Why I called CS Lewis a Garbage Christian Apologist
Mr. Zod Extracurricular | 4 Febr. 2026
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rpCDOZK-lk
1:48 Starting the video.
Combativeness doesn't discredit people to me, or to many CSL fans who have also liked Repicheep. However, a term like that, to me, isn't a sign of combativeness, but trying to win by walkover, by deterring undecideds from examining your opponent.
3:14 "everybody, since it came out?"
I think CSL, as an actual scholar of literature, has a bigger overview over what people have been saying about Paradise Lost than you and I.
Now, it is some time since I read his preface to one of the editions, but unless he mentioned and I forgot, or overlooked Pope (whom he was too allergic to), what he said about making Satan sympathetic started with Byron. A good century and a half if not two since the poem.
Perhaps I missed sth, perhaps I misrecalled, perhaps CSL missed Pope (he was under the impression of there being something Satanically arrogant in saying "I must be proud to see, men not afraid of God, afraid of me" ... he was probably rejoicing in heard prayers, like "da mihi virtutem contra hostes tuos"), but can you point to someone (including Pope if you know his work better) who agreed with Byron closer to when Milton wrote?
4:21 Simplification doesn't equal garbage.
5:04 My lay XXth C. bastion of Christian thinking is more like Chesterton, Belloc, to some extent Tolkien, and CSL fills in some chinks, but not unimportant ones.
6:56 "silly and juvenile"
Preferable to senile and judgy, perhaps?
He'd have thought it. But what can one expect from a principal ... was it Wyvern or Experiment House?
7:37 Oh, dear ... you will consider this a shortcut then.
We see Sun, Moon, "system Planets" and fix stars move around Earth each day. Closer observation has shown that what we observe is too intricate an order to be credible as purely accidental or following from simple laws of nature only, or rather the causalities described by such laws, and obviously, since Epicure, people haven't really been eager to uphold his theory this is a vortex, nor has a better mechanism of purely mechanistic order been proposed for Geocentrism.
So.
Geocentrism can't be explained without God.
From here, we can reason two ways.
Geocentrism can't be explained without God.
God doesn't exist.
Therefore Geocentrism doesn't hold.
Geocentrism can't be explained without God.
Geocentrism is observed.
Therefore God exists.
8:13 Just to be clear. I have read Narnia, Till We Have Faces, Screwtape Letters, Space Trilogy, The Great Divorce, Pilgrim's Regress.*
Even so, I have the impression to have read at least as much of his Apologetics prose in essay collections.**
On some very few issues, he actually was shoddy, and that's why I credit Tolkien, Chesterton and Belloc more than him. In dismissing Belloc, for instance. Apologetics isn't one of them, except he was sloppy enough in Miracles chapter 3 to pretend that the big story of Evolution (not pepper moths) is sth we know from reason.
8:48 I'm very sorry, but you were sloppy enough to glide from Atheism (in the shape it was known to him back then) to Atheists, as you know them from personal acquaintance now.
I think there is plenty of attestation in 20th C. Atheists' writings on the topic, they thought the Universe didn't have any meaning, unless you shut out the visions about the Cold Death*** of the universe, and concentrated only on Evolution while ongoing. And that wouldn't be assigning meaning to the universe, but to the ecosystem we live in, which is a different affair.
CSL wasn't speaking of AtheisTs, as individuals. He was speaking of the AtheisM he had wholeheartedly held and was therefore familiar with.
8:51 "meaning is made within people's minds"
Ouch. You are playing humpty dumpty. You are redefining words.
And in other words, you are also saying, in a different phrasing, that the universe, being on your view not in or of a mind, has no inherent meaning.
So, you are not really criticising Lewis for speaking untruth about your lot, you are just complaining he doesn't use your phrasing.
9:03 Is understanding about connections you create, or is there an objectively correct understanding, on at least some levels?
If there is no objectively correct understanding, on any level, you have just given up what used to be the claims of science to understand the world we live in correctly. You have also given up logic.
10:18 There is a good way to do presuppositionalism and a bad way.
We don't presuppose Christianity to be true in our premisses for Christianity. But we do presuppose reason to be reason, i e objectively correct, before we use it.
The former would be a circulus in probando. The latter is just what you need in order to reject circulos in probando.
Unlike Hovind Jr. (Erik or Eric?) CSL is doing it the good way.
10:18 bis. Saying "presuppositionalism is a sad place to be" and saying "CSL is a garbage Christian apologist" is pretty much the same thing.
a) It's the same form of dismissiveness.
b) through Miracles, a preliminary study, CSL and presuppositionalism are closely connected.
CSL does presuppositionalism on reason and morals in Mere Christianity and in Miracles, and at least on morals once again in Abolition of Man. It is I think also at least strongly hinted at in The Problem of Pain. Years since I read these, but still.
9:50 (returning to)
"if you break it down"
If you are any thing like intelligent, you can obviously see that CSL's argument is nonsense and the Emperor's new clothes are magnificent.
Like that fictional example of gaslighting, you did however leave the work to the other guys intelligence ... or shame.
No, I do think CSL has a valid point about what kinds of things we can make points about. Especially on Evolutionary assumptions. On your assumption, a universe without visible light would have not developed eyes in any creature. And obviously to all, "light" and "dark" are meaningless to those born blind. Unless they get their sight belatedly through operation or miracle.
10:27 "that God must exist or sth like that"
Thanks for providing an example of the simplification that's really not just glossy, but dishonest.
The full argument would be sth less easy to debunk.
1) Reason cannot evolve. Cannot emerge from evolution. Is not a simple brain movement (or a complicated one, for that matter).
2) Man hasn't always been around.
3) Man's ancestry (yes, he's supposing Evolution to be true, which I disagree with, but which gives an excellent "even from your pov") didn't have reason.
4) Man's existence depends, insofar as Man is reasoning, on an eternal reason, so non-emergent, and supra-human, since we are emergent.
Try debunking that if you like.
10:38 I would rather say, two things.
1) An abstraction, as such, is not a substance.
2) It is however always some aspect of a substance, or of an aspect.
There are guys who feel they are good at handling abstractions while forgetting these. Who think that the abstraction we Christians deal with is anyway just a minor subset or special case.
Yes, compared to algebra with imaginary numbers, classic geometry and arithmetic are indeed special cases insofar as they are directly based in reality. You actually do not escape St. Tommy's "infinitum non est pertransire" by calling him bad at abstractions and you do not escape a conclusion about a First mover by pretending 1 only comes after zero and zero only after minus 1. Reality is a special case insofar as it is actually real. The number line, isn't, unless you speak of "relative numbers" ... it is plus one that is on the other side of minus one around zero and plus one means "one more than" ... but numeric actual amounts are still starting at 1.
10:51 That "thought is generated in our heads" is, not a proven fact, not a well explained theorem, but, rather, a claim on the Atheist side, and one disputed by the Christian side.
The question isn't if the movements can conform to reason. The question is if reason, even as abstraction, can be about those movements. A very different question.
The atheist gets it as "it has to be, since there is nothing over and above that" ...
The problem is, this is logically impossible, it cannot explain the experience that reason is there. In fact, not even as an illusion.
[Tried to add:]
Thanks for showing your willingness to deflect from debate in favour of a vague impression of giving conventional (so presumably correct) information.
I break off here for today, since my comments after "9:50 (returning to)" have been deleted.
* These works are works of fiction. The last one auto-fiction. ** And in his autobiography, selected passages, and in various passages of these fictions, most of all Pilgrim's Regress. *** This has since then been denied by Carl Sagan who wants to imagine universes following on eachother in a series of Big Bang's and Big Crushes, rather than a single universe with a Big Bang in the far past and a Big Freeze in the far future. Obviously, Sagan wasn't around in Lewis' time.
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