Compelling Reason by C.S. Lewis

My interest in this piece aside from the fact that C.S. Lewis always writes interesting and extremely insightful work is the fact that I am gathering information from various sources in order to validate the work of Cornelius Van Til. Van Til is recognized as formulating a Christian Apologetic. 

The Transcendental argument for God, otherwise known as Presuppositional Apologetics recognizes that people come to various truth claims with a readymade worldview through which all truth claims are interpreted. Therefore a persons epistemological background is seen to play a crucial part in what is recognized as true or not true (or whether "truth" is even a valid category!). It is therefore the presuppositions a person holds that determine how those claims are judged. The high claim of Presuppositional Apologetics is that unless one presupposes the existence of God, no other presupposition can logically account for anything. To put it in a metaphor that Van Til himself observed: 

Van Til developed his own transcendental argument. He maintained that Christian theism is the presupposition of all meaning, all rational significance, all intelligible discourse. Even when someone argues against Christian theism, Van Til said, he presupposes it, for he presupposes that rational argument is possible and that truth can be conveyed through language. The non-Christian, then, in Van Til’s famous illustration, is like a child sitting on her father’s lap, slapping his face. She could not slap him unless he supported her. Similarly, the non-Christian cannot carry out his rebellion against God unless God makes that rebellion possible. Contradicting God assumes an intelligible universe and therefore a theistic one. (From "Transcendental Arguments," for IVP Dictionary of Apologetics.)

Consider this also, I find remarkable kinship to the above passage with the thought of another of Christendoms well known thinkers- C.S. Lewis:

"There is a difficulty about disagreeing with God. He is the source from which all your reasoning power comes: you could not be right and He wrong any more than a stream can rise higher than its own source. When you are arguing against Him you are arguing against the very power that makes you able to argue at all: it is like cutting off the branch you are sitting on."- (C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity)

(I believe it is an important distinction to make clear- that a presupposition does not necessarily entail a conscious assumption of some truth, and in all cases as far as atheists are concerned it is necessarily not a conscious assumption otherwise they would give up immediately all hope of argument, or like the child, accept the fact of their immaturity and inconsistency. Therefore it is the job of the apologist to make the op-posers epistemologically self-aware, that is to say- aware of the fact that even in opening their mouth they are making these assumptions.)


This post and others like it is concerned to point out the validity of this extraordinary claim by pointing to other writers who have seen and logically laid claim to a) either show non-theistic accounts to be using faulty logic or b) where an expert in a particular field has come to admit that from their particular world-view (usually metaphysical naturalism) a certain phenomena is inexplicable.


In the February 2011 issue of New Statesman Raymond Tallis writes:

The republic of letters is in thrall to an unprecedented scientism. The word is out that human consciousness - from the most elementary tingle of sensation to the most sophisticated sense of self - is identical with neural activity in the human brain and that this extraordinary metaphysical discovery is underpinned by the latest findings in neuroscience. Given that the brain is an evolved organ, and, as the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky said, nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution, the neural explanation of human consciousness demands a Darwinian interpretation of our behaviour. The differences between human life in the library or the operating theatre and animal life in the jungle or the savannah are more apparent than real: at the most, matters of degree rather than kind.

Indeed "thrall" would have to be an entirely appropriate expression. Thrall- according to Wikipedia- is enchantment, the state of being under a magical spell of obedience, and this indeed would have to describe the effect on individuals who are so enamored with the idea that science is the only source of knowledge that when this same "science" discovered that human consciousness, and intentionality is mere illusion it in fact destroys the rational basis of science. As Dr. William Lane Craig said recently in his notable debate with  Dr. Alex Rosenberg. Physical-ism,  the view that everything without exception can be explained completely in terms of matter, is self refuting. What else could characterize a view that- when taken to its limits- actually ends up not only destroying science but all thinking whatsoever?

I cannot help but feel that what C.S Lewis said (now over sixty years ago) still applies. The idea that human consciousness is completely and as Lewis would say: "without remainder" explicated by the view that it is all just so many neurons reacting to various stimulus caused by electro-chemical reactions is self defeating. If it is true to define consciousness as that which we can fairly reduce to Richard Dawkin's "illuminating" phrase of humanity merely "dancing to our DNA"  then that would equate to the same thing as saying that all of the words and symbols occurring on paper as I tap my typewriter keyboard are simply no more than paper and ink. Analogously, Neuroscience can explain things as far as the paper and ink but not the meaning behind them.


In the following article Lewis attacks the idea of naturalism and its inability to logically account for rational thought:

Compelling Reason By C.S Lewis

An excerpt from: Religion Without Dogma (1946)

It would be impossible to accept naturalism itself if we really and consistently believed naturalism. For naturalism is a system of thought. But for naturalism all thoughts are mere events with irrational causes. It is, to me at any rate, impossible to regard the thoughts which make up naturalism in that way and, at the same time, to regard them as real insight into external reality. Bradley distinguished idea-event from idea-making, but naturalism seems to me committed to regarding ideas simply as events. For meaning is a relation of a wholly new kind, as remote, as mysterious, as opaque to empirical study, as soul itself.

Perhaps this may be even more simply put in another way. Every particular thought (whether it is a judgement of fact or a judgement of value) is always and by all men discounted the moment they believe that it can be explained, without remainder, as the result of irrational causes. Whenever you know what the other man is saying is wholly due to his complexes or to a bit of bone pressing on his brain, you cease to attach any importance to it. But if naturalism were true then all thoughts whatever would be wholly the result of irrational causes. Therefore, all thoughts would be equally worthless. Therefore, naturalism is worthless. If it is true, then we can know no truths. It cuts its own throat.

“The validity of rational thought… is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing.”

I remember once being shown a certain kind of knot which was such that if you added one extra complication to make assurance doubly sure you suddenly found that the whole thing had come undone in your hands and you had only a bit of string. It is like that with naturalism. It goes on claiming territory after territory: first the inorganic, then the lower organisms, then man’s body, then his emotions. But when it takes the final step and we attempt a naturalistic account of thought itself, suddenly the whole thing unravels. The last fatal step has invalidated all the preceding ones: for they were all reasoning and reason itself has been discredited. We must, therefore, either give up thinking altogether or else begin over again from the ground floor.

There is no reason, at this point, to bring in either Christianity or spiritualism. We do not need them to refute naturalism. It refutes itself. Whatever else we may come to believe about the universe, at least we cannot believe naturalism. The validity of rational thought, accepted in an utterly non-naturalistic, transcendental (if you will), supernatural sense, is the necessary presupposition of all other theorizing. There is simply no sense in beginning with a view of the universe and trying to fit the claims of thought in at a later stage. By thinking at all we have claimed that our thoughts are more than mere natural events. All other propositions must be fitted in as best they can round that primary claim.

Holding that science has not refuted the miraculous element in religion, much less that naturalism, rigorously taken, can refute anything except itself, I do not, of course, share Professor Price’s anxiety to find a religion which can do without what he calls the mythology.

Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL (born 26 March 1941), is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was the University of Oxford's Professor for Public Understanding of Science from 1995 until 2008. (Wikipedia) Dawkins is an outspoken atheist, or more commonly "new atheist" whose world view could be described as philosophical naturalism.

Philosophical naturalism is characterized by the view that the observable universe is all there is, and that as the result of methodological naturalism the scientific method is the only way to arrive at truth, some however will concede that there are other ways of knowing. They reject the idea of the supernatural altogether and are also atheists.

In the light of the above by C.S. Lewis regarding the validity of rational thought as a basic presupposition for all thinking- consider the following which is a quote from Richard Dawkins' (River Out Of Eden, p.133):

 In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice.

"DNA just is. And we dance to its music."  

 The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. And we dance to its music.

In John C. Lennox's book, "Gunning for God: Why the New Atheists are missing the target" he quotes Alvin Plantinga, widely recognized as one of Christianity's foremost philosophical authorities. He is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics.  Plantinga is a Christian and known for applying the methods of analytic philosophy to defend orthodox Christian beliefs (Wikipedia):

Plantinga: If Dawkins is right that we are the product of mindless unguided natural processes, then he has given us strong reason to doubt the reliability of human cognitive faculties and therefore inevitably to doubt the validity of any belief that they produce- including Dawkins' own science and his atheism.

"If Dawkins is right... he has given us strong reason to doubt...the validity of any belief...including [his] own..." 

 His biology and his belief in naturalism would therefore appear to be at war with each other in a conflict that has nothing at all to do with God.

It is evident then that Dawkins' statement above is self defeating. If  "human cognitive faculties" (ie. our ways of knowing, or rationality) are unreliable then he undermines his own theories, we must hold them also- as a natural consequence of his postulations- as not having any bearing or relationship to what is true. All by himself then he has managed to cut off the branch upon which he is sitting. But and just as important to notice is the necessary consequence of- as G.K. Chesterton would say- undermining his own mines, that is to say look at this post for his inconsistency, as Klaus Nurnberger points out in his book- Richard Dawkins' God Delusion: A Repentant Refutation.

John Lennox: That is atheism undermines the very rationality that is needed to construct or understand  or believe in any kind of argument whatsoever- let alone a scientific one. Atheism is ultimately but one great self-contradictory delusion. (Gunning for God p.54)



Michael H. Warren Jr. :“Human irrationalism and evil are the difficult things to explain in the Christian worldview, but the Christian can live with such mysteries because the only alternative is to renounce all meaning, [and] to begin with atheism’s ultimate irrationalism. “Good,” “evil,” “reality,” “illusion,” and every other human word would be meaningless if atheism were true and the world were ultimately meaningless."

"error and imperfection in the world require a perfect, absolute God...mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would be meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to identify occurrences of imperfection"

"The atheist believes that error and imperfection in the world imply the non-existence of a perfect, absolute God. Rather, error and imperfection in the world require a perfect, absolute God, because such concepts as “error” and “imperfection,” whether in the fields of mathematics, ethics, logic or science, would be meaningless without a perfect, absolutely rational standard by which to identify occurrences of imperfection, and without an ultimately rational structure to the world which allows concepts, whether positive or negative, to be applied, whether rightly or wrongly, to the changing realm of human experience. If God did not exist, it is not merely personal, psychological feelings of having a meaningful life that would suffer, but rational meaning would suffer.”

In the following link to another post, the irony of "intellectual progress" rather than setting us free through the truth, has, if we are to follow the likes of Dawkin's, narrowed down what it means to be human through successive layers of determinism. For further thoughts of Lewis and Richard Tarnas go to the post "The Irony of Modern Intellectual Progress"

In the following short video clip we see the result of the assumption that we are no more than our brains, if all that we are, that is- our consciousness- can be fully explained in material terms, then, like all matter, we are determined, but note- it all depends on whether we are indeed just so much matter. The gentleman chewing M&M's certainly assumed we are.

Are we strictly and absolutely material beings? Or, is it as C. S. Lewis said, (well he probably got it from George McDonald): "You are a soul with a body". If he meant anything by this surely he (they) meant that we were more than matter. Note too the assumption of the thing called "chance".

Notice that this video clip is based on two overarching assumptions about reality:

i) That all there is, can be fully explained in material terms, (therefore God, does not exist), this view of reality is called philosophical naturalism.

ii) That we live in a Universe of Chance (despite the glaring fact that he admits all effects are preceded by causes and therefore are determined at least up until the sub-atomic level) This assumption is in direct contrast to a Universe of intelligent design.

How are those assumptions proved? They are not, they are simply assumed.