Path: ultra.sonic.net!samba.rahul.net!rahul.net!a2i!news.pbi.net!su-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.bbnplanet.com!dispatch.news.demon.net!demon!aslan.demon.co.uk!aslan.demon.co.uk!andrew From: Andrew Rilstone Newsgroups: alt.books.cs-lewis Subject: Re: Difficulties with "Miracles" - no quantum mechanics Date: Sat, 15 Feb 1997 20:44:40 +0000 Organization: The Small Carrot Shop Distribution: world Message-ID: <$+4nUCA4AiBzEwZr@aslan.demon.co.uk> References: NNTP-Posting-Host: aslan.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: aslan.demon.co.uk MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Newsreader: Turnpike Version 1.11 <3aYeJUWAsGS1FwPCwFgLAUIQiZ> Lines: 151 In article , Sam Dodsworth writes > > >Sorry it's taken me a while to get back with this one - good points need >good answers, and those take time to prepare. Ditto. (Scientific laws) >I think that what separates science from mere >cataloguing is precisely what makes it Supernaturalism within Lewis' >definition: there is an assumption that the regularities we observe are >evidence of a "deep structure" that explains our observations but is not >the result of them. We canna change the laws of physics. > I am interested by the fact that Lewis doesn't insist, in 'Miracles; on "the supernatural" being outside the universe, but merely on it being the primary thing which all other things are derived from. He pushes this point in so many other places -- that God exists in that relationship to the Universe as an Author does to a book or a play -- that this may simply be a slip on his part. Or maybe her thought it was implicit in his use of the term super-natural. I wasn't meaning to imply that what science deals in is "just" laws of thumb. I quite understand and agree that it discovers regularities and deep structures which have predictive power and which are "really there". What I have problems with is the idea that the laws are prior to the universe, or that the universe is in some sense derivative from the laws. It isn't a rule of thumb to say that, in any right-angled triangle "(a x a) = (b x b) + (c x c)". We don't look around trying to spot the one instance of a hypoteneuse mis-behaving it self: we accept that this is simply true and in the nature of triangles. But I don't think that this implies a supernatural conception in Lewis' sense. In fact, I think that the geometrical theorom has boiled down "what we mean by triangles" into a simple, easily graspable, manipulatable and therefore *usefull* formula. I think that science does this to the universe as a whole; and I think that what exites Hawking and others is the idea that 'what we mean by the universe' could be boiled down into rules which are very simple indeed. But I don't think that the formula (or the "law" which it is a codification of) caused the triangle. > None of your examples except Hawking are trying to do more than >explain some part of nature in terms of other parts: to be a Naturalist >you have to believe that _everything_ is part of one enormous process. >What Hawking seems to be trying to produce in "A Brief History Of Time" >is very close to Naturalism, but he still requires the laws of physics >to be basic and original: that's why he has a problem explaining why we >have these laws and not others. Does he? Or does he merely think that the universe shows regularity, and this regularity can be brilliantly and elegantly described in simpler and and simpler propositions? > Campbell is >>basing his argument on Kant, who I have never read but Lewis >>(presumably) had, so I wonder if what Lewis is giving us is muddled >>Kant? The claim "Everyone will see that, if the Christian God exists, He >>would be the Final Thing that I am here postulating" would be a much >>less drastic claim. >> > Yes, but it's not the claim Lewis is making. I know: I began by accepting that. I think that the two claims have enough in common that Lewis could have slipped from one to the other without any culpable intention of intellectual dishonesty. i.e I think he is guilty of a mistake, not an attempt to catch people out. >He's jumped from >"some things are basic and original" to "there is one basic thing" to >"that basic thing is what we call God", and he's (explicitly or >implicitly) adding attributes at each step without even admiting what >he's doing. When we think of a god we give it attributes (consciousness >and volition, for a start) that do not neccessarily follow from the idea >of "One Basic Thing". If God is a metaphor then it's a bad metaphor >because it leads us to make unjustified assumptions. I broardly agree. Speaking as a theist, I have much less problem with the statment "The Form of the Good is God" or "Brama is God" than you might think: they have enough of the divine attributes to make me feel that we are talking about the same sort of thing. If it were really true that the proposition E=MC squared existed outside of the universe, had always existed and had caused the universe to come into being then I might possibly say "Well then, E = MC squared is God." It would have some divine attributes (necessary existence, pre-existence, eternal existence, arguably perfection) but not others. None of this invalidates your point that Lewis ought to have used the word a good deal more carefully. > > Plato doesn't (as far as I can recall) grant his "form of the >Good" any of the attributes we normally associate with God. For a start, >it has no desires or goals - it's not even really a being. That's >nothing like a god and, I re-iterate, it's not useful to assume that it >is. Yah. But your point was that Plato could not have meant it to be God, because he doesn't associate it with the gods. My point is that if it were remotely analagous to Lewis's God, then you wouldn't have expected him to. (Bringing Plato into this, is, as you say, like walking into a minefield. Keep in mind that its been argued that there is a direct Platonic influence on Christianity, via (e.g) the letter to the Hebrews and parts of John's gospel.) Some theolgians would say that God *cannot* have desires or goals, since this would a: imply that he wasn't perfect and b: violate the principle of divine impassibility (that God cannot change or be acted on in any way). Anytime we see God apparently acting, or changing his mind, or being angry we are simply applying anthropomorphic language to an expression of what God always, absolutely, unchangably and fundementally *is*. On this view, God has a good deal in common with the Platonic form of the Good or the idealist Absolute which Lewis believed in prior to his conversion. The negative or mystical Way (of, say the medieval "Cloud of Unknowing") says that it therefore follows that we can only approach this One Real Thing by totally emptying our mind of images. Anything we think God might be, by definition, he isn't. (I shall refrain from quoting the Apologist's Prayer again at this point.) Lewis's view seems to be that a: While this is probably true, the Negative Way is too difficult for most people b: That God wouldn't have communicated himself to us in images if he hadn't intended us to use them c: That most attempts to correct those images ends up simply by replacing them with less vivid images -- the "primitive" picture of a fire-breathing God crashing through the sky on a winged beast is replaced, not by no image at all, but by a vague picture of a bright light or some smoke. My own view, by the way, is that the Bible is a story, and that God is a character in that story; that one should trust the story rather than anyones interpretation of that story; and that it is a mistake to blame the God of Genesis for not having the attributes that theolgians say he ought to have. Put another way: it is far more important to my religion that God can be hurt when Israel rejects him angry when Moses doubts him than it is that he should be and Impassable Infinite Being with the attribute of Necessary Existence. -- Andrew Rilstone andrew@aslan.demon.co.uk http://www.aslan.demon.co.uk/ *************************************************************************** "The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity" Yeats ***************************************************************************