Ch. 4 - Jon's Comments

Chapter 4 – What Lies Beyond the Law

1. Summary

Physical laws may not be anything real.  We just have facts to observe, so we can’t know if a law is forcing objects to act according to the law of gravity.  The law of morality however has additional evidence – we can see how people act (facts of how they act) AND we can also learn how the law feels to us – that is compels us to act a certain way.

“There is one thing, and only one, in the whole universe which we know more about than we could learn from external observation [i.e. science] - that one thing is Man.” (comment added).

Because we have facts PLUS experience of the law, we have additional information about the moral law. 

Because we can experience the law working upon us, we can know where it comes from.  How does our experience give us a clue about where the moral law comes from?

“If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe – no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or a staircase or fireplace in that house.”  Instead, it could show itself “as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way.”

The moral law points to this influence or command trying to get us to behave a certain way.  In other words, the Moral Law gives us a very big clue about what kind of universe we are living in.  What kind of universe could there be?  Lewis says there are two kinds.

TWO VIEWS OF THE UNIVERSE

Materialist view: “People who take this view think that matter and space [and time] just happen to exist, and always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in certain fixed ways, has just happened, by sort of fluke, to produce creatures like ourselves who are able to think.”

Religious View: “According to [the religious view], what is behind the universe is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know. That is to say, it is conscious, and has purpose, and prefers one thing to another.

Lewis claims that science cannot tell which is the correct view. “…[W]hy anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind the things science observes…this is not a scientific question. If there is ‘Something Behind’, then either it will have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can make.” (emphasis added). 

At the end of Ch. 4, Lewis concludes that he hasn’t proven Christianity yet: “All I have got to is a 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.”

2. Things I liked. 

I like how he is breaking down different understandings of the universe.  Although I don’t believe there are only two, the type of physicalist and supernatural views he lays out certainly are popular.

I liked how he has built his case up from the ground.  Starting with an observation that we all have experienced, and taking this and reasoning until he comes to a conclusion that a deity exists.  I think this attempt to use simple reasons is useful.  Too often we skip the basic questions and go right to belief.

3. Questions/ Concerns

I am worried Lewis is making leaps here.  He says there is a law urging him to act a certain way.  It makes him feel uncomfortable when he doesn’t follow it.  He says “we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know… the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions.”

This is a huge leap.  He is going from observing a psychological phenomenon, to claiming something must exist that is external to him.  I just don’t buy the fact that this feeling (of having to act a certain way) is best explained by an outside force.  There are  plenty of inside forces to explain it.  Rules we have learned from a young age, fear of disappointing our parents, fear of getting in trouble, desire to help others, memories of how people act.  All of these explain it better than saying something is outside me that is making be feel this way. 

We are great at detecting patterns.  Our minds see patterns , even where there may not be any.  It is not a result of any problem.  A normal, healthy mind will see patterns even where there aren’t any.  Look at the following picture:

Is there a triangle in the middle, or does your mind perceive multiple items in such a way that it thinks there is?  The phenomenon Lewis is observing created by multiple psychological forces, acting together to create a feeling that there is a moral law – its that simple. 

Is there a triangle in the middle, or does your mind perceive multiple items in such a way that it thinks there is?  The phenomenon Lewis is observing created by multiple psychological forces, acting together to create a feeling that there is a moral law – its that simple. 

My conclusion: an external Mind is not the best explanation for the phenomenon Lewis observes in Ch. 1.  Our own minds are.