Atheist Sam Harris front and center on CNN

[Michael]

At the time of this post, this link is the top viewed story on CNN.com by a landslide:

Philosopher: Why we should ditch religion - CNN.com

Now why can't an orthodox Christian get that kind of spotlight--especially considering the circumstances that brought attention to the topic? As I recall, Lewis' Mere Christianity was originally a series of broadcasts to the sullen English folk during the World War. My have times changed...

 

[JennyG]

At the time of this post, this link is the top viewed story on CNN.com by a landslide:

Philosopher: Why we should ditch religion - CNN.com

Now why can't an orthodox Christian get that kind of spotlight--especially considering the circumstances that brought attention to the topic? As I recall, Lewis' Mere Christianity was originally a series of broadcasts to the sullen English folk during the World War. My have times changed...

I protest! but only against that last bit. We weren't sullen! We were full of wry, loveable, cockney-sparrow, mustn't-grumble good humour. (I say we...it's true I wasn't personally actually born) But yes, things have changed since the time when King George VI was able to call his people to a day of prayer before Dunkirk, and the prayers were wonderfully answered.

 

[jwright82]

You know I have read and listened to Harris before and one thing strikes me about the so-called "new atheism", they scream the loudest using personal attacks and logical fallacies to to try and say they are the only rational group in town. I have debated disciples of Dawkins, and they liked Harris and Hitchonson, and I always just point the logical fallacies and mistakes that they make to try to show that the only reason they scream so loud is because they don't have a rational stone to stand on.

You cannot criticize all religions as if they are the same and then turn around and claim that they are irreconcilable, what? If they are irrecocilable than they are irreconcilable, that is fundementally different. I just tell people who love Dawkins, Harris, or Hitchonson that they are trying to play philosophers but at the end of the day we need to understand that they are not really ones, but if they want to keep trying to play the game than we at least ametuer philosophers will have to hold responsible for their logical blunders.

 

[SemperEruditio]

Harris also said people should not be afraid to declare that certain acts are right and others are wrong. A person who would spill battery acid on a girl for trying to learn to read, for instance, he said, is objectively wrong by scientific standards.

How? How is someone who pours battery acid on another "wrong by scientific standards?"

Then he says:

"It's not our job to not judge it and say, 'Well, to each his own. Everyone has to work out their own strategy for human fulfillment.' That's just not true," he said. "There's people who are wrong about human fulfillment."

Umm....yep! I can agree with him there.

 

[py3ak]

Orwell had a somewhat different take on Lewis' talks:

One reason for the extravagant boosting that these people always get in the press is that their political affiliations are invariable reactionary. Some of them were frank admirers of Fascism as long as it was safe to be so. That is why I draw attention to Mr C. S. Lewis and his chummy little wireless talks, of which no doubt there will be more. They are not really so unpolitical as they are meant to look. Indeed they are an outflanking movement in the big counter-attack against the Left which Lord Elton, A. P. Herbert, G. M. Young, Alfred Noyes and various others have been conducting for two years past.

("As I Please", Tribune, 27 October 1944)

 

[JennyG]

Orwell had a somewhat different take on Lewis' talks:

One reason for the extravagant boosting that these people always get in the press is that their political affiliations are invariable reactionary. Some of them were frank admirers of Fascism as long as it was safe to be so. That is why I draw attention to Mr C. S. Lewis and his chummy little wireless talks, of which no doubt there will be more. They are not really so unpolitical as they are meant to look. Indeed they are an outflanking movement in the big counter-attack against the Left which Lord Elton, A. P. Herbert, G. M. Young, Alfred Noyes and various others have been conducting for two years past.

("As I Please", Tribune, 27 October 1944)

Lewis would have known just what to make of such overweening claims to understand him better than he did himself. In one essay he mercilessly dissected inept critical attempts to "see through" his fiction to the psychological motivation behind.
Somewhere he also has a wry comment on how consistently his "mere Christianity" was judged ultra-conservative by liberals, and vice versa.
I don't rate Lewis' theology the way I used to, but his intellect (and his fiction) I do. He was a big help to me early in my walk, and there's something about Orwell's arrogant account that brings me bristling out of my corner!
I think where he gives himself away (in that would-be magisterially unbiassed analysis) is with the phrase "chummy little talks".
God raised up Lewis at a time when otherwise the British intellectual scene would have been dominated by the likes of Orwell

 

[py3ak]

Perhaps I should have provided more context from the essay: the criticisms he makes of Lewis' style in Beyond Personality are legitimate, and Lewis himself later owned up to some failings in that regard and revised them for publication. I don't think Lewis would have been angry, but I think he might have replied that Orwell was also an unintentional part of an outflanking movement, but in a battle of far greater consequence. I don't think Orwell is claiming that he knows Lewis' motivations or attempting psychoanalysis: he is saying why the BBC allowed him to do talks. The BBC employed Orwell, and he probably knew more about their internal workings than Lewis, who was merely a guest speaker, could have done. The fact is that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light, and it's not impossible for politicians to use Christians for their own purposes: of course, the Christians can also understand that God uses the politicians for His own purposes. But it's no good being naive about the politician's own motivations. Orwell doesn't intend magisterial, dispassionate analyses, either: his Why I Write confesses failings, but attempting to be dispassionate was opposed to his principled stance. If he did attempt it, he would have acknowledged that as a mistake.

Also, intellectuals of Orwell's stripe would probably never have dominated: for one thing, Orwell was much too honest to maintain a lot of friendships: so he got abusive letters from H.G. Wells and gave John Middleton Murry a thorough, and deserved, scolding. Also, there weren't a lot of them! Orwell tends to stand in a class by himself, coming as he did from a lower class of society than a lot of the intellectuals, having the courage of his convictions, and having a different range of experiences (Burma, as opposed to university; being a tramp, as opposed to working in a bank): he could get along with Eliot and excoriate Pound. It wasn't until Animal Farm, which he had trouble getting a publisher for because of the offence it might give to Britain's allies, that there was much general awareness of him. You might want to read his articles on the decline of belief in personal immortality as the central crisis of his times, before you clobber him too strongly. With Lewis, he is my favorite writer from the time around WWII, and one of the most valuable of non-Christian essayists.

 

[JennyG]

I'll give those articles the benefit of the doubt on your say so, Ruben, and even concede him to be the ne plus ultra of non-Christian essayists! but still, "he that is not with me is against me, and he that gathereth not with me scattereth".
If a writer is able to capture hearts and minds by the excellence of his skill, and yet does not put that skill to the service of the Kingdom, how can he not do great harm?

 

[py3ak]

Well, that would draw us into a discussion of the value of the work of the unregenerate. I think it would be quite absurd for anyone who uses modern technology to quite deny all value in them! But suffice it to say that God does not make them in vain, and while at times the processes that fulfilled their reprobation are painfully apparent, we should be sufficiently sympathetic observers to see as well the value in the task that God gave them. Orwell's main virtue was to be able to see things that others overlooked (often through prejudice precluding them from taking an active or sympathetic interest in that particular type of person or thing) and state them plainly and honestly. He was greatly gifted, and his observations are worth considering, much as Thucydides' or Tacitus' observations are. In the same way, a Theodore Dalrymple can do good work in ridiculing militant atheists, though he is an atheist himself, or in explaining the mental processes from "life on the bottom", or a Christopher Hitchens can do good work in calling the Pope to account. Even the reprobate work together for our good, sometimes directly, sometimes indirectly; and there's a lot of value to be had from Orwell, without mentioning his merits as a recreational writer.

 

[JennyG]

Certainly, God can and does use the unsaved for his own purposes. ok I concede that one!
(or to put it another way, it's nearly my bedtime, and with some busy days ahead, I'm not up for an exhaustive debate

 

[py3ak]

Yes, there are a lot of potential spin-off discussions in these posts.