Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Lewis' "Liar, Lunatic, or Lord" argument?

this is called lewis's trilemma, and it has long been dissected and correctly dismissed, even ridiculed, by many philosophers and other thinkers, incl. believers. there are several holes not one. first, contrary to what u seem to imply, the gospels, even as much as they have messed with by lying believers, nonetheless do not support this logic. jesus is nowhere quoted as saying anything that would make him the literal son of god; he is even depicted as being cagey about whether he was the messiah (even in his last conversation with pilate). he never calls himself the son of god, and even if he did, that would not mean what lewis umes since in the old testament lots of people are called that. note too that even paul does not claim to be the literal son of god (or of a virgin mother). what other people such as the authors of the gospels claim is not relevant of course since the argument is about what jesus claimed. second, there are plenty of examples of people who have taught great truths while being liars and/or lunatics on other points, e.g., gandhi, who was a pedophile AND at times called for the wholesale slaughter of indian muslims, or newton, who discovered the theory that in the end got rid of god but at the same time not only defended religion but also devoted time to astrology, or darwin, who was a racist, or godel, who discovered one of the greatest results in mathematics (for those who do not know him he figures as one of einstein's friends in the movie IQ) but was literally insane (he apparently starved himself to death), and so on. third, besides liar and lunatic we have the category of "simply misLED". someone can be sane and honest and yet be wrong.

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