The question is “would there be reason to worry about a person like Lewis banning sins”. Figuring out why he believes is not, in that context, Bulverism because the question is not about whether his beliefs are correct, it’s a question of what he would do.
And of course to you, what he would do is to ban things, because that is what you would do, and the idea of not banning things you don’t like is to you practically a contradiction in terms. But it’s all right for you to ban things, because you would be banning the right things, the sufficient proof of which is that everyone in your circle agrees with you, but it’s wrong for Lewis to ban things, because he would be banning the wrongs things, the proof of which is that everyone in your circle agrees they’re the wrong things. We are right because we are right, and everyone else is wrong because they are wrong.
Thanks you for setting out your epistemology so clearly.
And of course to you, what he would do is to ban things, because that is what you would do,
No, it’s what people like him would do. Religious people have a really bad record with respect to believing arbitrary things are bad and then banning them. Your idea that I think he would ban things because I would ban things is pulled out of thin air. I think that people would do lots of things I don’t do.
“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is quite the different question—how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine.
My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.”
“It’s what people like him would do” is just plain false. He is quite clear there that the fact that he does not want to ban divorce for other people is not arbitrary, but reasoned, and he would apply the same thing to anything else which was specific to his religion.
Notice that that description doesn’t contain a claim that divorce hurts anyone other than the people getting divorced. So it doesn’t generalize to things which Lewis believes are banned by his religion because they harm others.
Also, it generalizes poorly to things like gay marriage. There used to be a time when nobody accepted gay marriage. Someone like Lewis could, while staying consistent with the above argument, claim that since gay marriage was universally abhorred, a law against it is not a Christian-specific law but a State-specific law.
Let’s suppose that Islam taught that every time someone drinks wine, ten random non-Muslims automatically will go to hell. Do you think that Lewis would have been less angry if consequently Muslims tried to ban wine for everyone? Since he compared divorce to that himself, fully understanding that the prohibition on wine looks arbitrary to other people, he would be fully capable of realizing that it would look arbitrary even if he himself had such a belief.
But besides that, as I’ve said all along, Lewis’s beliefs are not arbitrary. He would be unlikely to believe a religion that taught something like that about wine, and if he did accept the religion in general, he would be unlikely to accept that particular belief. And even if he did, the awareness that it looks arbitrary to other people could be sufficient reason for him not to ban it, by the same argument he made explicitly.
The gay marriage argument is irrelevant. Neither Lewis nor anyone else living at that time would have specifically legalized gay marriage, or even thought about it. Neither would you, if you had lived at that time and been in charge of England. That does not mean that Lewis or anyone else was tyrannical or would have been.
Your whole argument is based on a strawman of religious beliefs as arbitrary beliefs. One could as well argue that “Jiro’s beliefs” are arbitrary, since if Jiro had believed something different, he would have had different beliefs.
Let’s suppose that Islam taught that every time someone drinks wine, ten random non-Muslims automatically will go to hell. Do you think that Lewis would have been less angry if consequently Muslims tried to ban wine for everyone?
I could speculate, but you could just say he wouldn’t act according to my speculation. Do you have any examples of Lewis believing that something harms others, and yet still refusing to ban it (and for similar reasons)?
Neither Lewis nor anyone else living at that time would have specifically legalized gay marriage, or even thought about it.
But if he had lived at the transition point the question would come up. If he has exceptions that let him ban things that are condemned by society, he could argue that the fact that gay marriage was universally condemned makes it more like banning murder than banning wine.
One could as well argue that “Jiro’s beliefs” are arbitrary
Religions have a habit of throwing in “this thing is bad” purely on argument from authority, an authority Lewis considers himself bound to believe as an infallible source of truth. Nonreligious people have the step “figure out if it’s really bad” in there, which Lewis does not—if God says it’s bad, it’s bad.
I think one of us is misunderstanding Jiro here; isn’t s/he saying not that Lewis thinks God creates the moral law, but that Lewis thinks God is a perfectly reliable source of information about the moral law? (Epistemology, not ontology.)
[EDITED to add the second instance of “Lewis thinks” in the previous paragraph. I hope my meaning was clear anyway.]
(I’m fairly sure that Lewis wouldn’t have regarded himself as committed to accepting every moral claim promulgated by the Church of England, or every moral claim a reasonable person could extract from the Bible, so I find Jiro’s argument less than perfectly convincing. But I think you’re refuting a different argument.)
Lewis would likely have regarded himself as committed to accepting every moral claim he thinks was made by God. He might not believe that the Church of England is perfect at figuring this out, but whatever source of God-claims he uses instead of the Church would produce results as arbitrary as using the Church. (Except to the extent that he uses motivated reasoning to decide what God is claiming.)
It is not “motivated reasoning” to argue that God doesn’t claim a thing, if you have reasons for believing both that the thing is false, and that whatever God says is true.
And of course to you, what he would do is to ban things, because that is what you would do, and the idea of not banning things you don’t like is to you practically a contradiction in terms. But it’s all right for you to ban things, because you would be banning the right things, the sufficient proof of which is that everyone in your circle agrees with you, but it’s wrong for Lewis to ban things, because he would be banning the wrongs things, the proof of which is that everyone in your circle agrees they’re the wrong things. We are right because we are right, and everyone else is wrong because they are wrong.
Thanks you for setting out your epistemology so clearly.
No, it’s what people like him would do. Religious people have a really bad record with respect to believing arbitrary things are bad and then banning them. Your idea that I think he would ban things because I would ban things is pulled out of thin air. I think that people would do lots of things I don’t do.
This is from Lewis:
“Before leaving the question of divorce, I should like to distinguish two things which are very often confused. The Christian conception of marriage is one: the other is quite the different question—how far Christians, if they are voters or Members of Parliament, ought to try to force their views of marriage on the rest of the community by embodying them in the divorce laws. A great many people seem to think that if you are a Christian yourself you should try to make divorce difficult for every one. I do not think that. At least I know I should be very angry if the Mohammedans tried to prevent the rest of us from drinking wine. My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognize that the majority of the British people are not Christian and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, the other governed by the church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought to be quite sharp, so that a man knows which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.”
“It’s what people like him would do” is just plain false. He is quite clear there that the fact that he does not want to ban divorce for other people is not arbitrary, but reasoned, and he would apply the same thing to anything else which was specific to his religion.
Notice that that description doesn’t contain a claim that divorce hurts anyone other than the people getting divorced. So it doesn’t generalize to things which Lewis believes are banned by his religion because they harm others.
Also, it generalizes poorly to things like gay marriage. There used to be a time when nobody accepted gay marriage. Someone like Lewis could, while staying consistent with the above argument, claim that since gay marriage was universally abhorred, a law against it is not a Christian-specific law but a State-specific law.
Let’s suppose that Islam taught that every time someone drinks wine, ten random non-Muslims automatically will go to hell. Do you think that Lewis would have been less angry if consequently Muslims tried to ban wine for everyone? Since he compared divorce to that himself, fully understanding that the prohibition on wine looks arbitrary to other people, he would be fully capable of realizing that it would look arbitrary even if he himself had such a belief.
But besides that, as I’ve said all along, Lewis’s beliefs are not arbitrary. He would be unlikely to believe a religion that taught something like that about wine, and if he did accept the religion in general, he would be unlikely to accept that particular belief. And even if he did, the awareness that it looks arbitrary to other people could be sufficient reason for him not to ban it, by the same argument he made explicitly.
The gay marriage argument is irrelevant. Neither Lewis nor anyone else living at that time would have specifically legalized gay marriage, or even thought about it. Neither would you, if you had lived at that time and been in charge of England. That does not mean that Lewis or anyone else was tyrannical or would have been.
Your whole argument is based on a strawman of religious beliefs as arbitrary beliefs. One could as well argue that “Jiro’s beliefs” are arbitrary, since if Jiro had believed something different, he would have had different beliefs.
I could speculate, but you could just say he wouldn’t act according to my speculation. Do you have any examples of Lewis believing that something harms others, and yet still refusing to ban it (and for similar reasons)?
But if he had lived at the transition point the question would come up. If he has exceptions that let him ban things that are condemned by society, he could argue that the fact that gay marriage was universally condemned makes it more like banning murder than banning wine.
Religions have a habit of throwing in “this thing is bad” purely on argument from authority, an authority Lewis considers himself bound to believe as an infallible source of truth. Nonreligious people have the step “figure out if it’s really bad” in there, which Lewis does not—if God says it’s bad, it’s bad.
Where are you getting this from? Not from any reading of Lewis, it seems.
C.S. Lewis, “The Poison of Subjectivism”
I think one of us is misunderstanding Jiro here; isn’t s/he saying not that Lewis thinks God creates the moral law, but that Lewis thinks God is a perfectly reliable source of information about the moral law? (Epistemology, not ontology.)
[EDITED to add the second instance of “Lewis thinks” in the previous paragraph. I hope my meaning was clear anyway.]
(I’m fairly sure that Lewis wouldn’t have regarded himself as committed to accepting every moral claim promulgated by the Church of England, or every moral claim a reasonable person could extract from the Bible, so I find Jiro’s argument less than perfectly convincing. But I think you’re refuting a different argument.)
Lewis would likely have regarded himself as committed to accepting every moral claim he thinks was made by God. He might not believe that the Church of England is perfect at figuring this out, but whatever source of God-claims he uses instead of the Church would produce results as arbitrary as using the Church. (Except to the extent that he uses motivated reasoning to decide what God is claiming.)
It is not “motivated reasoning” to argue that God doesn’t claim a thing, if you have reasons for believing both that the thing is false, and that whatever God says is true.
Lewis, however, does believe that God makes moral claims and that he (Lewis) can know what at least some of them are.