"A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic — on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg — or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” -- CS Lewis.
The more of Lewis' writing I read, the more creepy, disgusting and appalling I find him to be. "Kill him as a demon," eh? And people let children read books this man has written. As far as Jesus goes, if he existed, I think he might have been quite a nice guy, but not the sharpest knife in the drawer, and not the kind of person you'd want to have in charge of anything. Certainly not a worldwide organization of billions of people. Not even a small dog-grooming shop. You come back to the shop after leaving Jesus in charge for a minute, and:
"Jesus! What happened to the place?! Wait -- what happened to you?!"
"Some men came in while you were gone. One of them struck me on the cheek, and so I turned the other cheek and he struck that one, too."
"Oh, Jesus! When will you learn to take care of yourself? So, I guess those men stole all of our dog-grooming equipment too, huh? Don't see any of it anywhere."
"Yes, they took all of the money and the equipment. And so I gave them the dogs as well."
"You WHAT?!"
"Yes. My Father in Heaven told me that, because they took the money and the grooming equipment, I was to give them the dogs as well."
"Jesus: those weren't our dogs. Our customers will sue us. And they'll win. Our insurance company will drop us like a hot rock."
"The men jeered at me as they left, and threw a bottle of beer at my head, and so I blessed them."
I don't think I would dislike someone like that. I don't think I could. As angry as I might be about the way he had just ruined my small business, somehow, I can't imagine being angry at Jesus. Maybe because it would have been so clear that he simply didn't know any better, and was sincerely doing the very best he could. It's easy to imagine hanging out with Jesus and having fun. It seems that just about everyone likes the person they imagine Jesus to have been, atheists as much as anyone else. Maybe it's because most of us -- not CS "kill him like a demon" Lewis, perhaps, but most of us -- have a strong instinct to protect helpless creatures, and if ever there were a helpless human being... I might trust someone like Lewis, on the other hand, to run the dog-grooming shop, as long as I never had to see him or talk to him.
Showing posts with label c s lewis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label c s lewis. Show all posts
Sunday, March 30, 2014
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
In Which I Hand CS Lewis And GK Chesterton Their Butts
(Very often, amazingly, Christians point proudly to these two fellas. Obviously, Lewis and Chesterton aren't the very brightest of all the billions of Christians there have been. But maybe they're the best of the Christian equivalent of New Atheists: Christians who've made a career of defending their side. Well, enough of their supposed brilliance! Watch as I decimate their "arguments" with ease! [Plus one each by Aquinas and William Lane Craig while I'm here.])
“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." -- CS Lewis "Rejecting the meaning you assign to the universe, CS, doesn't mean it has no meaning. To some degree our lives mean what we are able to make them mean. This means you're weren't listening to Jean-Paul Sartre, even if that sounds mean." -- The Wrong Monkey
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” -- CS Lewis "A young Christian who wishes to remain so -- Christian, that is. Young is more difficult -- does not need to be careful about how much Lewis or Chesterton he or she reads. One page of Nietzsche or Twain or Russell or Sartre or The Wrong Monkey or Schopenhauer or Marx or the Bible or Augustine or Aquinas or Kierkegaard or Carlin or Napoleon or any of thousands of other authors, on the other hand, could instantly and irrevocably mess that plan up. But only if this young Christian really wants to learn, which most of them don't, which is why they end up old and stupid and unbearable like you!" -- The Wrong Monkey
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” ― Thomas Aquinas "That must be why you spent so much time and effort writing those proofs of God's existence. Have I told you I'm a big fan, Thomas? Well I'm not, and anyone who's told you otherwise is a stinking liar! I find your writing unbearable at best! On the question of the existence of God, arguments for are easily ripped to shreds by an average atheist who is not yet full grown, and arguments against are generally ignored by the best of you, when they're not they're distorted into strawmen. Debating with Christians is a waste of an atheist's time, time much better spent warning others about people like you." -- The Wrong Monkey
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. 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. 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 have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” ― C.S. Lewis "See what I wrote above about meaning. Other than that -- wow, what can I say, except: You really can talk some mess! And maybe you should've checked out some other people's arguments against the existence of God, instead of just assuming that yours was state-of-the-art, and that when you thought you'd found a hole in it you were done." -- The Wrong Monkey
“"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.” ― William Lane Craig "You had a couple of deep thoughts and scared yourself, and instead of continuing to think, which often, perhaps more often than not brings some consolation with no sacrifice of intelligence, you retreated to the standard conservative-Christian fall-back position and dedicated your life to interfering with those of us who are trying to continue to think." -- The Wrong Monkey
“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.” ― G.K. Chesterton "Speak for yourself, Fatso!" -- The Wrong Monkey
“The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still." ― C.S. Lewis "Atheists aren't mad at the cosmos, CS. We don't arraign heaven. In order to be able to do so we would first have to believe that heaven exists. We are impatient with morons like you, and we are angry that you still have power so grotesquely unproportionate to your intelligence and skills. As powerful as you Christians still are, and as fat as Chesterton was, very few non-Christians ever confuse or conflate you with the entire universe" -- The Wrong Monkey
“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” ― G.K. Chesterton "If there were no diseases, there would be no physicians. If there had been no Chesterton, there would have been much more cheese for everyone else. (He was very fat.)" -- The Wrong Monkey
“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” ― G.K. Chesterton "You must have had some very powerful connections, the way you prattled on endlessly about it. Unless what you really meant, and I think it was, is that you wished you lived in a Medieval world where no-one was allowed to breathe an un-Christian word in your presence." -- The Wrong Monkey
“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” ― G.K. Chesterton "I've never met anyone like that. This is the very first time I've ever even heard of someone like that, and I'm 52 years old and astonishingly well-read. It's clear why being a Christian interferes with someone's ability to be a good novelist much less than it interferes with other things: both activities require that one constantly make stuff up. Of course, Christianity also requires that one insist that the made-up stuff is true, while the novelist admits that it is fictional." -- The Wrong Monkey
“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." -- CS Lewis "Rejecting the meaning you assign to the universe, CS, doesn't mean it has no meaning. To some degree our lives mean what we are able to make them mean. This means you're weren't listening to Jean-Paul Sartre, even if that sounds mean." -- The Wrong Monkey
“A young man who wishes to remain a sound atheist cannot be too careful of his reading.” -- CS Lewis "A young Christian who wishes to remain so -- Christian, that is. Young is more difficult -- does not need to be careful about how much Lewis or Chesterton he or she reads. One page of Nietzsche or Twain or Russell or Sartre or The Wrong Monkey or Schopenhauer or Marx or the Bible or Augustine or Aquinas or Kierkegaard or Carlin or Napoleon or any of thousands of other authors, on the other hand, could instantly and irrevocably mess that plan up. But only if this young Christian really wants to learn, which most of them don't, which is why they end up old and stupid and unbearable like you!" -- The Wrong Monkey
“To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.” ― Thomas Aquinas "That must be why you spent so much time and effort writing those proofs of God's existence. Have I told you I'm a big fan, Thomas? Well I'm not, and anyone who's told you otherwise is a stinking liar! I find your writing unbearable at best! On the question of the existence of God, arguments for are easily ripped to shreds by an average atheist who is not yet full grown, and arguments against are generally ignored by the best of you, when they're not they're distorted into strawmen. Debating with Christians is a waste of an atheist's time, time much better spent warning others about people like you." -- The Wrong Monkey
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such a violent reaction against it?... Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies. 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. 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 have known it was dark. Dark would be without meaning.” ― C.S. Lewis "See what I wrote above about meaning. Other than that -- wow, what can I say, except: You really can talk some mess! And maybe you should've checked out some other people's arguments against the existence of God, instead of just assuming that yours was state-of-the-art, and that when you thought you'd found a hole in it you were done." -- The Wrong Monkey
“"If there is no God, then man and the universe are doomed. Like prisoners condemned to death, we await our unavoidable execution. There is no God, and there is no immortality. And what is the consequence of this? It means that life itself is absurd. It means that the life we have is without ultimate significance, value, or purpose.” ― William Lane Craig "You had a couple of deep thoughts and scared yourself, and instead of continuing to think, which often, perhaps more often than not brings some consolation with no sacrifice of intelligence, you retreated to the standard conservative-Christian fall-back position and dedicated your life to interfering with those of us who are trying to continue to think." -- The Wrong Monkey
“For when we cease to worship God, we do not worship nothing, we worship anything.” ― G.K. Chesterton "Speak for yourself, Fatso!" -- The Wrong Monkey
“The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if he realized this, he could not go on being indignant. The fact that he arraigns heaven itself for disregarding them means that at some level of his mind he knows they are enthroned in a higher heaven still." ― C.S. Lewis "Atheists aren't mad at the cosmos, CS. We don't arraign heaven. In order to be able to do so we would first have to believe that heaven exists. We are impatient with morons like you, and we are angry that you still have power so grotesquely unproportionate to your intelligence and skills. As powerful as you Christians still are, and as fat as Chesterton was, very few non-Christians ever confuse or conflate you with the entire universe" -- The Wrong Monkey
“If there were no God, there would be no atheists.” ― G.K. Chesterton "If there were no diseases, there would be no physicians. If there had been no Chesterton, there would have been much more cheese for everyone else. (He was very fat.)" -- The Wrong Monkey
“Religious liberty might be supposed to mean that everybody is free to discuss religion. In practice it means that hardly anybody is allowed to mention it.” ― G.K. Chesterton "You must have had some very powerful connections, the way you prattled on endlessly about it. Unless what you really meant, and I think it was, is that you wished you lived in a Medieval world where no-one was allowed to breathe an un-Christian word in your presence." -- The Wrong Monkey
“There are those who hate Christianity and call their hatred an all-embracing love for all religions.” ― G.K. Chesterton "I've never met anyone like that. This is the very first time I've ever even heard of someone like that, and I'm 52 years old and astonishingly well-read. It's clear why being a Christian interferes with someone's ability to be a good novelist much less than it interferes with other things: both activities require that one constantly make stuff up. Of course, Christianity also requires that one insist that the made-up stuff is true, while the novelist admits that it is fictional." -- The Wrong Monkey
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