Sunday, November 4, 2007
The Rival Conceptions of God
I thought this was a very interesting essay. Lewis did a good job of explaining Christianity in a way I had never really thought about it. His use of metaphors and similes. It really helped me to understand what he was saying. Had he not used some of these metaphors I may not have been able to follow this essay. For example when he was trying to describe Pantheism I had no idea what he was talking about or why it was a bad thing until he threw in the metaphors about the human body and the painter painting a picture. This was a very deep essay, but made very understandable by Lewis.
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3 comments:
I agree with Jen. I liked his use of examples too. This subject dealt with some complex ideas, but Lewis did a good job at using enough examples in the right places to support his argument and simplify it by associating it with more concrete ideas. I thought it was interesting that instead of using metaphors to compare an abstract idea to a concrete object, he used metaphors to compare abstract ideas to slightly less abstract ideas.
I thought that the way he began this essay was very efficient. I liked that he started out talking about how he was going to start by explaining what Christians do not believe. It was however kind of a confusing essay. Lewis lost me at a few points in his essay, and I had to read back over some paragraphs to understand them. Overall I thought he did a good job with it. He does use some good illustrations like Amanda and Jenny said like the painter, and also when he talks about atheism where he proves it to be to simple as he says.
I agreed with Nate, there were some paragraphs I needed to re-read to understand. I really like the "cancer and the surgeon" example. What constitutes something as bad? Take it further - a prison guard killing a prisoner or a prisoner killing a prison guard... which is more wrong? C.S. Lewis is only positing questions that mankind has delt with for melliniums! This is nothing new. I disagree with his thoughts on Atheism (obviously). To me, yes, it is clear there is no god. But it is equally convenient to suppose that there is a creator (in spite of modern understanding) who is above every law that governs the natural world.
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