I Don't Understand the Obsession...
... Hillsdale College has with this asshole. The latest e-missive from Hillsdale:
Dear Friend,
C.S. Lewis was a master at addressing life’s most important questions through vivid language that is delightful and captivating to read.
No he wasn't. I tried reading some of his "writing" (I use that word loosely in this context) The Screwtape Letters and The Great Divorce. I couldn't get through a half dozen pages of this shitty writing. Neither delightful nor captivating, it's excruciating.
His signature ability to communicate the truth about Christianity has inspired countless skeptics to become believers and even more believers to renew and deepen their faith-making him the greatest Christian apologist of the twentieth century.
The. Greatest. FUCKING! Christian. Apologist. Yeah, right, sure, whatever the fuck you say. Lewis popularized this:
I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept his claim to be God. That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic-on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg-or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God, or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. ... Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God
This is the Fallacy of the Excluded Middle. It's also a tactic the deceitful use to trick you. Present someone with ready made conclusions and the tendency is to reason which one is the best conclusion. It screens other possibilities from consideration, and that is the intention.
The trilemma has continued to be used in Christian apologetics since Lewis, notably by writers like Josh McDowell. Philosopher Peter Kreeft describes the trilemma as "the most important argument in Christian apologetics",[18] and it forms a major part of the first talk in the Alpha Course and the book based on it, Questions of Life by Nicky Gumbel, an English Anglican priest. Ronald Reagan used this argument in 1978, in a written reply to a liberal Methodist minister who said that he did not believe Jesus was the son of God.[19] A variant has also been quoted by Bono.[20] The Lewis version was cited by Charles Colson as the basis of his conversion to Christianity.[21] Stephen Davis, a supporter of Lewis and of this argument,[22] argues that it can show belief in the incarnation as rational.[23] The biblical scholar Bruce M. Metzger argued: "It has often been pointed out that Jesus' claim to be the only Son of God is either true or false. If it is false, he either knew the claim was false or he did not know that it was false. In the former case (2) he was a liar; in the latter case (3) he was a lunatic. No other conclusion beside these three is possible.
-- Clicky
Mission accomplished! It works on weak minds and/or those already predisposed to believing the fantastic claim. The other possibilities deliberately concealed are that the Jesus stories are fiction. Indeed, even as far back as the 2nd century you had Christian theologians who never claimed the Jesus stories were real history, but rather allegories not meant to be taken literally. It is also impossible to know what Jesus said, as there is no indication he employed a personal secretary or stenographer to record what he said, nor are there any manuscripts of his speeches. All you have are anonymous authors saying what Jesus supposedly said, written decades after the fact.
Another case in pointy is Patrick Henry's Give Me Librium or Give Me Meth speech for the Virginia Revolutionary Convention of 03/23/1775. No one heard a word of this speech until 1817, in a Patrick Henry biography written by William Wirt. all we do know is that Henry gave a speech that was eloquent and persuasive. As to the actual content, again, there were no stenographers to record the proceedings. At best this is Wirt's attempted recreation of a speech from snippets the audience members remembered. At worst, it's Wirt's making shit up. The [Alledged] Speech
It also rests on the unwarranted assumption that Jesus said he was God, a claim he denied repeatedly.
Jesus said:
16 And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? 17 And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. 18
-- Mat 19:16-18
The story is repeated in Mark and Luke.
Jesus said:
36 But of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels of heaven, but my Father only. 37 But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.
-- Mat 24 : 35-37
Jesus doesn't know because he's not the father.
'
Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can do nothing of himself, but what he seeth the Father do: for what things soever he doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise.
-- John 5:19
This speaks for itself.
Ye have heard how I said unto you, I go away, and come again unto you. If ye loved me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father: for my Father is greater than I.
-- John 14:28
Can it get clearer? The claim that Jesus was a demigod came much later. What we see here has all the hall marks of a legend in the making.
"Philosopher Peter Kreeft describes the trilemma as 'the most important argument in Christian apologetics'". What does it say for the state of apologetics when The. Most. Important. Argument. is a logical fallacy resting on an unwarranted assumption?
Why Hillsdale's fascination with this dipshit?