{"id":5017,"date":"2018-06-30T11:00:24","date_gmt":"2018-06-30T19:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/?p=5017"},"modified":"2018-06-29T13:57:09","modified_gmt":"2018-06-29T21:57:09","slug":"the-abolition-of-man-chapter-3-appendix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/archives\/2018\/06\/30\/the-abolition-of-man-chapter-3-appendix","title":{"rendered":"The Abolition of Man, Chapter 3 & Appendix"},"content":{"rendered":"
The Abolition of Man by C. S. Lewis<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2018<\/a>. The schedule is online<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

I hope you\u2019re enjoying the readings as much as I am. I had forgotten how prophetic Lewis is in this little volume.<\/p>\n

If you\u2019ve gotten a little behind, there is an excellent short summary of all three chapters<\/a> by Arend Smilde at Lewisiana and a 13 page study guide<\/a> by Dr. David Naugle at Dallas Baptist University.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ll content myself with three quotes that stood out to me:<\/p>\n

When all that says \u2018It is good\u2019 has been debunked, what says \u2018I want\u2019 remains\u2026. those who stand outside all judgements of value cannot have any ground for preferring one of their own impulses to another except the emotional strength of that impulse. (pages 723\u2013724)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This insight alone explains SO MUCH about contemporary society. Strength of feeling overwhelms everything else in today\u2019s moral discourse. In fact, emotion has become the new determiner of moral values for many people. Pick virtually any news story and you will see this playing out, especially when it comes to the debates surrounding the sexual revolution and its consequences.<\/p>\n

It is not surprising that the sexual norms prevalent in our society are in direct contradiction to the old ones, because one of the functions of the Tao is to be a trellis upon which our emotions may grow. To revisit Lewis\u2019s phrasing from the first chapter \u201cMen Without Chests\u201d, it used to be that the head (reason) shaped the chest (emotions trained by habit) and thereby governed the belly (desire). But in our time it often happens that the belly shapes the chest and thereby governs the head. Our wants have become self-authenticating and domineering.<\/p>\n

My other favorite quote from this chapter addresses the limits of skepticism:<\/p>\n

But you cannot go on \u2018explaining away\u2019 for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on \u2018seeing through\u2019 things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to \u2018see through\u2019 first principles. If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To \u2018see through\u2019 all things is the same as not to see. (page 730)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This reminds me of something Lewis said in the previous chapter:<\/p>\n

The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao <\/i>is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in. (page 714)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Radical skepticism is self-defeating. If it succeeds it fails.<\/p>\n

Something I often tell people is that they need to learn to doubt their doubts. Our academic culture conditions us to place doubt in a privileged position over trust, but doubt is not a neutral thing. Doubt needs a justification just as belief does, and when you are inclined to doubt (whether the word of a friend, a truth of a moral principle, or the accuracy of a claim) it is worth asking whether the reasons for and costs of doubting outweigh the reasons for and costs of trusting. Sometimes they will, and sometimes they will not.<\/p>\n

Skepticism, incidentally, is different from asking questions. Skepticism is an entirely different thing than curiosity.<\/p>\n

John 12:37 illustrates the difference: \u201cEven after Jesus had performed so many signs in their presence, they still would not believe in him.\u201d Unbelief, in this sense, is a choice. It is not that they did not have reason to believe in Jesus \u2014 it is that they did not want to believe in Jesus. Hebrews 3:12 warns us not to have \u201can evil, unbelieving heart.\u201d But we must weigh that against Jude 1:22 which tells us to \u201cbe merciful to those who doubt\u201d, against the praise given the Bereans for their \u201cnoble character\u201d in Acts 17:11 for investigating the claims of the apostle Paul, and against the fact that Thomas is not condemned for his hesitation to believe in John 20:24\u201329. Putting them together, we see that God is not bothered by honest questions but He is opposed to motivated skepticism.<\/p>\n

The latter is famously illustrated by Aldous Huxley in his book Ends and Means<\/em>, \u201cFor myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.\u201d<\/p>\n

I think there are many people in our culture like Huxley. I pray they learn to doubt their doubts before it is too late.<\/p>\n

Side note: Huxley was a contemporary of Lewis \u2014 they actually died within hours of each other. There\u2019s a fun little book premised upon this fact called Between Heaven and Hell<\/em><\/a> by philosophy professor Peter Kreeft. It\u2019s a clever dialog between Lewis, Huxley, and John F. Kennedy (who also died within hours of these two) as they await the afterlife and debate what is going to happen next.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s all for this week. Next week we begin reading The Four Loves<\/em>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Blog readers: Chi Alpha @ Stanford is engaging in our annual summer reading project. As we read through three books by C. S. Lewis, I\u2019ll post my thoughts here (which will largely consist of excerpts I found insightful). They are all tagged summer-reading-project-2018. The schedule is online. I hope you\u2019re enjoying the readings as much \u2026 Continue reading \u201cThe Abolition of Man, Chapter 3 & Appendix\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[16],"tags":[229,231],"class_list":["post-5017","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-links","tag-summer-reading-project-2018","tag-the-abolition-of-man"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6Ded-1iV","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5017"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5025,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5017\/revisions\/5025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5017"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5017"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glenandpaula.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5017"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}