Miracles (the book) by C.S. Lewis

I'm sorry. I promised all of you that I would write about the books I'm reading. I have failed to do so.

I need to get a better method of reading and retaining what I'm reading. I think that Justin Sink back at Louisiana Tech had a book called "How to Read a Book". I saw it a few months ago on Piper's web site. Maybe I'll pick it up or check it out and take a look.

Right now, I've got a few chapters left in Lewis' "Miracles". I really enjoy this book. This is chapter after chapter of the philosophical Lewis from Mere and The Problem of Pain. What really amazes me is the striking similarity between Lewis' arguments for the validity of reason based on the impossibility of the contrary and the "Transcendental Argument for the Existance of God" put forth by the late presuppositional Christian apologist Greg Bahnsen, as best seen in his debate with athiest Dr. Gordon Stein. Lewis, in his chapter entitled "On Probability" expresses the main point that Bahnsen was making in the debate:

"The whole idea of Probability (as Hume understands it) depends on the principle of the Uniformity of Nature. Unless Nature always goes on in the same way, the fact that a thing had happened ten million times would not make it a whit more probable that it would happen again. And how do we know the Uniformity of Nature? A moment's thought shows that we do not know it by experience. We observe many regularities in Nature. But of course all the observations that men have made or will make while the race lasts cover only a minute fraction of the events that actually go on. Our observations would therefore be of no use unless we felt sure that Nature when we are not watching her behaves in the same way as when we are: in other words, unless we believed in the Uniformity of Nature. Experience therefore cannot prove uniformity, because uniformity has to be assumed before experience proves anything."

That's why I love to read Lewis.

Bahnsen said essentially the same thing in his debate, calling "Uniformity of Nature" "The Laws of Logic" and saying that they have to be "presupposed" instead of "assumed." I just wonder how much, if any, that Bahnsen read Lewis' work?


It's late right now, but I want to finish this thought in a much more thorough way. Please remind me.