A case against Naturalism (based on Miracles, by C.S. Lewis)
“I use the word Miracle to mean an interference with Nature by supernatural power. […] Some people believe that nothing exists except Nature; I call these people Naturalists. Others think that, besides Nature, there exists something else: I call them Supernaturalists.”
That’s how C.S. Lewis starts the second chapter of the book Miracles and he spends at least half of the book with arguments against Naturalism and in favor of Supernaturalism. I must confess I expected a little bit more of theology per se in the book. The book is wonderful in the apologetics aspect as it shows a lot of arguments, why miracles should not be discarded upfront, and why we should focus on the Grand Miracle (the resurrection of Jesus) as the basis of our arguments supporting miracles in general. However, he does not spend much time on Bible verses and analyzing how we can see that God shows us that He performs miracles. He also says nothing regarding miracles in our current days and does not explore theological debates. In short, I gave 4 stars in my GoodReads review.
Let’s focus here, then, on the arguments against Naturalism and in favor of Supernaturalism. He continues the second chapter with a caveat: “It by no means follows from Supernaturalism that Miracles of any sort do in fact occur. God (the primary thing) may never in fact interfere with the natural system He has created.” So we must remember that even after these arguments, it is still necessary to do another step toward miracles, we are not done. On the other hand, if Naturalism is true, it indeed follows that miracles do not happen: since there is nothing besides Nature, no supernatural power can come to interfere.
I already knew the first argument Lewis uses, but I was pretty sure this was an argument created by Alvin Plantinga. I have watched William Lane Craig mentioning this a lot of times and also read in Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview as Plantinga’s evolutionary argument against naturalism. As “Miracles” was originally published in 1947, when Plantinga was only 15 years old, I assume they are just different versions for the same general idea. Let’s see how C.S. Lewis’ starts:
“All possible knowledge, then, depends on the validity of reasoning. If the feeling of certainty which we express by words like must be and therefore and since is a real perception of how things outside our own minds really ‘must’ be, well and good. But if this certainty is merely a feeling in our own minds and not a genuine insight into realities beyond them — if it merely represents the way our minds happen to work — then we can have no knowledge. Unless human reasoning is valid no science can be true. […] ‘If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true … and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.’ (Possible Worlds, p. 209). […] This, as it seems to me, is what Naturalism is bound to do. It offers what professes to be a full account of our mental behaviour; but this account, on inspection, leaves no room for the acts of knowing or insight on which the whole value of our thinking, as a means to truth, depends.”
Did you follow his line of thought? How can we trust our own mental faculties if they are just a product of Nature? Nature itself does not what truth or falsehood is and so Naturalism becomes self-refuting:
- Suppose Naturalism is true;
- If Naturalism is true, then we should not trust our own mental faculties;
- Therefore: We should not trust our own mental faculties;
- If we should not trust our own mental faculties, then we cannot know if anything is true;
- Therefore: We can not know if anything is true;
- Therefore: We can not know if Naturalism is true.
It is possible to see that supposing Naturalism is true we end up that we cannot know whether or not Naturalism is true. Plantinga’s version focus on the evolutionary aspect of Naturalism, i.e. if we are just part of a random evolutionary process and evolution does not seek truth, then we can not trust our beliefs are true. Lewis also has his version of this idea:
“If there is nothing but Nature, therefore, reason must have come into existence by a historical process. And of course, for the Naturalist, this process was not designed to produce a mental behaviour that can find truth. There was no Designer; and indeed, until there were thinkers, there was no truth or falsehood. The type of mental behaviour we now call rational thinking or inference must therefore have been ‘evolved’ by natural selection, by the gradual weeding out of types less fitted to survive. Once, then, our thoughts were not rational. That is, all our thoughts once were, as many of our thoughts still are, merely subjective events, not apprehensions of objective truth.”
From this point on we start to see a focus on the arguments in favor of Supernaturalism or the author showing that Supernaturalists are not subject to the problems that Naturalists are. The Theist believes reason is older than Nature, as it comes from God, and in this way our acts of knowing should be trusted as they are based on Divine reason. Here we can see that “acts of reasoning are not interlocked with the total interlocking system of Nature as all its other items are interlocked with one another”, i.e. reasoning is somehow outside Nature, it exists on its own. The author tries to make clear that he is not defending that consciousness as a whole is outside Nature and he is not dealing with the dualism of mind and matter or even body and soul. At this point, I’m not sure if Lewis believes in this dualism or if he is just trying to avoid more time on this subject.
In the following chapter, C. S. Lewis uses an argument that I have already seen William Lane Craig using, which basically says that a Naturalism worldview is not consistent with the way we live. That is to say, someone who is Naturalist may say that only Nature exists and, for example, that moral values do not really exist, but are rather something we learned from evolution; nevertheless, they act in their daily lives as if moral values really existed, and as Naturalism was not indeed true.
“The Naturalist can, if he chooses, brazen it out. He can say, ‘Yes. I quite agree that there is no such thing as wrong and right. I admit that no moral judgement can be “true” or “correct” and, consequently, that no one system of morality can be better or worse than another. All ideas of good and evil are hallucinations — shadows cast on the outer world by the impulses which we have been conditioned to feel.’ Indeed many Naturalists are delighted to say this. But then they must stick to it; and fortunately (though inconsistently) most real Naturalists do not. A moment after they have admitted that good and evil are illusions, you will find them exhorting us to work for posterity, to educate, revolutionise, liquidate, live and die for the good of the human race.”
It is often seen Naturalists saying they accept that morality is an illusion and they are just pressing you out to adopt a system of morality they have found out to be good to preserve human race alive. Despite that, Lewis continues by saying that our actions to make moral judgments are only valid if there is some sort of absolute moral wisdom that is not a product or a non-moral, non-rational Nature.
After all these arguments, we must continue to remember that “Human Reason and Morality have been mentioned not as instances of Miracle […] but as proofs of the Supernatural”. We are in fact not talking about Miracles yet and will probably do this in another post, but I really think we were able to provide an interesting case against Naturalism based on the ideas present by C.S. Lewis in his book Miracles, so let’s finish with Lewis’ conclusion for all of what has been said:
“on our view, Nature as a whole is herself one huge result of the Supernatural: God created her. God pierces her wherever there is a human mind. God presumably maintains her in existence. The question is whether He ever does anything else to her. Does He, besides all this, ever introduce into her events of which it would not be true to say, ‘This is simply the working out of the general character which He gave to Nature as a whole in creating her’?”
Hope you had a good time reading this!
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Please, let your comments below with questions or considerations about the book, the blog, or whatever it’s in your mind. Here we were able to cover chapters 2–6 from the book Miracles by C.S. Lewis, approximately 25%. I’ll try to write more posts about this book since I think there are many other nice things to cover yet, and my next book will be “Prayer: Experiencing Awe and Intimacy with God” by Timothy Keller. Tim Keller was one of the best author I have read in the last few years, I think, so I am super excited to start reading another book from him. If you want to know more about one of his books, I have already written a little bit about “Center Church” here.
