Talk:Lewis Trilemma
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Prox[edit]
- Has a decision been taken to remove Trivia sections from articles?
- The Trivia section adds to the article and I hope it stays. Proxima Centauri (talk) 11:35, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
Purpose[edit]
Was this argument actually meant to establish the worship of Jesus? I thought it was only intended to shoot down those who already accepted the existence of Jesus, and the accuracy of the mundane segments of the Gospels, but not his divinity. Sake Fueled (talk) 09:41, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
- You are correct. I wouldn't be surprised, though, if Christian apologists applied the argument overbroadly. (talk to a) Nihilist 15:54, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
The truth[edit]
There probably was a person called Rabbi Joshua ben Joseph who promoted his 'religious-polital-ethical world view' and who had a following.
There were also any number of other persons promoting their own r-p-e worldviews', who did not get a sufficient following/did not get spin doctors/gospel-writers - including those working with the colonial rulers, and the Siccari.
The various trilemmas/polylemmas with regard to the gospel writers, the gospel selectors and the gospel interpreters have also to be considered.
The result - something that looks like a medieval hall full of sets of antlers. 82.44.143.26 (talk) 16:21, 25 March 2014 (UTC)
O noes we're not rational[edit]
If you listen to the Christian upvote brigade, anyway. FuzzyCatPotato!™ (talk/stalk) 16:28, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
Hitchens quote[edit]
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==Lewis gets Hitchslapped== [[Christopher Hitchens]] takes up the old coot on his trilemma, shedding the following light in ''God Is Not Great'';<ref>[[Christopher Hitchens]], ''[[God Is Not Great|God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything]]'' (p. 118-120)</ref> {{quotebox|There were many deranged [[prophet]]s roaming [[Palestine]] at the time, but [[Jesus|this one]] reportedly believed himself, at least some of the time, to be [[God]] or the son of God. And that has made all the difference. Make just two assumptions, that he believed this and that he also promised his followers that he would reveal his kingdom before they came to the end of their own lives, and all but one or two of his gnomic remarks make some kind of sense. This point was never put more frankly than by C. S. Lewis (who has recently reemerged as the most popular [[Christian]] [[apologist]]) in his ''Mere Christianity''. He happens to be speaking about the claim of Jesus to take sins on himself: Now, unless the speaker is God, this is really so preposterous as to be comic.<br> We can all understand how a man forgives offenses against himself. You tread on my toes and I forgive you, you steal my money and I forgive you. But what should we make of a man, himself unrobbed and untrodden-on, who announced that he forgave you for treading on other men’s toes and stealing other men’s money? Asinine fatuity is the kindest description we should give of his conduct. Yet this is what Jesus did. He told people that their [[sin]]s were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if he really was the God [[List_of_actions_prohibited_by_the_Bible|whose laws]] are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin. In the mouth of any speaker who is not God, these words would imply what I can only regard as a silliness and conceit unrivalled by any other character in history. It will be noticed that Lewis assumes on no firm evidence whatever that Jesus actually was a “character in history,” but let that pass. He deserves some credit for accepting the [[logic]] and [[morality]] of what he has just stated.<br> To {{wpl|Christian Atheism|those who argue that Jesus may have been a great moral teacher without being divine}} (of whom the [[deist]] [[Thomas Jefferson]] incidentally claimed to be one), Lewis has this stinging riposte: :That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the [[Devil]] of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman and something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a [[demon]]; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.<br> I am not choosing a [[straw man]] here: Lewis is the main chosen [[propaganda]] vehicle for Christianity in our time. And nor am I accepting his rather wild [[supernatural]] categories, such as devil and demon. Least of all do I accept his reasoning, which is so pathetic as to defy description and which takes his [[False_dilemma|two false alternatives as exclusive antitheses]], and then uses them to fashion a crude [[non sequitur]] (“Now it seems to me obvious that He was neither a lunatic nor a fiend: and consequently, however strange or terrifying or unlikely it may seem, I have to accept the view that He was and is God.”). However, I do credit him with honesty and with some courage. Either the [[Gospel]]s are in some sense [[Biblical_literalism|literal truth]], or the whole thing is essentially a [[Lie|fraud]] and perhaps an immoral one at that.<br> Well, it can be stated with certainty, and on their own evidence, that the Gospels are most certainly not [[Biblical_literalism|literal truth]]. This means that many of the “sayings” and teachings of Jesus are hearsay upon hearsay upon hearsay, which helps explain their [[Biblical_contradictions|garbled and contradictory nature]]. The most glaring of these, at least in retrospect and certainly from the [[Belief|believer]]s’ point of view, concern the imminence of [[Second_Coming|his second coming]] and his complete indifference to the founding of any temporal church. The logia or reported speeches are repeatedly cited, by bishops of the early church who wished that they had been present at the time but were not, as eagerly solicited thirdhand commentaries.}} |
It doesn't actually directly address the issue, but instead talks about biblical authenticity for quite awhile, which shows a fourth choice -- "Jesus's words were faked" -- which we can make more directly, I think. Herr FuzzyKatzenPotato (talk/stalk) 16:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
- I narrowed down the segment to the parts that are exactly right on the Lewis Trilemma. Hitchens' treatment of said trilemma in the very passage I quote (with source) is one of the best atheist analyses of the trilemma thus far written, while being fairly short and to the point - even more so after I shortened the section down. I strongly recommend that we keep it as it has now been re-added. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 02:24, 11 March 2016 (UTC)
4. Hypocrisy is Impossible—So?[edit]
I'm probably just missing something, but...why does hypocrisy matter to the Lewis Trilemma? It's given a couple paragraphs' worth of text, but I don't see how the possibility of hypocrisy affects Lewis's argument or its flaws. GreatWyrmGold (talk) 20:23, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
- Well, it's because Lewis has given us a three-headed
serpentversion of the classic false dilemma, this time known as a false trilemma. It's the same basic animal — Lewis is demanding that we ignore every option but the ones he has pre-selected for us (because that's how he phrased the question). Thus, he invites criticism based on how well he pre-selects the options.
- In other words, he's left us with an "either-or"-type situation. But despite the human penchant for reducting everything to binary propositions
, that's not necessarily how the world works. One outstanding option not given is the one that is perhaps most damning to the religious mindset — the mere possibility that Jesus was just bullshitting people for attention, worship, fame and/or money — much like today's equivalenttelevangelists and cult leaders do?
- You can actually become a famous millionaire simply by bullshitting people (and in that regard, RW is a huge index of various such "success stories"). People do do this, as unimaginable as it sounds to all the hundreds of millions (perhaps billions) of us human beings who wouldn't have the stomach to become cult leaders if we tried.
- The question is, could Jesus have done it? It's certainly not categorically impossible, that much is plain. There's actually support for the notion that he was a charlatan of sorts (as there is for countless other mutually incompatible notions) in scripture. There's historical parallells to group psychology and cults. And, vitally — no matter how you slice it — a cult of worship was certainly born around the man.
- In the light of these basic facts, surely anything that could be ascribed to him being a madman surely could just as well be ascribed to him being a professional troll of sorts? I'm not saying it's likely, I'm saying that certainly it's not impossible.
- And as such, the main point here is directed against Lewis (not Jesus). Lewis' false trilemma fails completely. And to no surprise — it's what false dilemmas tend to do. Reverend Black Percy (talk) 20:44, 3 February 2017 (UTC)
Not a trilemma at all?[edit]
If I understand the concept of dilemma (and by extension trilemma) right, the options must be mutually exclusive. However, Jesus COULD be God's son, erroneously believing that he isn't, due to insanity, yet lie about this, and present himself as God's son. Or is it not lying when you believe a falsehood and thus tell the truth when you attempt to lie about it?
- Lewis's trilemma falls under the fallacy of the false dichotomy, or would that be "false trichotomy"? It's fallacious because it arbitrarily assumes that there are only three options when it comes to the truth of the Gospels, when in fact there are far more than three options. — Ɖøn Ĵuan Harass 16:29, 21 December 2018 (UTC)
- I'd add libelled and legend, making it at least a pentalemma. (There's also the possibility that an idiom or metaphor has been taken too literally, but a one word alliterative summary escapes me.) 87.75.44.190 (talk) 00:45, 21 August 2022 (UTC)