Morality C.S. Lewis

O

OrangeChipper

1,000+ Posts
Many people say things like. "Why are you forcing your morality on me?"

Or, "That's your moral code, not mine."

They treat morality like its a fashion or a flavor of ice cream. You have your preferences and I have mine. You have your tastes & I have mine. I reject this notion. I don't believe morality is like that. You can't go through the list of items deemed wrong and say... sure that fits me...check.... nope don't like that one... nope.... check....nope....check....check. It's not like that.

Morality can be likened to a law. Not dissimilar to the law of gravity. Whether you believe in it or not, the law of gravity is pressing on you. You can say you don't believe it, but you'll still fall flat on your face if you jump off a roof to fly.

CS Lewis was discussed not too long ago. Some were challenged to read some of his works. Well, I'll be. His entire work, "Mere Christianity" is online. Please read chapter 1 where he digs into this very topic. (chapters 2 & 3 where he anticipates objections)
The Link
 
Actually, Mr. Lewis distinguishes what he terms Law of Nature (like gravity) from what he terms Law of Human Nature. You likened them. Two very different arguments.

My understanding is that you see the consequences of attempting to defy a Law of Human Nature as equally inevitable to attempting to defy a Law of Nature when you say "you'll still fall flat on your face if you jump off a roof to fly."

So, what are the certain consequences of attempting to defy a Law of Human Nature? It might serve the conversation for you to state a Law of Human Nature for us to discuss.
 
OC,

I knew you were working on a moraltiy thread and hoped that would help me understand you. I was way too optimistic.

Yes, I read the link. How you can say there is not a check list for morals illudes me. Lets pretend we could put together a list of 1,000 items that were considered morals. Most of us would agree on almost all of them. But not all. I'm not going to try to develop some exhaustive list of items that I think are moral or immoral that others would disagree with, but here are some:

Abortion, porn, homosexuality, dancing, the death penalty, white lies, hunting, pre-marital sex, legalizing drug use, legalizing prostitution....the list goes on and on.

While you and I would probably agree on the moral way to treat each other and interact with society, you can't tell me that the items listed and many others would create differences of morals. How can the morals of an extremely religious Christian be the same as an athiest? They can't.
 
If the Narnia books aren't Christian allegory, I don't know what is. Pretty straight-forward Christian Resurrection allegory right there in Lion, Witch and the Wardrobe.

Maybe we have different definitions of allegory.

"a representation of an abstract or spiritual meaning through concrete or material forms; figurative treatment of one subject under the guise of another. "

Lewis even threw in a character named Lucy. He has a granddaughter named Lucy. Is he a lunatic that thinks his granddaughter went to a magical world? Is he lying to us on purpose? Or did she, in fact, go to that magical world? Or did he tell a story that may have included some real life experiences of his granddaughter and even use her name, so that it would have more relevance to the reader, in addition to relating a spiritual message through a supernatural metaphor?

I have done a lot of reading beyond Lewis, Stroebel, and McDowell. I've read plenty of extra-canonical texts. I have read a lot regarding the dating of canonical texts, contemporaneous early Judeo-Christian sects, and so on.

I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. Just trying to give you an idea of the ground that I've covered in this area.

It is my opinion that texts in the Bible are largely allegorical.
 
The flaw I see some making here is that you want to argue particulars rather than principles. Morality is not based on particulars, but must be understood at the level of principles. Americans as a people very rarely think of the general, but rather we start with situations and try to make an argument there without even considering over arching principles.

LHG,
I would love to have more discussion about this idea that the New Testament is allegory primarily. Do you believe that about the Old Testament also? And what leads you to believe the New Testament is allegory? How do we seperate the difference between the historical and the allegorical?

L M White. I had him for a couple of classes at UT back when he first came here. I felt like I had a good relationship with him since I worked to try to get a Religious Studies Major started at UT (anyone know if that happened?) I disagree with him on his approach to the Scriptural Text and what it is. This all might be another thread, and if so I could start that up.
 
I think everyone believes that their personal moral code is universal, right? I mean, I don't know a lot of honest, thoughtful people who say "oh, it's moral when I do it, but not someone else." So, when they say things like "that's your moral code," they aren't implying that they accept it as an equal possibility to their own. Instead, they are saying that they don't think that your morals should have any reason to take precedence over their own.

I guess what I'm saying is that I don't really understand the point of your post. Most everyone believes their set of morals to be correct and universal. I'd like to hear from anyone who doesn't. The quotations you are describing are actually people telling you to get off their back, because there is no proof that you are right and they are wrong.

I also think that you are not giving enough credence to other sources of morality (besides, I presume, the Bible). If one uses utilitarianism to determine what they think is moral, they will almost always agree with the Bible. However, that doesn't mean that they have picked and chosen at random.
 
He explains the difference in terms something like this "The law of gravity means: 'How gravity, in fact, always behaves', but the law of human nature does not mean 'How humans, in fact, always behave'"

In reply to:
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see LHG, you lost me with that ketchup v. mustard thing.

Anyone who puts ketchup on a hamburger or a hot dog should forever lose the right to eat either. Especially a hot dog. I may be a prig about it, but there are few things that offend me more than seeing someone put ketchup on a hot dog.
 
LHG, but you put mustard on that chili dog right? I mean you think you are kinky... I do chili WITH mustard.
 
While I personally don't mix mustard and chili, it is within the realm of personal preference. Beans in the chili, however, constitutes HornFans heresy.
 
I'm not trying to be a pain in the *** by providing definitions, nor am I trying to create a different language so that my arguments appear more intelligent or more valid than they are. I'm not even really making an argument yet. I'm simply stating a hypothesis, but I want to do my best to be clear about what that hypothesis is.

I am trying to be clear about my position so as to not fall into arguments that are the result of misunderstanding rather than the result of a difference of opinion or perspective. Evidently I've done a poor job, because there are obviously already some misunderstandings.

If you have a word that you believe better describes a "guiding sense of the requirements and obligations of right conduct. a fundamental truth from which others are derived" I'll be happy to use it. "Sense" was my least favorite word in the description given, for the reasons that you cite. Something like "responsibility" or "urge to follow" would be more correct, which isn't the direction that you were headed with it.

The distinction that I'm trying to draw between Law (that word already generates some misunderstanding as it has multiple definitions, but I'm not talking about Law as in legal, but rather Law as in immutable -- again not a great word because that denotes changeable vs. unchangeable which isn't what I'm trying to get at either) and Principle is in the realm of reason/consciousness.

Now, when I say reason, the obvious arguments are that we are back to "picking and choosing" or "deciding" or "agreeing" on a Principle (BTW, I tend to use capitalization to avoid having to type fundamental or universal whatever over and over). That isn't what I intend either. Is there something (let's call it Principle) that has an existential quality but is born of universal reason or consciousness rather than physical particles?

The concept is actually fundamental to Mr. Lewis' argument in Mere Christianity. He wants to use the word "Law" but I think that this generates confusion -- the kind of confusion that Chipper has shown in equating a Law of Nature (such as gravity) with what Lewis calls a Law of Human Nature.

Whatever we call it -- Universal Moral Principle, Law of Human Nature, whatever -- we have yet to establish how we are able to distinguish such a thing. We have determined a couple of things that are NOT required.

1. Immediate, predictable consequences
2. Universal agreement

I do think that we'll need to establish what criteria need to be met for a Universal Moral Principle before we can start discussing whether one or more such principles exist and what they might be.

I do also want to discuss fundamental vs. derived principles. I've always been interested in physicists and cosmologists who are working towards a Theory of Everything. The idea is that a single Law of Nature exists from which everything else is derived. I think it is probable that such a law exists. I also think that such a Universal Moral Principle might exist as well.

In reply to:
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"born of" was just florid phrasing on my part. I think we on the same page regarding the hypothesis and that we both think that it is possible that a universal consciousness may exist and that it has one or more Principles.

In my personal, understandably limited and possibly flawed, perception, I have only been able to conceive of a single Principle that I consider to be fundamental. All the other principles that I have considered can be derived from this principle.

Any thoughts on this notion of derived principles?
 
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