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Date: Mon, 25 Jul 2005 16:49:07 -0400
From: Mike Ryder
Subject: CS Lewis again
To: [Family member B]
Cc: [Family member A]
Hi
I came across the following while doing some reading on Arguments for
the existence of God. Remembering your email I thought I'd share
Mike
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The Modern Moral Argument: C.S. Lewis
"...we know that men find themselves under a moral law,
which they did not make, and cannot quite forget even when they try,
and which they know they ought to obey. ...If there was a controlling
power outside the universe... [t]he only way in which we could expect
it to show itself would be inside ourselves as an influence or a
command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that is just
what we do find inside ourselves."
--C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.19; The Macmillan
Company, 1960.
A slightly different version of the moral argument, advanced by theists
such as C.S. Lewis, states that there is a universal moral law, a
standard of right and wrong which all human beings are innately aware
of, even if some choose to violate it. The argument's backers claim
that such a moral awareness could only have been put into us by God.
The most significant problem with this argument is that human beings
are not all aware of the same moral law, as even a cursory examination
of human history would reveal. In various societies throughout history,
behaviors such as polygamy, segregation, slavery and racism, physical
abuse as a method of discipline, infanticide, incest, pedophilia, human
sacrifice, ritual suicide, ritual murder, cannibalism, genital
mutilation and genocide were widely accepted, even encouraged. None of
the societies that did these things seemed to feel that there was
anything wrong with them; many justified their actions by appealing to
their god. Some societies have shunned violence of any kind, while
others have encouraged war and militarism. Some have advocated free
speech and individual rights, while others have mandated conformity and
the superiority of the state. Even today, there are furious debates
over the ethics of topics such as gay marriage, abortion, capital
punishment, sex education, drug legalization, contraceptive use and
euthanasia, to name just a few. Claiming that God is responsible for
humanity's universal sense of right and wrong fails to explain why
there is and has always been such widespread disagreement over morality.
On the other hand, atheism can accommodate both the existence of a
moral law and the manifest fact that not every culture or individual is
aware of it. The explanation is straightforward: morality is not
something implanted in every person's heart by a creator, but something
derived from careful deliberation and a rational understanding of our
place in the world and our relationships to each other. There is no
reason why we should expect it to be immediately obvious to everyone,
just as there is no reason why we should expect the laws of physics to
be immediately obvious to everyone.
Mike Ryder
bravenet.com