C.S. Lewis and his "trilemma". (page 3)

Zico

I'm in agreement with hmike. As I posted on a recent thread on 'Mere Christianity' the problem with the book is that C.S. Lewis wrote it for a 1930s/40s audience, and not a 21st Century one, and now we're in a time where Science and Philosophy (and Skeptic's arguments) have advanced some what, some of his arguments appear weak.

He's still a wonderful writer though, and his fictional works are timeless.

inkling

Make of it what you will, but as a fan of C. S. Lewis, I say simply, Beware of taking him out of context.

Bewaaaarre!!!!

Why, is he going to smite us from beyond the grave?

[inkling]

XJW4EVR

Ok XJW,
If it doesnt make sense I'd be happy to break it down for you.
Are all dogs mammals?
YES

No cats are dogs?
Correct

Then no cats are mammals right?
Correct? No there are other possibilties not discussed here. Lewis only presented 3 possibilties. There are other possibilties. Therefore his argument is logically flawed. This doesnt mean his premise is wrong. Jesus could very well have been the son of god inspite of his flawed logic.
So when yes you are correct. Early followers Might have corrected errors. They might not have. Since they might not have Lewis didnt present enough possibilties for a logical argument.

IP-SEC, I understand what you are attempting to say. However, your presupposition is not based on reality, and that is what does not make sense to me.

You are presupposing that the followers of Jesus would not defend their leader against teachings that he never made. This is so incredulous that I can't even find words. You are going to sit there and tell me that the "true" followers of Jesus (the ones that did not believed him to be the Son of God) would stand idly by and let the "false" followers of Jesus (the ones that believed him to be the Son of God) define this early Jewish sect?

Edited to add: Furthermore, you have 17 other New Testament books which are written in an apologetic style, defending what they believed to be true. Most of these books were written within the lifetimes of the people that were eyewitnesses to what happened to Jesus. So again, we have human nautre showing itself, something that you want to deny to the followers of Jesus.

You are also presupposing that Jesus' enemies would not bring out the issue that Jesus never claimed to be God. This is the very point that they killed him over.

There is only one way to go through the horns of the trilemma, and that is to deny that Jesus ever existed. Prove that and you disprove Christianity. For without a real Jesus, then there is no resurrection, and if there is no resurrection, then I might as well become an atheist, because no other religions offer any true hope to humanity.

sir82

The Gospels are accurate in the essentials.

A few questions:

1) What are "the essentials"? How do we determine that? Is there a universal standard of "essentialness"?

2) How do you determine their "accuracy"? Given that there are no contemporaneous writings which mention even a hint of the central person described within the Gospels, what do you measure the Gospels against to determine their "accuracy"?

funkyderek

Mohammed: Prophet, pillager or paedophile. Discuss.

GentlyFeral

Hortensia said:

there's no evidence there actually was a real Jesus,

Mind you, I haven't actually assessed the evidence for Jesus' nonexistence -- but it seems, to my mind, like looking for one particular mammoth in the fossil record.

In his own time, Jesus (if he existed) was a small-town preacher in a landscape thick with small-town preachers and country prophets. He lived in a time when birth and death records were hit-or-miss unless you were upper-class.

Furthermore, little notice of him was taken in his own time, except by his disciples. He simply did not get a second glance from people who were not attracted to his message. (I once read that Pilate, at the end of his life, did not remember executing him.)

And two thousand years of war, fire, flood, bookworms, mold, mildew and clerical forgetfulness have intervened.

I have lived a much more ordinary life than Jesus did: I have started no movements, been accused of no capital crimes, made no extraordinary claims about my relationship with the alleged divine. In two thousand years, I expect there will be no evidence for my existence, either.

gently feral

GentlyFeral

Zico notes,

[C.S. Lewis] still a wonderful writer though, and his fictional works are timeless.

Oh, yeah. Till We Have Faces is my favorite.

gently feral

inrainbows

Funky

Prophet, pillager or paedophile. Discuss.

Well, define prophet. If your definition is of someone who thinks they are or who is thought of as a prophet, then, yeah, he was a prophet. If your definiton is more exacting than opinions, mmmm... don't think so.

Pillager? Yeah, under most reasonable definiton of the word.

Pedo? Under modern popular definitons, yes. Under medical or biological definitons, yes. Under cultural definitons, no.

But then most of us don't have to go back much further than the 16 or 17th C to have grand-pappies that were pedos by modern definitons.

But the Christian god knocks up 14 year-old virgins, so the story goes...

Did the Earth move for Mary? Enquiring minds want to know.

Maybe that's the origin of the expression "oh my GOD!!"

C.S. Lewis and his "trilemma".

Share this