How do you respond to this quote by C. S. Lewis?

Question

"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 present thoughts are mere accidents--the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts--i.e. of materialism and astronomy--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 me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset." C.S. Lewis, The Business of Heaven.

How does the order of the universe occur by chance? Logic depends on order. How can we trust that our logic is indeed logical?

Answer 1

C. S. Lewis is correct. The idea of everything in the universe happening as it has, with all its checks and balances, in a purely random fashion requires more faith than I have.

That is one reason why I cannot be an atheist. I don't have that much faith in the randomness of the universe.

Answer 2

I believe he is making an "argument from ignorance" fallacy in the fifth sentence, "I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents".

So because YOU can't see how, it must be false?

In the next sentence "It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset." he makes a straw man argument. He doesn't refute the evidence, he refutes a seperate thing all together. Furthermore, even his strawman is partially incorrect; with proper analysis it may be possible to determine how and why the jug was made and upset.


Since he makes at least two, and possibly three refutable logical fallacies, his argument does not persuade me.

Answer 3

Firstly, I am under the impression that logic is not "that which makes sense". It's "the study of how we make sense of things." Maybe.

Secondly, I assume that people do manage to make sense of these things for the purpose of living and I think that this is called "mythology." The Bible condemns mythology in 2 Timothy 4:3, 4.

I looked up "accident" in the dictionary. In philosophy, it means "any entity or event contingent upon the existence of something else." It has to do with "what befalls one", which is the same as for "pathos."

I don't think that what C.S. Lewis is talking about is an account of factual events, but a way of viewing things. There are a lot of accounts of the progress of time that seem to rely on gambling imagery. This one also incorporates the idea of a victimised universe. An accident also means "a surface irregularity, usually on a small scale, the reason for which is not apparent." This gets into things like quantum foam. If the universe is made of quantum foam or spacetime foam, then it is relevant that the general theory of relativity does not have any electromagnetism in it. Foam needs light to measure it, otherwise it is fundamentally altered. This is a view of the universe that accords with John 3:19-21 about men loving the darkness where their evil deeds are done.

However, the alternative imagery is as of money, where light is merely there to achieve a fixation technique to hypnotise people. The opposite to worshipping God is called worshipping money or worshipping demons. Demon means a distributor of fates or fortunes, from daio - to distribute. Distribution has to do with the idea of sequencing, as in the firing order of a distributor in a car engine. Lists have to do with sequence or meaningful connection as well, and the word is related to the word lust.

The last sentence reminds me of the stereotypical idea of feminity. In regards to an artifact, its feminine aspect, according to J. Bronowski's "The Ascent of Man", is that which gives it form and shape but tells you nothing about its function. I'm not sure about this sentence, because this viewpoint of the connection between shape and function reminds me of the persecution and suffering that woman have experienced. In fact, the word accident, as I noted above, carries the idea of the necessity of there being a contributing factor. A splash could tell you something about the immediately preceding events, although not as far back as the manufacturing process of the jug, perhaps.

Answer 4

Lewis is wrong.

Tracing a puddle of milk back to a milk jug is not possible because any evidence of its shape is drowned in noise. Evidence of how the solar system came about is not.

He also seems to be conflating "accident" with "random," as if our brains, materialistic thought they are, are not well adapted to simple syllogistic logic. Lewis's attempt to use logic here foils his own argument.


Lewis was good at fanciful ideas, but there's a reason he's not considered a philosopher.

Answer 5

He should have stuck to fantasy. His science is a wee bit off.

Random events happen in the context of patterns and laws. It's like playing a game that involves a spinner or die. There are still rules and a general way things happen. But the exact result depends on the randomness.

This is not a difficult concept. Eight year olds get it.

Answer 6

i do no longer likely comprehend it to be truthful, yet C.S. Lewis grew to become into somewhat no longer a nicely-known Christian in keeping with what I somewhat have examine with the help of him. The final Chronicles of Narnia e book makes it clean that he believed in the experience that your intentions are sturdy, your movements are of God. A sacrifice made to Tash grew to become right into a sacrifice to Aslan, different than with the help of people who enjoyed inflicting suffering, and so on. fairly exciting, grew to become right into a step interior the desirable suited course for me.

Answer 7

C.S. Lewis was not aware of Chaos or String theories, nor of Quantum Physics. Perhaps a study of those would help you understand the fallacy of his supposition.

Answer 8

logic can be faulty , there are many ways of thinking and levels of thinking.

C.S. Lewis has an interesting theory and I'd like to see those who knock him come up with a better one on their own

Answer 9

Valid, until you ask him where we came from and who did it and what did that and so on and so on.Life doesn't have to make sense I wish people could under stand that our mind creates these defenses and learning strategies to cope with our experiences.

Answer 10

There's a big difference between accidental and unpredictable.