Refuting CS Lewis' Weak "Lunatic, Liar, or Lord" Argument

[atanu]

No, just his argument.
I have great respect for Lewis. I believe he was brilliant and a great writer. But his apologetics were not at all compelling due to the omissions and assumptions he used.
Tom

But would you say that his argument was bankrupt?

 

[columbus]

But would you say that his argument was bankrupt?

Yes.
Because he assumes things like "Jesus accurately and completely quoted", and that the stories told about Him were accurately represented. And Lewis ignores the obvious possibility that most of it was invented years later by people with more agenda than journalistic integrity.
Tom

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

C. S Lewis, in my opinion, wrote beautifully clear prose, but in case after case, he simply left out, ignored the "full picture" in order to make his points.

What kills me is that he writes stories filled with fantastic creatures and doesn't realize his own logic would make Aslan, a talking lion, some sort of god.

And he's a hack writer.

 

[Sunstone]

What kills me is that he writes stories filled with fantastic creatures and doesn't realize his own logic would make Aslan, a talking lion, some sort of god.

And he's a hack writer.

I've heard that Aslan was intended by him to be a symbol for Christ. Not sure if that's true though,. Got bored with the series when I was a kid.

 

[Subduction Zone]

What kills me is that he writes stories filled with fantastic creatures and doesn't realize his own logic would make Aslan, a talking lion, some sort of god.

And he's a hack writer.

Aslan was Jesus. He sacrificed himself and rose from the dead. That was the idea behind them he whole series.

 

[Subduction Zone]

I've heard that Aslan was intended by him to be a symbol for Christ. Not sure if that's true though,. Got bored with the series when I was a kid.

Yep, I found that out from my brother and his family. They are Seventh Day Adventists and much of modern day TV, movies, books, etc. are frowned upon, but that series is okay because . . . Jesus.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

Meh. There are better "metaphorical" stories out there. Lewis shoves that crap in your butt without any lube. And I know Aslan represents Jesus. I'm only saying that per his logic, I should expect a talking lion to be liar, lord, or lunatic. Not a big fantasy fan but Tolkien's better.

 

[columbus]

But would you say that his argument was bankrupt?

Here's a metaphor.
Suppose you and a buddy are out on the Texan range at night. Y'all hear the sound of hoofbeats. He argues that is proof that herds of zebras are roaming Texas, because nobody would bother putting up loud speakers to fake that.
Without mentioning the possibility of it being horses.
Tom

 

[Rational Agnostic]

No, just his argument.
I have great respect for Lewis. I believe he was brilliant and a great writer. But his apologetics were not at all compelling due to the omissions and assumptions he used.
Tom

I personally don't think he was brilliant. I actually think that he was quite over-rated as an intellectual and was not a very critical thinker. But, he was a good writer.

 

[atanu]

Yes.
Because he assumes things like "Jesus accurately and completely quoted", and that the stories told about Him were accurately represented. And Lewis ignores the obvious possibility that most of it was invented years later by people with more agenda than journalistic integrity.
Tom

Okay, I wanted to hear this. What you say stems from your world view. And possibly from your world view (and from OP's world view), Lewis' argument was intellectually bankrupt. You believe what you believe of Jesus. You too cannot prove anything.

Consider it from a theistic world view, which can be of two types. I am a theist of advaitic kind. In my understanding, every living being is essentially That. So, when I hear a person say "I am Brahman" and I see matching actions, I will understand that the person is Self Realised and is one with All-Brahman.

Consider interpretation of a monotheist and particularly a Christian, of the following from Bible:

"My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him.…"
​

In a strong Monotheistic (Jewish) environment, stoning would be very normal. And for a Christian monotheist, a person claiming to be same as God would either be considered mad or would be considered really the God. There cannot be a middle.

Again, I reiterate, that for me, an advaitin, Jesus was saying the same as the Upanishadic sages said "Sarvam hyetad brahmayam-atma brahma soyamatma...." (All of this, everywhere, is in truth Brahman, the Absolute Reality. This very Self itself, Atman, is also Brahman, the Absolute Reality.)
...

I am not asking anyone to change one's world view, but just pointing out that perspectives may vary. This post is for dear @Sunstone.

 

[Samantha Rinne]

CS Lewis' most famous argument for the divinity of Jesus is trivially easy to refute. The argument goes like this, quoted directly from Mere Christianity:
"I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.
We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse. Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God. God has landed on this enemy-occupied world in human form."

Now, of course this argument is intellectually bankrupt. There is no reason why being a great moral teacher and being a lunatic should be mutually exclusive. For instance, Pythagoras was a phenomenal mathematician who revolutionized our view of geometry, yet he was also more than a bit loony, and started his own religion that was primarily based upon his hatred of eating beans. Nikola Tesla was a revolutionary scientist, electrician, inventor, and all-around genius who even predicted future events correctly. Yet he was also irrational in many ways, fearing quantities of anything not divisible by three, and believing that he communicated with Martians. There are many other great scientists, philosophers, geniuses and moral teachers who were mentally ill. I cannot understand why Lewis would think that a mentally ill man could not have good ideas, and I cannot understand how this so obviously illogical argument is still used today as an argument that Jesus must be God.

I'm sure C.S. Lewis's ghost is gonna be so impressed with some postmodern era internet guy writing a "refutation" of his ideas. This, in an era where people don't bother learning how to properly back assertions with logic, and kids eat Tide pods. Let's see if there is any merit to this post or whether you completely missed the point Lewis was making.

Okay, so, basically your whole point is that some brilliant people have quirks. Yeah, I can think of a few. But there is a difference between being eccentric-yet-brilliant, which accounts for most of the people on this list, and being a lunatic.

What Lewis meant by a lunatic is not "someone who is brilliant but has weird interests." I have weird interests. He meant someone who has let madness become the defining trait. As in, someone who no longer has any firm sense of logic or reason. If you're in an institution for instance, you're no longer writing novels. Also, to "refute" this, you'd have to prove Jesus actually WAS insane.

 

[atanu]

Here's a metaphor.
Suppose you and a buddy are out on the Texan range at night. Y'all hear the sound of hoofbeats. He argues that is proof that herds of zebras are roaming Texas, because nobody would bother putting up loud speakers to fake that.
Without mentioning the possibility of it being horses.
Tom

And the same may apply to OP or to you. Remember that you have a view of Jesus for which you have no proof. And based on that view alone, terming Lewis as intellectually bankrupt is not warranted -- in my opinion.

 

[columbus]

And the same may apply to OP or to you. Remember that you have a view of Jesus for which you have no proof. And based on that view alone terming Lewis as bankrupt is not warranted -- in my opinion.

That's not really true.
I have compelling evidence, AKA proof, for more than one aspect of this. I know for a fact that humans are inclined to embroider the stories about charismatic leaders, from Buddha to King Arthur to George Washington. And that the New Testament authors made some spectacular assertions of events that should have left some record, regardless of Jesus' Divinity, and that no such records have ever been found (Despite centuries of Christians looking for them).
Tom

 

[Subduction Zone]

Okay, I wanted to hear this. What you say stems from your world view. And possibly from your world view (and from OP's world view), Lewis' argument was intellectually bankrupt. You believe what you believe of Jesus. You too cannot prove anything.

Consider it from a theistic world view, which can be of two types. I am a theist of advaitic kind. In my understanding, every living being is essentially That. So, when I hear a person say "I am Brahman" and I see matching actions, I will understand that the person is Self Realised and is one with All-Brahman.

Consider a monotheist and particularly a Christian the following from Bible:

"My Father who has given them to Me is greater than all. No one can snatch them out of My Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.” At this, the Jews again picked up stones to stone Him.…"
​

In a strong Monotheistic (Jewish) environment, stoning is very normal. And for a Christian monotheist, a person claiming to be same as God is either mad or really the God. There cannot be a middle.

Again, I reiterate, that for me, an advaitin, Jesus was saying the same as the Upanishadic sages said "Sarvam hyetad brahmayam-atma brahma soyamatma...." (All of this, everywhere, is in truth Brahman, the Absolute Reality. This very Self itself, Atman, is also Brahman, the Absolute Reality.)
...

I am not asking anyone to change one's world view, but just pointing out that perspectives may vary. This post is for dear @Sunstone.

It does not matter what your world view is. If you ignore the most likely answer to an argument then that argument paints the person as being rather dishonest to say the least.
Did you not understand his analogy?

Even from a theistic worldview your response is wrong because you are assuming that Jesus is God. There are many monotheists that disagree with that. They too would likely go by the "legend" route. Lewis's argument was morally bankrupt because he had no answer to the legend possibility so he pretended that it did not exist.

 

[Subduction Zone]

That's not really true.
I have compelling evidence, AKA proof, for more than one aspect of this. I know for a fact that humans are inclined to embroider the stories about charismatic leaders, from Buddha to King Arthur to George Washington. And that the New Testament authors made some spectacular assertions of events that should have left some record, regardless of Jesus' Divinity, and that no such records have ever been found (Despite centuries of Christians looking for them).
Tom

But thankfully not Abraham Lincoln

 

[Rational Agnostic]

Okay, so, basically your whole point is that some brilliant people have quirks. Yeah, I can think of a few. But there is a difference between being eccentric-yet-brilliant, which accounts for most of the people on this list, and being a lunatic.

Where do you draw the line between "eccentric-yet-brilliant" and being a "lunatic?" Also, if there is a distinction between being "eccentric" and being a "lunatic," why should being a person's "lunatic" status automatically disqualify them from saying anything of value? BTW, Nikola Tesla, one of the men I mentioned in the OP had many other delusions that would arguably class him under the lunatic umbrella, or at the very least, he had psychological problems that would put him well beyond the category of just harmlessly eccentric. But, he also had great wisdom and intellect. The same could be true of Jesus (though I don't think we can trust the gospel accounts that say Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, but that's beside the point).

 

[Samantha Rinne]

I'm sure C.S. Lewis's ghost is gonna be so impressed with some postmodern era internet guy writing a "refutation" of his ideas. This, in an era where people don't bother learning how to properly back assertions with logic, and kids eat Tide pods. Let's see if there is any merit to this post or whether you completely missed the point Lewis was making.

Okay, so, basically your whole point is that some brilliant people have quirks. Yeah, I can think of a few. But there is a difference between being eccentric-yet-brilliant, which accounts for most of the people on this list, and being a lunatic.

What Lewis meant by a lunatic is not "someone who is brilliant but has weird interests." I have weird interests. He meant someone who has let madness become the defining trait. As in, someone who no longer has any firm sense of logic or reason. If you're in an institution for instance, you're no longer writing novels. Also, to "refute" this, you'd have to prove Jesus actually WAS insane.

So, to elaborate on what I said:

1. If Jesus is a liar, his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
2. If Jesus is a lunatic (not just a "little crazy", we would be looking for serious logical contradictions) his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
3. If Jesus cannot be proven as either, he is still Lord.

This is not a weak argument. In order to actually invalidate it, you would need to show either where Jesus led people in a direction that was not right, where he was seriously crazy (not just slightly depressed, which he probably was), or you haven't any real case. You instead decided to put forth an actual weak argument, that brilliant people are often weird. Yeah, one scientist legit believed in a blue energy wavelength known as orgone. If he had locked himself in his room, and contributed nothing, this would make him a lunatic. But being brilliant but weird doesn't, because they still get around people, and their ideas are still sound.

The line, ThePersonAboveMe, is when you stop making sense. When you stop contributing. Jesus was a wise and kind man. He occasionally did say weird stuff. But he could be counted on more or less to perform healings and to teach the people. Matthew shows repeatedly in his gospel that Jesus was acting in line with the prophecy of how Messiah was supposed to act. If he had shut himself in his room for seven years, sure, lunatic. (Me, btw, part of why I don't make messianic claims) Chased people around with sharp implements (a friend of mine, when he was on some bad meds)? Nope, didn't do that either. Claimed his religion was one of peace, then robbed from and murdered people (oh wait, that's Muhammad).

A lunatic is someone whose word cannot be trusted because it literally defies their own or common logic.

But Jesus didn't do those things.

 

[Rational Agnostic]

So, to elaborate on what I said:

1. If Jesus is a liar, his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
2. If Jesus is a lunatic (not just a "little crazy", we would be looking for serious logical contradictions) his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
3. If Jesus cannot be proven as either, he is still Lord.

Not true at all, and this opens up another can of worms. Jesus didn't write the gospels; other people did. Could very well be that the people who wrote the gospels added in his claims to divinity afterwards. But, another question I would have is, just what do you mean by the gospel being "void?" Void of what?

 

[Subduction Zone]

So, to elaborate on what I said:

1. If Jesus is a liar, his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
2. If Jesus is a lunatic (not just a "little crazy", we would be looking for serious logical contradictions) his words cannot be trusted, thus the Gospel is void.
3. If Jesus cannot be proven as either, he is still Lord.

This is not a weak argument. In order to actually invalidate it, you would need to show either where Jesus led people in a direction that was not right, where he was seriously crazy (not just slightly depressed, which he probably was), or you haven't any real case. You instead decided to put forth an actual weak argument, that brilliant people are often weird. Yeah, one scientist legit believed in a blue energy wavelength known as orgone. If he had locked himself in his room, and contributed nothing, this would make him a lunatic. But being brilliant but weird doesn't, because they still get around people, and their ideas are still sound.

Number three is an unjustified conclusion!. And you are ignoring the possibility of legend. That makes Jesus neither lunatic, liar, nor lord.

 

[columbus]

But Jesus didn't do those things.

You don't know what Jesus did or didn't do.
I have come to the conclusion that Jesus' main gig was anti-Roman activist. But the Apostles were hardly likely to tell Paul about that, given Paul's history. So Paul invented a new religion based on a carefully edited legend of The Christ. That better matches the facts, such as there are any.

Tom