C.S. Lewis' Theism vs. André Comte-Sponville's Atheism

As I had mentioned three weeks ago, I would devote an entire entry to my readings of C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and André Comte-Sponville's The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality. I read these because I wanted to hear from the most credible and intelligent advocates the strongest arguments they could make for their respective beliefs about God. I thought I would line up each of the arguments that resonated the most with me, and tried to choose the ones that were arguing about the same point to make it as fair as possible.

A few notes before I begin: I have my own opinions separate from either of the one laid out here, but I felt a lot of what both of them had to say to be quite persuasive in some ways, although less so in others. Furthermore I don't believe that you can prove or disprove God's existence, certainly not just by logical debate. Thankfully, I think this is something which both authors would recognize as well. Ultimately I wouldn't leave the matter of such personal significance up to other people whose experiences I haven't had. This is just for fun.

I should also admit that to compare these gentlemen's arguments is an unfair business to begin with. They were not contemporaries and they had different audiences. Not to mention they were using different means to put their arguments across. C.S. Lewis delivered Mere Christianity as a series of radio broadcasts to the beleaguered people of the British Isles during the German blitz of World War II. He was acting as a voice of hope and he was speaking directly to the British people, trying to be as simple and clear as possible without dumbing down his message to for the people. His writing style is full of humour, wit, piercing intelligence and beauty. His argument as a whole is not without its warts however. He makes claims that show quite clearly where he is and when he is in history, and he cannot exactly be judged by our standards for having these beliefs, but they are prejudiced beliefs nonetheless and we can't follow his advice in those areas, knowing what we know and being who we are in a 21st century secular context. That being said he strikes me as quite a progressive man for his time, and was not someone to let Christianity fall into the hands of simpletons who believe the "common" person is unable to engage with his or her faith on a deeper, more contemplative level. Lewis never stood for blind faith. Indeed, a man of letters like himself, I should hope not. On that note, he uses a more literary style for his argument, employing scenarios and images that will resonate with a regular English person, whereas Comte-Sponville follows the tradition of Western philosophers and uses their words to fuel his arguments. Both write clearly enough and beautifully enough for the layman to appreciate, but sometimes their tactics are so different they seem to be speaking different languages, on different premises.

The reason why I find both of their voices compelling is that both of them have seen God from both sides, so to speak. The only difference is they went in opposite directions. For a long time, Lewis was an atheist, and then he found his way back to theism, and then ultimately Christianity. What he is very successful in doing in this book is making Christianity seem like the most sensible thing anybody can do, and I imagine the arc of his reasoning might reflect his own personal journey. Comte-Sponville came out of a Christian context; he was one in his youth, and when he entered adulthood he found his way into atheism. But he understands quite thoroughly what he is arguing against, and even acknowledges the value of belief without outright dismissing the whole thing. I feel I can engage in what he is saying because he maintains his respect for people who have different views than his own. He does not launch an attack on religion like individuals such as Richard Dawkins and his staunch 'militant atheism', but he calmly and firmly says why he is not a believer and makes a damn good case for it. Finally what I find appealing about his argument is that he believes it's possible to be spiritual without God, and His non-existence does not preclude living a life of the spirit.

I only wish they knew each other and that I knew them, because I would love to hear what I'm certain would be a lively debate between them. Anyway, enough of my yammering.

THE LAW OF MORALITY

Without touching Christianity, Lewis makes a claim for the existence of a God based on two things. The first is the Intelligent Design view that with a universe so beautiful and immense and elegant, it must have been made by Someone or Something. This would be extremely weak evidence if he had stopped there. But he doesn't, thankfully. In fact, it's not even the main thrust of his argument. "If" he says, "we used that as our only clue, then I think we should have to conclude that He was a great artist (for the universe is a very beautiful place), but also that He is quite merciless and no friend to man (for the universe is a very dangerous and terrifying place). The other bit of evidence is that Moral Law which He has put into our minds. And this is a better bit of evidence than the other, because it is inside information. You find out God from the Moral Law than from the universe in general just as you find out more about a man by listening to his conversation than by looking at a house he has built."

He recognized that the world is governed by laws, but when it comes to human beings, the Law of Morality is the law that we can choose not to follow. Lewis says that we act one way even though we know we should be acting another. It is something deeply ingrained in us as animals, and the cause for it being there is that there is a force in the universe telling us to listen to it, and the reason why this is what we feel we should be following is because it is in fact the law we were originally meant to follow. "Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know--because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions."

So for Lewis, the voice of conscience is a sign of God's existence. I won't go into it here, but he skillfully reasons from this point that this voice inside of us is directly linked to the origins of the universe. This is based on the assumption of course that right and wrong are truths that govern the entire universe, and not just the way we understand the universe. But he makes the case that even if they as concepts only concern human beings, that doesn't necessarily mean they don't exist.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust," he says. "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 from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. 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 that 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. Consequently 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: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." This last statement, although not verifiable as definite evidence in any way, is compelling in my eyes.

LEWIS' CONCLUSION: EXISTENCE OF GOD=LEGITIMACY OF CHRISTIANITY

From here he goes step by step to his final conclusion that Christianity is the most logical choice one could make. Make no mistake, Lewis is arguing for a very particular idea of God, and does not want it to be confused for something else. "To be complete" he says, "I ought to mention the In-between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution...people who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet 'evolved' form the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the 'striving' or 'purposiveness' of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then 'a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection' is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind 'strives' or has 'purposes'? This seems to me fatal to their view". So if you believe in God, Lewis says, you might as well believe in a personal God, as in a God that actually has a personality and is not just some abstract law. If you're going to go that far you might as well admit that because there is so much evil and because we fail to climb out of it despite our best efforts, you might as well admit that we need help from the outside, and that's where God's Incarnation comes in.

REASON VS. THE ABYSS

I can also see just what Comte-Sponville might say in response to Lewis' argument for God. He might say that because we are able to find meaning in the universe, that does not mean the universe innately has it, or that it is even built to be meaningful. He looks at the question from the philosophical angle "Why is there something rather than nothing?" Gottfried Leibniz asks, and Comte-Sponville reiterates. He makes the case for a universe of contingency, that is, the absence of necessity. The universe is here without having to be here, and that drives us with our need for order, meaning and reason, up the wall. "Contingency is an abyss in which reason loses its bearings," he says. "Disorientation, however, does not constitute a proof. Why shouldn't reason--our reason--get lost in the universe, if the latter is too big, too deep, too complex, too dark or too bright for it? Indeed, how can we be certain our reason is perfectly rational? Only a God could guarantee us that, and this is just what prevents our reason from proving his existence...That our reason stumbles and feels dizzy when confronted with the abyss of contingency proves that we would like to get to the bottom of the abyss, not that the abyss has a bottom." I have to admit, the flaw in Lewis' thinking is that the universe is a teleological one, where everything has a designated purpose, a trajectory. This is not necessarily the case, as Comte-Sponville believes, and there really is no way of proving it.

WISHFUL THINKING

He also argues that the very belief in God is wishful thinking. "What is at stake in this argument? Nothing less than us--and our wish for God. Yes, I desperately wish that God existed, and I see this as a particularly convincing reason not to believe he does. This is only apparently contradictory. To be an atheist is not necessarily to be against God. Why would I be against what does not exist? Personally, I would go even further and admit that I would definitely prefer that there be a God. This is just why, in my eyes, all religions are suspicious...We are in favor of justice, too, but that hardly proves it exists. As Alain rightly put it, "Justice does not exist, which is why we need to create it."

COMTE-SPONVILLE'S SUMMARY

Comte-Sponville actually sums up the reasons behind his atheism in 6 clear points:

"A final word to sum up and conclude this chapter: We have discussed six major arguments, the first three of which lead me not to believe in God and the latter three of which lead me to believe that he does not exist. They are:

1. The weakness of the opposing arguments, the so-called proofs of God's existence.
2. Common experience: If God existed, he should be easier to see or sense.
3. My refusal to explain something I cannot understand by something I understand even less.
4. The enormity of evil.
5. The mediocrity of mankind.
6. Last but not least, the fact that God corresponds so perfectly to our wishes that there is every reason to think he was
invented to fulfill them, at least in fantasy; this makes religion an illusion in the Freudian sense of the term."

EVIL AND SUFFERING

The Problem of Evil has always been a powerful argument against God's existence. This is something which neither the Jewish nor Christian traditions can adequately answer. The Book of Job is a testament to this. They might say something like how evil exists because God gave us free will. He preferred that we choose to follow Him out of our own volition rather than by his. This almost works, but it still doesn't cut it for me. Even if human beings were less despicable, bad things will still happen to good people. The Judeo-Christian tradition uses the story of the rebellion of the angels in heaven as a mythological model to explain evil; so evil came from outside the natural order of things. But even this has its flaws. I like to ask the question, Who tempted the Tempter? Lucifer may have free will and that's what enabled him to turn away from God, but God did not have to organize free will around morality.* Evil did not necessarily have to be the alternative. We only can't imagine anything else because that's all we know and if that's what the omniscient ruler of the universe decided out of all of his infinite options for what this universe would be, then he must be a cruel despot indeed.

To answer believers' claims that we are not meant to know these things, that "God works in mysterious ways" makes the matter more complicated, according to Comte-Sponville. His third point is his reason. "From a theoretical point of view, believing in God always amounts to trying to explain something we do not understand (the universe, life, human consciousness) by something we understand even less (God). How can such an attitude satisfy us intellectually?...Much will always be unknown--this is what relegates us to mystery. But why would that mystery be God, especially given the fact that God can't be understood either, since ineffability is part of his definition?...Religion becomes the universal solution, something like a theoretical master key--except that it opens only imaginary doors. What use is that? God explains everything, since he is all-powerful; but in vain, since he could just as well explain the opposite. The sun revolves around the earth? God wanted it that way. The earth revolves around the sun? God wanted it that way. This does not get us very far. And in either case, what is the explanation worth, given that God himself remains inexplicable and incomprehensible?" I find this argument incredibly compelling.

FAITH AND HOPE

I must touch on Christianity in a little more detail, and while the debate about God's existence does not mean bringing this particular religion into the ring, both writers draw from it heavily (albeit for different purposes), and it greatly concerns me as well, because I live in Western society, which is predominantly a context of Judeo-Christian thinking. Furthermore, as someone who is currently grappling with Christianity and trying to give it a chance, I feel it important to talk about.

I think that Lewis understands that Christianity cannot ultimately answer these questions any better than Comte-Sponville can. Paradoxically enough, I think this is what gives me hope for Christianity's survival, provided its adherents can admit to it. It also makes me believe that there can be a real dialogue between theists and atheists. The real point of Christianity is not to answer the question. Any attempts to do so is a human attempt, including the story of Genesis. But Christian faith, at its bare essence, acknowledges that we are in a world gone wrong, and no, ultimately we won't find out why we are creatures who are conscious of suffering, but that there is an antidote to that suffering. It's the specifics of that antidote that cause disagreement.

The reason why I believe C.S. Lewis is a sobering voice for Christianity, and the reason why I think him and Comte-Sponville would have something to agree on is the topic of faith and hope. They use different words, but I get the sense that they are speaking about the same thing. In Christian doctrine, the three theological virtues are Faith, Hope, and Love (Charity), as outlined by St. Paul. Comte-Sponville believes that Christians spend too much time on the first two. "In the kingdom of heaven," he says, "faith and hope will have disappeared; only charity, or love, will remain! From my own standpoint as a faithful atheist, I would simply add that this is already true. Why dream about paradise? The kingdom is here and now." People who wait around, dreaming of a better world are missing out on the wonder and beauty of this one. This is because it was largely influenced by Greek philosophy, specifically Neoplatonism and Plato's Theory of Forms, which separated the body from the soul, the world of thought from the world of being. A lot of Christian thought over the years has been obsessed with the Hereafter, and paid little attention to the Here. From this conclusion Christians have justified abuse self-flagellation, poverty and any sort of abuse against the physical body to remind themselves and other people that it is sinful and the sooner we can be rid of it (without actually doing the deed ourselves) the better. I think that Lewis might agree with Sponville however. "God never meant man to be a purely spiritual creature. That is why He uses material things like bread and wine to put the new life into us. We may think this rather crude and unspiritual. God does not: He invented eating. He likes matter. He invented it."

Sponville also thinks that Christians put to much emphasis on belief, and instead ought to follow Jesus' example, rather than lean entirely on him for the solution. "If Jesus himself, as even Saint Thomas acknowledged, was inhabited by neither faith nor hope, then being faithful to Jesus (and attempting, with the means at our disposal, to follow his example) would not entail imitating either his faith or his hope; it might entail imitating his vision and comprehension (as Christians do through faith and hope and as Spinoza does through philosophy); it would definitely entail imitating his love (such is the ethics of the Gospel--or, again, Spinoza's ethics)." There is a passage in Lewis' book that might also make an appropriate response to this statement, as well as Comte-Sponville's statement that the "kingdom is here and now", and it has to do with the Christian idea of faith. "Handing everything over to Christ does not, of course, mean that you stop trying. To trust Him means, of course, trying to do all that He says. There would be no sense in saying you trusted a person if you would not take his advice. Thus if you really handed yourself over to Him, it must follow that you are trying to obey Him. But trying in a new way, a less worried way. Not doing these things in order to be saved, but because He has begun to save you already. Not hoping to get to Heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act in a certain way because a first faint gleam of Heaven is already inside you." Jesus himself was quoted to have said that 'the kingdom of God is inside you', and all it takes is to recognize this ( to me it is actually not unlike the Buddhist view of Samsara and Nirvana being the same thing, merely two side of the same coin). I think one of my favourite quotes of Lewis' about the matter is this one: "Christians have often disputed as to whether what leads the Christian home is good actions, or Faith in Christ. I have no right really to speak on such a difficult question, but it does seem to me like asking which blade in a pair of scissors is most necessary."

Again, even though I think Christianity still has a fighting chance as a faith tradition, that doesn't mean it's the best solution for all people at all times, or that its potential for good prove that God is necessarily behind it. I think it has a fighting chance because it has the wisdom enough to point to something greater than itself, indeed greater than any single creed or philosophy, and I feel fortunate to have learned from two individuals who I think have tapped into that idea. Lewis although deeply Christian in his way of thinking, I believe is open-minded and compassionate because of his faith. With his trademark cleverness as a writer, he gives this answer: "Is it not frightfully unfair that this new life should be confined to people who have heard of Christ and been able to believe in Him? But the truth is God has not told us what His arrangements about the other people are. We do know that no man can be saved except through Christ; we do not know that only those who know Him can be saved through Him." If you ask me, it's not a bad response at all. You certainly wouldn't find an intolerant bigot in him, that's for sure, and that's what makes me feel like I can read him without feeling uneasy, like I'm going to have my wrist slapped (or my soul thrown into eternal damnation) for disagreeing with him when I do. I only wish more Christians thought like him. Comte-Sponville speaks with this same open-mindedness as well, which shows his willingness to have dialogue with theistic thinkers. "It would be madness" he says, "to attach more significance to what we don't know and what separates us than to what we know from our own experience, in the depths of our hearts, and what brings us together, namely, the idea that people's real worth is measured neither by faith nor hope but by the amount of love, compassion and justice of which they are capable...when summits are involved, why should we need to choose? When sources are involved, why should we need to exclude? The mind knows no fatherland, nor does humanity."

Ultimately, they haven't answered my questions. Nor did I expect them to. But Lewis has reminded me what Christianity, as we know it, is at its essence. Comte-Sponville has offered a reminder to always search for the truth, no matter what, at the expense of comfort, at the expense of hope, at the expense of religion, and even at the expense of God. I feel that I can engage with both of these belief systems, because at heart they know they are dealing with something greater than either of their traditions can accurately describe.