C.S. Lewis on Rationality and Materialism
"One absolutely central inconsistency ruins [the popular scientific philosophy]. The whole picture professes too depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears...unless reason is an absolute, all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of it's endless and aimless becoming. Here is a flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based." [1]
In God in the Dock, Lewis also argued:
"If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents-the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the materialists' and astronomers; as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts are merely accidental by-products...why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents." [2]
Courage and Godspeed,
Chad
Resources:
1. C.S. Lewis, Theology Poetry.
2. C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock, p. 52-53. |
