C. S. Lewis Journal

Here you will find the journal entries I have written in response to various books I have read, written by C. S. Lewis. In particular, these are in response to the HON 303R course requirement.

Monday, September 27, 2004

Miracles: Holes

I'm sorry, but there are many holes in the reasoning Lewis uses to justify Miracles. For example, on pages 94-95 (chapter 8), he states:
It is therefore inaccurate to define a miracle as something that breaks the laws of Nature. It doesn't. ... If God creates a miraculous spermatozoon in the body of a virgin, it does not proceed to break any laws. The laws at once take it over. Nature is ready. Pregnancy follows, according to all the normal laws...
If events ever come from beyond Nature altogether, she will be no more incommoded by them. Be sure she will rush to t
he point where she is invaded, ... and there hasten to accommodate the newcomer. The moment it enters her realm it obeys all her laws. ... miraculous bread will be digested. ... It does not violate the law's proviso, 'If A, then B': it says, 'But this tiem instead of A, A2'.
But Lewis uses lots of examples (most skipped above) that only support his hypothesis. He skips the ones that do not, and there are plenty. I could immediately think of the manna from heaven, which did not go moldy on the Sabbath, but did on every other day. That is a "newcomer" that did not obey the laws of nature.

Earlier in the book, Lewis says that if atoms move about randomly, then in no way could man's mind reason. He works up to the random atoms argument very comprehensively. He works from man's inability to reason quite well. But the leap from atoms to man's mind is a shot in the dark, with no explanation or attention drawn to the fact.
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I have just finished the book. I can't say I was nearly as impressed with it as with many of the author's other books.
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Added 10/26/04
In the original chapter 3 of the book, the "Self Contradiction of the Naturalist", I believe I found the hole in the argument. Lewis suggests that when the naturalist states that everything is a natural result of something preceding it, and that nothing thinks, and then discovers that atoms are random, Lewis suggests the naturalist annihilates his own argument because "naturally" if atoms are random, and a brain is made of atoms, then a brain cannot be logical. He then proceeds on without any justification of his argument. I believe that random things can come together to make a logical thing. Take a desk. A desk is made of quantum particles that are jumping around with no apparent logic or predictability to them. Yet the desk as a whole is very predictable. Why not with the brain?

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