Path: ultra.sonic.net!miwok!news-out.internetmci.com!newsfeed.internetmci.com!btnet!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!aristos.demon.co.uk!aristos.demon.co.uk!sam From: Sam Dodsworth Newsgroups: alt.books.cs-lewis Subject: Re: Difficulties with "Miracles" - no quantum mechanics Date: Tue, 11 Feb 1997 13:11:15 +0000 Organization: Annexia Free Press Distribution: world Message-ID: References: <5do0kj$nsv@news.acns.nwu.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: aristos.demon.co.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: Turnpike Version 3.01 <7c0azr3XvpMr4dZzpifF$I+pPf> Lines: 39 In article <5do0kj$nsv@news.acns.nwu.edu>, "Joshua W. Burton" writes > >Plato quite plainly saw the traditional gods as an embarrassment, >as indicated by the slyly satiric passage about them I quote below. > And he wasn't the only one. The ancient Greeks had fairly clear ideas of right and wrong behaviour, which they saw as part of the structure of the universe (in Athens, murder was a religious crime because it brought pollution on the city) but they also had gods who did all kinds of disreputable things. I'm moved to wonder if this dichotomy wasn't a major stimulus to Greek philosophy. > >I feel you've raised some excellent points. Certainly I agree with >you that Lewis's description of Naturalism does not describe the >metaphysics of most working scientists I know (nor of anyone I know, >for that matter). In my earlier remarks, I had taken this to be a >criticism of Lewis's definition of Naturalism. In accepting Lewis's >usage, then denying that scientists are Naturalists, I think you are >saying roughly the same thing in different words. I was trying to examine Lewis' arguments in their own terms as far as possible, partly to because I wanted to show that Lewis' arguments were weak in themselves but mostly because I didn't have another definition of Naturalism. There is a point here, though: it's easy to argue against someone by refining their terms to mean what _you_ think they do and then proceeding from there, but in the end it's just misrepresentation. This is partly what I mean when I suggested that Lewis' conservativism might have been a problem. I think that sometimes he's not setting up straw men so much as arguing against an image of another person's position that he's never bothered to check - like the people who confuse communism with Stalinism. Sam Dodsworth (sam@aristos.demon.co.uk) "I think there should be more sex and violence on television, not less. Both are powerful catalysts of social change, at a time when change is desperately needed." -J.G. Ballard