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Originally Posted by Mycroft
That doesn't count, as it is a neutral statement with which I can neither agree nor disagree.
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Sorry. I was sticking to the Six-Word Rule and didn't feel like using up valuable glucose to provide something of actual value.
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...also, to stop sounding like a robot, I have a read a bit of his defense of Christianity and while I can't argue that it's eloquent and well-composed, he is guilty of what I've found every NT Christian I've encountered on these boards and in real life to be guilty of: rather than applying his intellect to drawing conclusions via the rigors of logic, he puts the cart before the horse, starting with his conclusion/belief, then going on to use his intellect in the defense of what he wants to believe. I.e., rather than logic leading to belief, he begins with the belief then uses logic to support his not not believing.
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I haven't read Lewis for a long time, to be honest (15-20 years?). What you describe is my current problem with faith issues: The conclusions are assumed, then logic is used to support them or show why they could easily be true.
And this is why I mentioned him specifically in regard to the form of apologetics I was describing in my post: Pattern recognition. It is really the style of support that enabled me to believe for such a long time -- I can see patterns in life, which I take to then be true, which then suggest or insinuate things about spiritual reality. And for a long time, that is what I operated from -- using observable patterns to justify spiritual belief or support what I had been told was true and what seemed to be true. (This is why I said for awhile that Christianity seemed "reasonable" to me. That is the most that can be said with pattern recognition style logic.)
But I eventually reached a point where I recognized that might all be fancy on my part -- proof of nothing. And I wanted something more rigorous, where I started with the data and developed my conclusions from it. So that is where I am at now.
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In the words of the Great Sage Shatner, I can't get behind that.
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Oh, Shatner is a master at striking from behind!