it myself. So I borrowed a copy from a good friend (thanks, Dawn!) and read it cover to cover.

I have rarely read such a complex weaving of faulty premises, false alternatives, contradictions, circular logic, and non sequiturs. Frankly, I was astonished that THIS book is touted as a “reasoned and logical” Christian apology. I expected a more formidable adversary. Lewis is barely methodical in his approach to justifying Christian beliefs and is rarely consistent from chapter to chapter. He makes most major leaps in his argument by presenting false alternatives and sometimes without providing justifications at all. His leap from theism in general to Christianity specifically, for example, rests entirely on the following argument. I’m quoting it directly because I fear those who haven’t read the book will doubt that this could be all there is from an author who is arguably the most influential Christian apologist of all time.

“This man [Jesus] we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said [the Son of God] or else a lunatic, or something worse. 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.”

No, I’m not kidding. This is really it.

Lewis cleverly devises a false dichotomy for his readers — either Jesus was a devilish fiend/raging lunatic or he was God (Lewis claims that he couldn’t be said to be merely a human moral teacher, for his behavior of forgiving everyone’s sins as if he were the one primarily wronged would be beyond presumptuous and very conceited indeed, not the stuff of a good moral teacher… at least not according to Lewis’ yet-to-be justified Christian standards). Lewis banks on the assumption that most readers, believers or not, consider the teachings of Jesus to be neither pure evil nor pure lunacy and will thus accept the only other alternative he offers. Of course, besides the fact that lunacy and malevolence are far from eliminated as explanations, there are yet other alternatives. The only information we have on Jesus’ personal character is that which was described by a handful of men who never even met him (and likely never even met anyone who had met him), and in fact, there is great scholarly debate as to whether there is enough historical evidence to conclude that Jesus even existed. Except for the Bible and a couple passages of questionable authenticity, Jesus is not mentioned in any other of the many historical accounts written during his alleged lifetime. Obviously, he did not make a significant impression on his contemporary historians. Lewis does not even consider the two additional possibilities suggested by these data: (1) that Jesus is a fictional character or (2) that he was an ordinary man exaggerated into a supernatural myth two generations after his death.

But forget Christianity specifically. Lewis’ entire 190-page argument collapses at its very first turn, when he tries to prove that there must be some supernatural force behind our internal sense of “right” and “wrong”. All one need do is successfully shoot a hole in this one conclusion, and the rest of his discussion crumbles along with it. By page 32, I knew his defense was based on a meritless assumption about the basis of human morality, but I read his entire book nonetheless. I did so partly so that I could assert I had read the entire thing but mostly I read out of sheer fascination. It was a bit like watching a horror movie. I was curious to see how (or if) he would try to justify the unjustifiable, and I wanted to see if he would take his faulty conclusions to the horrific ends I suspected. And he did.

In the name of morality, Lewis advocates what I consider to be some of the worst evils: complete self-abrogation; socialism (or communism); the belief that people are not fully responsible for their actions (judge not, for Hitler may have been the most virtuous man to ever walk the earth); unquestioning obedience to “appointed magistrates” (including wives to husbands); and dutiful charity to the point of “crippling and endangering your own position”. Moreover, he judges pride (or “self-respect”) to be the “utmost evil” (and ambition is a sin not far behind). The Christian ethics as described by Lewis is among the most twisted of moralities, one I believe has persisted only to the extent that it happens to also contain a few basic, decent values and to the extent that followers aren’t successful at achieving the many incorrect moral ideals within it (more on this in a separate post).

[I can't help but note at this point an incredible irony I discovered while reading Mere Christianity. Lewis' discussion is so authoritative, decisive, and dismissive of other interpretations and religions that he comes across as incredibly arrogant. What could be more proud than fancying yourself decent enough to know the whole of God's will and writing an authoritative book that prescribes precisely what one must do in order to be saved? When Lewis describes what he calls a "fully Christian society", he does so unwaveringly as if he had some direct line to truth in the matter. Then he claims that nobody will like all aspects of his self-proclaimed ideal Christian society because "We have all departed from that total plan in different ways, and each of us wants to make out that his own modification of the plan is the plan itself." Apparently, however, Lewis considers himself the one human who has not departed from the plan. He is telling it like it really is. If this does not constitute pride as he defines it (considering oneself as "being above the rest"), I'm not sure what would. Since those who succumb to pride are, according to Lewis, in a completely "anti-God state of mind", his argument practically refutes itself. If his analysis is correct, he is not somebody from whom any Christian should be taking advice.]

I’d love to write a blow-by-blow commentary on every bit of Lewis’ argument (there are some real contradictory gems in there), but that would result in a document at least ten times as long as his book. I don’t have time for that. So I will stick to refuting his major assumption, upon which all the rest of his conclusions rest. Let’s take a close look at his one “proof” for the existence of a god.

Lewis observes that there is a general standard of “right and wrong” that all people sense, but nobody practices perfectly. He calls it The Law of Human Nature, and puts it thus:

“…human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it.”

He seems to consider the core of this standard to be a selflessness, for he claims that every community and most every person in the history of time agree “that you ought not put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired.” He rejects the idea that this Law of Nature is merely a social convention passed down from generation to generation based on his observation that moralities across different, isolated societies (with presumably different social conventions) is generally the same, and that when we do compare moralities or specific principles, there is some standard of “good” that we all seem to use to judge one better than another, even if we don’t stack up to this standard ourselves. This latter point he claims proves that there is some Real Morality that is “independent of what people think” and not just what people want it to be.

He concludes that the Law of Human Nature

“…must somehow or other be a real thing — a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves. And yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense, in the same way our actual behaviour is a fact. It begins to look as if we shall have to admit that there is more than one kind of reality, that, in this particular case, there is something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior, and yet quite definitely real — a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.”

There are a few problems with this analysis, but I’ll focus on the main one. Lewis has again set up a dichotomy: Either morality is completely made up by people based on personal preference (which seems unlikely given its general cross-cultural consistency and, as Lewis argues, the fact that moral rules are not generally followed to the letter and are not necessarily considered convenient or easy) or it’s “above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behavior”. This is a false alternative, and it’s the major flaw in his argument.

Lewis’ argument hangs on the assumption that the proper human morality is somehow outside the realm of science, not a truth able to be discovered via observation and rational inference. In his words: “it’s not a fact in the ordinary sense.” This is a widely-held attitude, even among non-believers. Throughout human history, supernatural explanations for otherwise unexplained phenomena have been all but replaced by scientific discovery and reason, but modern people generally accept that morality remains the domain of religion. Science, they claim, can answer the “how” questions, but cannot answer the “whys” or discover the proper “oughts”. But if morality can be built upon a rational observation of the world, if we can determine what we should do by accurately observing the nature of ourselves and the reality in which we function (that is, if morality is just a type of observable “fact”), Lewis’ argument falls apart. I will argue that there is no reason to conclude that a proper human morality is anything but this sort of fact. And like knowledge of any other facts, its mere assimilation by people of various societies requires no supernatural explanation.

Morality is a science indeed. It is the science of human preservation, and its proper development includes an accurate assessment of human nature and of the reality in which humans function. If humans are to survive, they must conceptualize the requirements of human survival within this world. This can be accomplished via observation and a proper application of reason. If people tend to come to similar moral ideals, it is because all humans share a specific, identifiable nature (they are rational animals) and live within the same, identifiable reality. Within the context of reality and human nature, certain principles can be said to be “right” and others “wrong” by reference to their ability to preserve (or damage) human life.

To illustrate my point, let’s look at a very basic moral principle: do not eat poisonous berries. I suspect that most people fail to recognize such a basic fact as a moral “rule”, but it is. It is not a “how” question; it is an “ought”; that is, it’s a behavioral prescription. If preserving life is the goal, there is a “right” course of action and a “wrong” one, and the “right” choice in this case is determined via acquiring knowledge about oneself relative to the berries and engaging in a process of reason. This example illuminates two important things: (1) moral rules are a type of fact and are learned through experience just like other facts of reality (a young child or even an adult, ignorant about the dangers of poisonous berries, might very well choose to eat them) and (2) one need not understand the causal factors involved in order for moral rules to be efficacious (a primitive man need not know the chemical reactions that cause the berries to act as poison in his body; he need only know that people usually fall ill or die after eating them), but knowing the true causal factors adds accuracy and reliability to one’s moral principles (for example, unaware of the causal factors, a primitive man may wrongly conclude that he needs to avoid eating all berries or that a juice made from the poisonous berries is safe to consume).

Lewis assumes that the causal factors that make morality “work” are somehow not able to be discovered by humans, and therefore The Law of Nature must have been placed within us. His conclusion is unwarranted. Correct moral judgments are objectively valuable to humans because our very lives depend upon getting them right. If we choose to pursue that which is inconsistent with human life or fail to pursue that which is essential to it, we will die. At the most basic, staying alive is the goal of values and of all moral action in the world. When Lewis claims that all people have a “curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way”, the ultimate standard they are using to determine “good” and “bad” is not some inexplicable urge placed in their minds, but the most basic standard of all: human life (and for each human being, this means his own human life). Things can be said to be “good” by reference to their ability to sustain and improve human life and “bad” by reference to the damage they do to human life.

My example of avoiding poisonous berries is a simple moral rule, but it is not fundamentally different from more complex, higher reasoned moral principles (such as justice and honesty) that prescribe the ways in which humans should interact with each other. There is no more need to conclude that a supernatural entity somehow placed a sense of “justice” within our heads than that a supernatural entity placed a sense of “avoiding poisonous berries” in our heads, even if we discover that independently and cross-culturally all people tend to favor (regardless of whether they fully understand the causal factors involved) both acting justly and avoiding poisonous berries. More abstract moral principles, like simple moral rules, are neither merely “made up” by people nor “above or beyond ordinary facts”, the false dichotomy offered by Lewis. Instead, they are ordinary facts, facts rooted in the interaction between man and reality, and facts that can be discovered via scientific observation and a process of reason. And the very real-world universal moral “standard” that seems to elude Lewis so completely is simply this: human life. Even he describes moral rules as “directions for running the human machine”. You’d think the standard would have been more obvious to him.

I think my hypothesis explains the cross-cultural phenomenon of human “moral sense” better than Lewis’. It also fixes a couple problems that plague Lewis’ explanation: (1) the pesky fact that not all humans agree on basic moral principles (for example, in my philosophy’s ethics, pride is a virtue, whereas Lewis claims that “every one in the world loathes” pride) and (2) the observation that moral codes have changed over time (most notably and significantly after the Enlightenment, when human reason blossomed). If, as Lewis claims, some timeless, supernatural entity is responsible for placing a sense of “right” and “wrong” in our heads, it is unclear why there should be any differences among people’s moral sense and equally unclear why, to choose one example, nearly everyone rejects slavery as immoral today while nearly everyone considered it moral 2000 years ago. If an understanding of human nature and an application of reason are at the root of moral sense, however, such an evolution over time would be expected. At the very least, however, Lewis’ argument cannot be said to be a “proof” of something supernatural, much less proof of a god of any sort. Thus, the rest of his argument (which is mostly hot air anyway) becomes nothing but hot air.

Yet to come:

I have alluded to the fact that the system of ethics I consider the “right” one is at significant odds with the Christian ethics (and indeed, any religious or otherwise supernaturally-based ethics). So the question that remains is: why have these incorrect ethics developed and dominated so many cultures for such a long time? I will address this question in Part 2 of this post… when I can find the time.