Lewis dilemma

[Walt Zingmatilder]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

[Shaker]

This is as big and steaming a pile of horseshit as the trilemma.

He should have stuck to mediaeval literature. Apparently he was quite good at that, once.

[floo]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

Some of what Jesus is quoted as saying was sensible and worth consideration. However, the 'supernatural' stuff surrounding the guy has no credibility whatsoever, and is highly unlikely to be true. If Jesus was truly dead, then resurrected, staying down here on Earth would have confirmed the status claimed for him.

[ippy]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

Unfortunately for you Vlad the evidence is not laying on the side of your beloved Christianity, it's looking like a con job at the mo.

Regards ippy

[Walter]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

'andles, do you come yo this board just to get a good battering because I cant see any other reason ?

you certainly aren't going to convert anyone with the arguments you propose . I ,for one, would change my view immediately if you produced any empirical evidence but you never do .

In your defence, no one else ever has either

[Walt Zingmatilder]

'andles, do you come yo this board just to get a good battering because I cant see any other reason ?

That then begs the question of what you are coming to this board for.
.

[Nearly Sane]

That then begs the question of what you are coming to this board for.
.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

[Stranger]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

Oxford Dictionaries: beg the question (sense 1)

[Stranger]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

All religions are a con in a sense (neglecting the vanishingly small chance that one of them is true). In particular, most versions of Christianity are way too riddled with contradictions to be taken seriously.

However, a con would imply a deliberate deception and totally leaves out the possibility of people simply getting stuff wrong: being deluded, mistaken, hallucination, misunderstanding, stories getting exaggerated or embellished, hyperactive agent detection, and so on, and so on, and in any combination, including, perhaps, some deliberate deception along the way.

So, some combination of cock-up and con, would be my guess.

Lewis wasn't very good at this, was he?

[Walter]

That then begs the question of what you are coming to this board for.
.

you could just ask me directly .

you might not get an answer but you can ask .

[Nearly Sane]

Oxford Dictionaries: beg the question (sense 1)

People put their Christmas trees up in November, doesn't make it good.

[floo]

People put their Christmas trees up in November, doesn't make it good.

Some around here were even up in October!

[Stranger]

People put their Christmas trees up in November, doesn't make it good.

Indeed - but as far as language changing goes, resistance is futile!

Also, given that the "formal" usage was a mistranslation from Latin (according to your wiki link), it could be argued that the modern meaning makes more sense.

[wigginhall]

Interesting tangent about the change in meaning in 'begging the question'.   It reminds me of 'theory', where a popular usage has developed, quite different from the formal sense.   As Stranger says, resistance is futile.  I have spent years arguing about the shift in meaning in 'gender', but to no avail. 

[Walter]

Interesting tangent about the change in meaning in 'begging the question'.   It reminds me of 'theory', where a popular usage has developed, quite different from the formal sense.   As Stranger says, resistance is futile.  I have spent years arguing about the shift in meaning in 'gender', but to no avail.

don't know where I am these days with all that bollocks(noun) 

[Dicky Underpants]

While there is a lot of fun to be had over the trilemma. What about Lewis's dilemma......That Christianity is either true or it is the biggest con job in history.

Lewis really did have a problem with his attempts to reduce these religious questions to a few either/or propositions. Christianity refers to such a vast array of differing beliefs, that it is ludicrous to speak in such terms. I suppose he meant that the supernatural claims are either true, or those who believe in them have perpetrated a con. But even the supernatural claims can be seen to differ in the original scriptures. No doubt those Catholic Christians who marginalised and tortured Jews were quite sincere in believing what they did was right (and therefore not con-artists). No doubt those Protestant Christians who rooted out and tortured Catholics, whilst believing in the same original scriptures, also thought that what they were doing was right, and therefore not con-artists.
Do you know what Lewis meant when he spoke of "Christianity" in this inclusive way? (Does anybody here know what Vlad means by "Christianity" when he speaks of it as a sort of unified 'Platonic' idea?)


I wonder what Lewis' stance on transubstantiation was.

[Nearly Sane]

Lewis on Transubstantiation

'I don’t know and can’t imagine what the disciples understood our Lord to mean when, His body still unbroken and His blood unshed, He handed them the bread and wine, saying they were His body and blood…I find ‘substance’ (in Aristotle’s sense), when stripped of its own accidents and endowed with the accidents of some other substance, an object I cannot think…On the other hand, I get no better with those who tell me that the elements are mere bread and mere wine, used symbolically to remind me of the death of Christ.  They are, on the natural level, such a very odd symbol of that…and I cannot see why this particular reminder – a hundred other things may, psychologically, remind me of Christ’s death, equally, or perhaps more – should be so uniquely important as all Christendom (and my own heart) unhesitatingly declare…Yet I find no difficulty in believing that the veil between the worlds, nowhere else (for me) so opaque to the intellect, is nowhere else so thin and permeable to divine operation.  Here a hand from the hidden country touches not only my soul but my body.  Here the prig, the don, the modern , in me have no privilege over the savage or the child.  Here is big medicine and strong magic…the command, after all, was Take, eat: not Take, understand.'

[Dicky Underpants]

Lewis on Transubstantiation

" Here is big medicine and strong magic."

Heap big medicine, Kemosabe!

[wigginhall]

White man speak with forked tongue.

[Shaker]

The thread that cultural sensitivity forgot   

[wigginhall]

Oh gosh, is this racist?  I'll just sneak one more in, from John le Carre actually, 'too much wampum not good for braves'. 

[Walt Zingmatilder]

Heap big medicine, Kemosabe!

Does that make you Chief Running Skidmark?

[Walt Zingmatilder]

I rather think that those who dismiss the dilemma do so because, having weaved the story that believers are thick, mad or have some mental incompetence, and that atheists are intellectually superior, you can hardly go on to admit that such a crew as the Christians could be capable of the biggest caper, heist, con, hustle in history. The gymnastic predicament of those that don't accept the dilemma is IMV highly entertaining.

Of course there is a serious side in not calling out spade for spade and that is the promotion of vague generalities which legitimise fence squatting and lack of focus.

[Sebastian Toe]

I rather think that those who dismiss the dilemma do so because, having weaved the story that believers are thick, mad or have some mental incompetence, and that atheists are intellectually superior, you can hardly go on to admit that such a crew as the Christians could be capable of the biggest caper, heist, con, hustle in history. The gymnastic predicament of those that don't accept the dilemma is IMV highly entertaining.

Of course there is a serious side in not calling out spade for spade and that is the promotion of vague generalities which legitimise fence squatting and lack of focus.

So, Mohammed?
Mad, bad or the perpetrator of the (2nd?) biggest con in history?
Which one do you go for?

[Stranger]

I rather think that those who dismiss the dilemma do so because, having weaved the story that believers are thick, mad or have some mental incompetence, and that atheists are intellectually superior, you can hardly go on to admit that such a crew as the Christians could be capable of the biggest caper, heist, con, hustle in history.

Is this a joke? It's difficult to see what you might actually be suggesting here. A 2000 year conspiracy (silly)? Just a few people at the start (slightly less silly but to what end)?

The gymnastic predicament of those that don't accept the dilemma is IMV highly entertaining.

Of course there is a serious side in not calling out spade for spade and that is the promotion of vague generalities which legitimise fence squatting and lack of focus.

Much easier to just say that we should all indulge in black and white-ism rather than to actually address how the grey can be ruled out, eh?

Basically, this is all empty wordage to avoid addressing the actual points that have been raised. Par for the course...