Mere Christianity, Chapter 6*

*Really, Book 2 chapter 1, but keeping track of all the books seems
too confusing.

Lewis first explains that being christian doesn't mean believing
that everything else is totally wrong - he again reverts to a math
problem, showing that while there are many wrong answers, some are
much nearer to being right than others. I find this an encouragingly
fair- minded argument, given his belief that there is some sort of
universal rule that we will be judged against. Its very easy to say
we have done the problem right, and everybody else is wrong, but much
harder to allow for varying amounts of 'partial credit' among people
who you are at odds with - it means looking for the good in people
who you disagree with, trying to find the silver lining in each
heathen cloud.

Lewis next tries to position Christianity within the broad spectrum
of human beliefs along a variety of fundamental questions. The first
division is 'God or no god,' in which Christianity clearly falls in
the 'Gods' category. The second division is on the nature of the god:
Is it beyond 'good' and 'evil,' or definitely 'good'? Christianity
clearly fits the second category.

I find this a tremendously interesting approach. First, I would want
to flesh out his divisions a bit more: what does the 'no gods' part
of his spectrum look like? Is this true atheism, or would agnosticism
fit here as well? Where would my thoughts on the personified laws of
nature god fit? Can god be categorized in other ways than simply
'good' or 'neutral'? His divisions are convenient, but incomplete,
and seem to me to leave out a lot of the juicier parts of human
imagination and history.

For the god/no god division, to me it seems that rather than a simple
either/or, this needs to be some kind of spectrum. Absolute atheism
on one end, an actively participating single god on the other, and a
middle range that could consist of an inactive, apathetic, or
unreachable god, personified natural phenomena, or a combination of
all of the above.

On the second point, on whether god is 'beyond good or evil' or
'purely good.' This dichotomy only makes sense if you accept that
there is only one god. As soon as you allow for the possibility of
multiple gods, then the question becomes meaningless - you can have
gods that are both ways, and worship either as fits you.

I'd rather recast the rang of human thought as a two dimensional
graph: Power of the God and Involvement with humanity. You can have a
highly powerful god who is not involved in the world, or very weak
gods who are constantly involved, and anything in between. In such a
diagram, Christianity would sit in the High Power/ High involvement
corner, while Buddhism might fall in the High Power, Low Involvement
corner, and Ancestor worship might land be described as Low Power/
High involvement. Near the center, we might find the greek and roman
pantheons, deities that were powerful (but not omnipotent) and that
got involved in human life (usually to mess things up.)