Mere Christianity 9

In the last post, we said that there are two views of the universe, the materialist and the religious (or spiritual) views. And we added that one of the great gifts to humankind, scientific study and knowledge is able to discover a staggering amount of knowledge about the universe itself, but is limited to the universe and therefore unable to speak to the existence of Something Behind the universe.

So if there is “Something Behind” the universe, we can’t discover it through science, therefore it would have to make itself known to us some other way.

Lewis claims that since we have “inside information” about one part of our universe that we don’t have about anything else, namely ourselves, human beings. “We do not merely observe [humans], we are [humans]” (emphasis his). This is the key. To put it a little differently, there is one case in which we have more than just the observable external/behavioral facts. Our case.

To quote Lewis:

Since that power, if it exists, would be not one of the observed facts but a reality which makes them, no mere observation of the facts can find it. There is only one case in which we can know whether there is anything more, namely our own case. And in that one case we find there is. Or put it the other way round. If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe—no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just what we do find inside ourselves. Surely this ought to arouse our suspicions?

Having presented this argument, Lewis reminds the reader:

Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet with a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong.

Mere Christianity 8

It’s been a little while since that last post, but let’s get back to CS Lewis’s classic Mere Christianity. We pick up in book 1, chapter 4.

Lewis is now exploring what the existence of the Moral Law (“a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us”) tells us about what lies behind the Law itself.

First, we are directed to notice that there have always been two basic views of the universe: the materialist view and the religious view. (For an excellent comparison of these two views and their significance, see The Question of God: CS Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life, by Dr. Armand Nicholi. The book is based on a graduate course he taught for 25 years at Harvard. It’s a moderately challenging and a very rewarding read.)

The materialist view says that nothing exists beyond the universe, that the universe (or some material antecedent) has always existed, and that while we know an amazing amount of information about when and how, we do not know why. In fact, we hope to know why, but “why” only in the sense of what caused what to occur, which led to the part that we know at present. But as for the “meaning and significance” sense of the term “why,” the materialist view has nothing to offer. Why the universe gave rise to persons with intelligence is another mystery.

The religious view (we might say, “spiritual view” today) contends that something does lie behind the universe after all, and that something is more like a mind with intelligence than anything else we know.

Here’s another fact. If there is an intelligence behind the universe, then science would not be able to verify or falsify either view because science works with the universe itself and therefore lacks the tools to examine anything that lies behind the universe. This is not an anti-science statement (though, yes, some Christians have unfortunately dubious views and relationships with science). Science has yielded an absolutely staggering amount of knowledge about the universe. But science has limits. It is limited to the universe itself.

So… “If there is ‘Something Behind,’then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to [us] or else make itself known in some different way.”

Mere Christianity 7

We began book 1, chapter 3 in the previous post.

Assigning a moral value of good or bad to someone’s actions is what the word “ought” means. Lewis points out that the physical Law of Nature is about what the natural world does. Gravity is his prime example. If you let go of a rock in mid-air, the rock falls. The Law of Nature describes what happens.

But the Law of Human Nature (what Lewis has called The Moral Law), is about the word “ought” in a moral value sense.

But what if, Lewis asks, someone questions his use of an “ought” moral value and claims that what he is saying someone ought to do describes not a moral principle but a preference that relates to his own convenience: “we might try to make out that when you say a man ought not to act as he does, you only mean the same as when you say that a stone is the wrong shape; namely, that what he is doing happens to be inconvenient to you.”

So, is all this “ought to” really about behavior that isn’t morally bad, but is simply inconveniencing me? Lewis says no and gives four lines of argument to support his claim.

1. Intentionality: “A man occupying the corner seat in the train because he got there first, and a man who slipped into it while my back was turned and removed my bag, are both equally inconvenient. But I blame the second man and do not blame the first.” In other words, there is an “ought to” attached to the second man’s actions that is not attached to the first man’s actions.
2. Motive: “I am not angry…with a man who trips me up by accident; I am angry with a man who tries to trip me up even if he does not succeed. Yet the first has hurt me and the second has not.”
3. Universal Standard: “In war, each side may find a traitor on the other side very useful. But though they use him and pay him they regard him” poorly. Their actions may be more convenient to us, but that alone does not determine how we assess their character.
4. True Inconvenience: Obeying the Moral Law is itself the inconvenient thing much of the time–honesty instead of cheating/lying, honor and respect instead of gratification, bravery instead of safety, truthfulness “even when it makes you look a fool.”

So, the Moral Law, or the Law of Human Nature/Behavior, is not a matter of preferences that convenience us. Rather, it is a hard edge. Something that holds us to a standard even when it would seem more convenient to be free of its demands. And since it is not a statement of how we’d like others to behave for the sake of our own convenience, the Moral Law “must somehow or other be a real thing–a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves.”

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.

Mere Christianity 6

In this post, we’ll begin looking at chapter 3 in book 1 of Mere Christianity.

Having dealt with some potential objections in chapter 2, Lewis now gets back to advancing his argument for the existence of the Moral Law. To do that, he picks back up where he left off at the end of chapter 1: Humanity has a sense of a Moral Law, and humanity fails to follow it.

Here’s an interesting difference between the Moral Law, which we might call the Law of Human Nature, and the Laws of Nature that we find in the physical universe. The Law/s of Nature are not laws for nature to obey, but rather a description of how nature actually behaves: “what Nature, in fact, does.”

But contrast that with the Moral Law, or the Law of Human Nature. It does not refer to “what human beings, in fact, do” because many do not obey it and no one obeys it completely.

“The law of gravity tells you what stones do if you drop them; but the Law of Human Nature tells you what human beings ought to do and do not. In other words, when you are dealing with humans, something else comes in above and beyond the actual facts. You have the facts (how men do behave) and you also have something else (how they ought to behave). In the rest of the universe there need not be anything but the facts.”