Another World - C.S Lewis

“If I find in myself desires which nothing in this world can satisfy, the only logical explanation is that I was made for another world.”

― C.S. Lewis

C.S Lewis on Reading Literature

We realize it best when we talk with an unliterary friend. He may be full of goodness and good sense but he inhabits a tiny world. In it, we should be suffocated. The man who is contented to be only himself, and therefore less a self, is in prison. My own eyes are not enough for me, I will see through those of others. Reality, even seen through the eyes of many, is not enough. I will see what others have invented. Even the eyes of all humanity are not enough. I regret that the brutes cannot write books.... in reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like a night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do

C.S Lewis

When a man is getting better and worse - C.S Lewis

"When a man is getting better, he understands more and more clearly the evil that's left in him. When a man is getting worse, he understands his own badness less and less."

- C.S Lewis 

Possible Gods and Goddesses - C.S Lewis

“It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which,if you say it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree helping each other to one or the other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilites, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all of our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. nations, cultures, arts, civilizations - These are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit - immortal horrors or everlasting splendors.”

C.S Lewis 

Can we be truly free? - Philip Vander Est

We are accustomed, in ordinary conversation, to dismiss any argument if it can be shown to rely wholly on prejudice or some other irrational factor or premise. But if atheism is true, our minds are wholly dependent on our brains (because we have no souls) and our brains are only accidental by-products of the physical universe. This means that all our thoughts, beliefs and choices, are simply the inevitable result of a long chain of non-rational causes. How then can we have free will or attach any validity or importance to our reasoning processes? If we are bound to think or behave the way we do because of our internal biochemistry, how can we be free agents or know that we are in possession of objective truths about science, ethics, or politics?

If our perception and use of the rules of logic are merely the inevitable end product of a long chain of random and purposeless physical and chemical events, how can we know that our examination of facts and arguments yields real knowledge? Surely, if atheism is true, our thoughts and values have no more significance than the sound of waves on a seashore, as C.S. Lewis argued at length and so convincingly in his famous book, Miracles¹. Indeed, even some atheists have recognized the extent of the problem of knowledge for philosophical materialists. To quote one famous Marxist scientist of the 1940s, Professor Haldane: ‘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...’ (Possible Worlds).

- Philip Vander Est

Thought - C.S Lewis

"Supposing there was no intelligence behind the universe, no creative mind. In that case, nobody designed my brain for the purpose of thinking. It is merely that when the atoms inside my skull happen, for physical or chemical reasons, to arrange themselves in a certain way, this gives me, as a by-product, the sensation I call thought. But, if so, how can I trust my own thinking to be true? It's like upsetting a milk jug and hoping that the way it splashes itself will give you a map of London. But if I can't trust my own thinking, of course I can't trust the arguments leading to Atheism, and therefore have no reason to be an Atheist, or anything else. Unless I believe in God, I cannot believe in thought: so I can never use thought to disbelieve in God."

- C.S Lewis

Why you can't "see through" everything - C.S Lewis

“The kind of explanation which explains things away may give us something, though at a heavy cost. But you cannot go on ‘explaining away’ for ever: you will find that you have explained explanation itself away. You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. 

The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. It is good that the window should be transparent, because the street or garden beyond it is opaque. How if you saw through the garden too? It is no use trying to ‘see through’ first principles. 

If you see through everything, then everything is transparent. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see through’ all things is the same as not to see.”

- C.S Lewis, The Abolition of Man

The First Things Principle - C.S Lewis

“Put first things first and we get second things thrown in: put second things first and we lose both first and second things. We never get, say, even the sensual pleasure of food at its best when we are being greedy.”

- C.S Lewis

Rationality and Materialism according to C.S Lewis

"If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too.  If so, then all our thought processes are mere accidents-the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms.  And this holds for the materialists' and astronomers; as well as for anyone else's.  But if their thoughts are merely accidental by-products...why should we believe them to be true?  I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give a correct account of all the other accidents."

- C.S Lewis

The Real Reason for Democracy - C.S Lewis

"I am a democrat because I believe in the Fall of Man.

I think most people are democrats for the opposite reason. A great deal of democratic enthusiasm descends from the ideas of people like Rousseau, who believed in democracy because they thought mankind so wise and good that every one deserved a share in the government.

The danger of defending democracy on those grounds is that they're not true...I find that they're not true without looking further than myself. I don't deserve a share in governing a hen-roost. Much less a nation...

The real reason for democracy is just the reserve. Mankind is so fallen that no man can be trusted with unchecked power over his fellows. Aristotle sat that some people were only fit to be slaves. I do not contradict him. But I reject slavery because I see no men fit to be masters."

- C.S Lewis