Friday, July 30, 2010

C.S. Lewis: Atheism is Too Simple

Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist - in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless - I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality - namely my idea of justice - was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning; just as if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, pg. 39

1 comment:

  1. This passage itself is "too simple". Lewis makes the statement that, without a meaning to the universe, then we should not be able to perceive this lack of meaning. This is not logical. We understand the concept of "meaning" and a lack of it because "meaning" is present within our experiences. We have "meaning" to our actions in that we meant to do something or that it will serve some motive. Therefore it has meaning to us. We do not observe a greater meaning in the universe itself, therefore we declare that there is a general lack of a meaning to it.

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