This little vignette is enough to illustrate the show. It's a part that shows how infants prefer good behavior over bad behavior, even in puppets. The segment lasts only 2:40 and encompasses all C. S. Lewis needed to convert himself from atheism to Christianity as detailed in his book, Mere Christianity.
Directly after this portion of the program, tweed-clad Ivy League academics condescendingly sneered at all religions, claiming that their research explained how it's all really based on humans anthropomorphizing objects and that there wasn't really that much difference between primitive animism and the religions of today. There was plenty of clucking about the unfortunate results of religious wars and, of course, the Crusades*.
As I watched the program, having just finished the first part of Mere Christianity where C. S. Lewis goes through the logical steps that led him to religion, I found it amazing that none of these scientists could make the same steps. It was as if that intellectual path was closed to them. It was right there in front of them and they turned around and walked away from it. I came to two conclusions.
1. They had never read any theology. No Aquinas, no Augustine, no C. S. Lewis. There was no way on Earth you could have been familiar with Lewis' work, performed those experiments and not begun to wonder about his conclusions. Somewhere in their education, they had been deprived of the genius of these and other thinkers, people who had considered the great questions of life from a different approach.
2. Much of what the scientists discovered is implicitly known by all of us. They gushed about how they had discovered that people like people who like other people and other stunningly obvious conclusions. Their technical work was fabulous, but their hubris matched it. Humility was completely absent as was any real sense of what they had discovered. Any parish priest I have ever met could have run rings around them when it came to human behavior.
In the end, Lewis, a simple infantryman from the Great War who had pondered the great questions of existence understood better the lab results of the brilliant physicists and chemists and biologists of our mightiest schools who actually performed the experiments.
* - Is it coincidence that the Islamists use the Crusades as a rallying cry, too? Is there something in Islamists and modern, secular Academics that they need to explain their failures by pointing out Christian, religious violence from hundreds of years ago?
10 comments:
"I found it amazing that none of these scientists could make the same steps."
I can't speak for anybody else, but the wall I hit in religion is simply this: Where exactly is all this detailed knowledge about the nature of God and what God wants coming from? And when I get the reply that it comes from "divine inspiration", this is pretty much a summary of where I end up.
OK, so maybe you think I'm a theological ignoramus - I have read the Bible, St. Augustine, and C. S. Lewis, though (although not that recently). I generally found them full of sound and fury, but in the end not signifying much. Same when I talked to priests back when I was an altar boy - there's a lot of fancy words circling around and around the issue, but in the end nothing actually gets said. I still keep coming back to the conclusion that I don't actually have any information from God. All I get is a bunch of people[1] *claiming to be speaking for God*, which is not at all the same thing.
That doesn't stop me from trying to be nice to people, donating to worthy charities, and generally trying to make the world a better place for everybody when I can. It's just that, quite frankly, religion hasn't been very helpful to me in answering any questions that I care about.
[1] If we are going to talk arrogance, it seems to me that a prophet claiming to be on a first-name basis with The Lord God Almighty, Creator of the Universe, and to be chosen by Him to communicate with all us other unworthy sheep, is pretty much the height of arrogance.
Good points, Tim. Both Lewis and Augustine drew their conclusions about the nature of God from their observations of the world around them. Specifically in the case of Lewis and Mere Christianity he observes that there are moral laws as firm as the laws of physics and from that deduces more. The experiments done in this show confirm this as the infants react in precisely the way Lewis would have predicted.
On a Dennis Prager show I heard a guest say that Mathematics is the only branch of science that is derived from first principles. Everything else is discovering and explaining things that already exist. That is, physicists have discovered that gravity is 9.8 meters per second squared at sea level, but they can't tell you why. Adjust a few things here or there and it could easily have been something else.
I'm going to stay out of the theology but the degree and amount of hostility expressed by both Islamicists and (broadly speaking) academia towards Christianity is unsettling.
Why the fear?
Dean:
I'm not sure about what you mean by "the degree of hostility expressed by . . . academia towards Christianity". Even the "notorious atheists" like Richard Dawkins and PZ Myers don't seem to me so much "hostile" to religion, as exasperated by what they see as people clinging to a belief that they can't prove to their (the atheists') satisfaction.
Again, speaking for myself, I'm not "hostile" towards religion. I worry about the more fundamentalist wings [1] when they start wanting to take control of what the schools teach. But, I think that's perfectly justified worry, because the creationists are basically claiming that I am a part of a massive, worldwide satanic conspiracy [2] just because I believe what I and others can see, touch, and analyze over what some fundamentalist literalist preacher rails about in church. I don't see any particular problem with non-creationist religions, that are willing to accomodate the things we can actually find out by looking at the world.
[1] We have a lot of such people around here. Entire towns are almost entirely composed of Apostolic Lutheran communities, who are about as creationist as they come. They regularly host presentations on campus where people seriously claim that the earth is 6000 years old and that Noah's Flood happened exactly as described, in spite of all the geology to the contrary. And then there is "Sandwich Board Guy", who pretty much embodies everything that people find distateful about religion into one wildly ranting individual. He's not a random crazy, by the way. The local chapter of Campus Crusade for Christ actually pays to bring him to campus at least once a year. He tours the country doing this sort of stuff.
[2] Honestly, if someone accused *you* of being part of a worldwide satanic conspiracy, woudn't you be at least a touch *annoyed* with them, at the very least? Especially when the worldwide satanic conspiracy won't even return your calls?
Tim, Aquinas needed only the finiteness of time to prove the existence of God in his Summa Theologica. Astronomers have shown that the galaxies are accelerating as they move away from each other. It sounds like science and theology should go hand-in-hand. Like Dean, I don't understand the hostility and fear from academia.
Also, I'm not sure who is accusing scientists of being part of a satanic conspiracy. It certainly isn't my church. The Catholic Chrch takes no position on evolution or science in general other than as it has moral implications.
It's easy to sieze upon the religious nutjobs who want to claim that earthquakes are God's anger or that science is the tool of the devil, but that's a dangerous game to play. Mao, Stalin and Hitler were all atheists and if you wanted to go down the road of finding straw men to represent secularists, it would be game, set, match.
Kt: I thought that was what I said: I'm not picking a fight with the Catholic church. I'm only trying to stop the fundamentalist nutjobs, who *do* exist, in some numbers, and are trying to exert their influence whenever possible.
I welcome any support from the Catholic church to help in keeping said nutjobs from exerting undue influence. And I would hope that Catholics in general will recognize that when I argue against religious nutjobs, I *don't mean them*.
Tim,
I guess it's a matter of perspective as I see statists in society both within government and without as being a far larger threat to my freedom than any religious nutjob.
I think, by and large, the nutjobs are seen for what they are.
For the record, as a believer, I am adamantly opposed to school prayer as I am not worried about religion imposing on matters of the state but the exact opposite. And for that belief, I am perfectly satisfied, in fact encouraged that I would be labeled an apostate in some religious circles.
Again, and I totally appreciate your perspective, I see encroachments on my freedom and liberty coming more from secular forces than religious.
I'm done with PBS. I'm offended that we are paying for this and for 'Public Access" channels that are being hijacked by leftist propagandists. PBS was created to counteract propaganda, to ensure an even voice - it sure isn't turning out this way.
FOX/Glenn Beck has had a couple of programs lately that really have taken over what PBS once was - one with a gathering of African Americans talking and his recent series on the REAL history of some of the left's icons, Mao, et al.
The so-called 'mainstream media' - which now includes PBS - needs to wake up, dump out the koolaid, and get real.
(captcha: niteyers)
Tim, I agree with you entirely! Unfortunately, the once intellectually muscular Catholic Church has spent way too much time laying down with the lambs. They aren't going to help you with anything.
Rose, I'm with you. PBS as run too many anti-religion hit jobs to be interesting to me. I have no problem that they do so or that they exist, I just loath the fact that I have to support them with my tax dollars.
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