What is Lewis's Trilemma? (Liar, Lunatic, or Lord?)
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 вер 2024
- A video briefly examining the argument from C.S. Lewis called Lewis's Trilemma, the Liar, Lunatic, or Lord, Argument, the Mad, Bad or God argument, the conman, madman, or God argument, or the charlatan, madman or God argument. This video introduces two forms of the argument and previews the objections we will make to both versions in the argument in the coming series.
Sponsors: NBA_Ruby, Antybodi, Federico Galvão, Mike Gloudemans, Andrew Sullivan, Eugene SY, Tyler James, Antoinemp1, Dennis Sexton, Joao Sa, Joshua Furman, Multitude, Ploney, Avatar, Diéssica, GhostlyYorick, Hendrick McDonald, horace chan, Will DeRousse, Star Gazer, Paul Linkogle, Julian Seidl, Doǧan Çetin, and Daniel West. Thanks for your support on Patreon! If you want to become a patron, follow this link: / carneades
Here are some videos you might enjoy:
The 100 Days of Logic ( • 100 Days of Logic (Full) )
History of Philosophy ( • Four Weeks of Famous P... )
Ancient Philosophers & Zeno’s Paradoxes ( • Schools of Ancient Gre... )
ExPhi Experimental Philosophy ( / @experimentalphilosoph... )
Map of Philosophy ( • The Map Of Philosophy )
More videos with Carneades ( / @carneadesofcyrene )
Philosophy by Topic:
Epistemology: • Epistemology
Metaphysics: • Metaphysics
Political Philosophy: • Political Philosophy
Philosophy of Religion: • Philosophy of Religion
Ancient Philosophy: • Ancient Philosophy
Philosophy of Science: • Philosophy of Science
Philosophy of Language: • Philosophy of Language
Philosophy of Art/Aesthetics: • Philosophy of Art (Aes...
Buy stuff with Zazzle: www.zazzle.com...
Follow us on Twitter: @CarneadesCyrene / carneadescyrene
Information for this video gathered from The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy, The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, The Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, The Collier-MacMillan Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the Dictionary of Continental Philosophy, and more!
I think the trilemma is only an option if one accepts already that he is a historical figure and that the gospel accounts we have of him accurately present his sayings.
The other options such as legend, myth (does not exist), or never claimed divinity are only plausible if one already rejects the gospels as reliable.
Another: the bible could be entirely reliable as far as quoting Jesus goes, and yet us modern people lack the cultural context to understand what he meant. Metaphors and other non-literal phrasing don't all fall under 'lies'.
That's all more or less addressed in the video.
Not necessarily. The other options path encompasses anyone that denies the trilemma. It is taken both by Biblical scholars such as Bart Ehrman, who argue that Jesus never claimed to be divine, and apologists like William Lane Craig, who denies that these are the only options and claims this is a bad argument for Christianity.
@@CarneadesOfCyrene Extremely minor point, but I think Ehrman's view is that Jesus claimed to be some type of "divine" being, but not God. I could be misremembering though, and it makes relatively little difference to the point you're trying to make above, because, in this context, when you say divine you clearly mean "God."
Both Craig and Alvin Plantinga have expressed doubt about this argument, and they're vigorous defenders of the idea that Christian faith is at least rational to believe, e.g. most of Plantinga's arguments are less "This proves God exists" as "This proves it's not irrational to believe God exists". If the guys with PhDs in Philosophy, whose job it is to make a convincing case for Jesus or at least to make the case that Christianity isn't inherently absurd, don't think Lewis's argument holds water, it might be a good idea to examine it in detail (an argument to authority doesn't make Lewis wrong, but two Christians with credentials finding it weak is a sign we should look for the weaknesses). Which is what this series is doing, so... yep.
Other options:
Mistaken, misunderstood, misrepresented.
I agree,
I think that if people are going to kill you for a misunderstanding, you will do anything in your capabilities to prove that it is a massive misuderstanding. As far as I know there's no proof or text that says that Jesus said that it was a misunderstanding, actually, our only texts say that Jesus was asked if he was the son of God and he kept saying "yes" lol.
I prefer "C.S. Lewis was a lummox," an untalented hack riding the coattails of his contemporaries, but with none of the intellect and detail of Tolkien and none of the wit and self-deprecation of Chesterton. Mere Christianity is such a lame work of apologetics that even other apologists tend to shy away from it. His other books may have captivated children, but that's about the only audience he could ever credibly write for. I do not have a high opinion of the man or his work, is what I'm saying.
As to the argument itself, I don't want to step on the toes of what I expect will be brought up in later videos, but I think Lewis's premises are obviously so flawed that the usefulness of even contemplating the trilemma is in question:
LIAR: There's no reason to think a person could not choose to lie to bolster the credibility of their teachings. Jesus could have lied about possessing some manner of divine power or authority in order to convince otherwise incredulous people to follow what he genuinely believed to be good moral teachings. Good teachings would theoretically be good regardless of whether the teacher is himself a hypocrite, and some people are able to pragmatically justify their own hypocrisy in the name of greater good. While this might be somewhat unlikely, Lewis's contention that anyone who would lie about moral teachings would have to be "the Devil in Hell" is utterly ludicrous hyperbole. If we can even contemplate a logically possible scenario in which a person might reasonably lie for reasons they see as ultimately beneficial to others, we can't rule out the Liar horn.
LUNATIC: Lewis seems to believe that a crazy person is incapable of functioning. This shows (as usual) his complete lack of both imagination and knowledge of people who suffer delusions. There are plenty of people out there who have delusional beliefs about one particular issue, but are otherwise completely functional individuals. Lewis's contention also seems to disregard the distinct possibility that a lunatic is actually MORE likely to draw a following; people pay attention to those who stand out, and a charismatic individual (even if they're nuts) can be quite persuasive (to say nothing of a lunatic's followers possibly being lunatics themselves, as suggested by Carrier). If Lewis's notion of a Lunatic is flawed and doesn't actually produce the individual he's claiming it would, we can't rule out the Lunatic horn.
LORD: What if Jesus genuinely believed himself to have been divine, had some subjective experience that appeared to confirm this, and was merely mistaken? Some people lump this under Lunatic, but I mean this in the sense that Jesus was a rational man being deceived by forces intending that he be led to make claims that he felt were justified but which were in fact untrue. For example, malicious aliens used advanced technology to convince Jesus that he really did have the power to heal the sick; these same aliens later revived him from death, leading him to preach resurrection as he genuinely believed he had been raised from the dead by God. While I'm sure Lewis would argue this scenario is implausibly silly, it is self-evidently more probable than that God exists and that Jesus was correct in believing he received supernatural powers from God and/or was God. We have evidence that space travel, medical technology, and malicious gaslighting exist, as well as reasons to think that life may be possible elsewhere in our surprisingly old universe; we have no such evidence that divine beings of any sort exist. If we can find a more statistically likely explanation for all the same claimed facts regarding Jesus's powers, no matter how improbable that explanation is, we can't "rule in" the Lord horn.
I rarely see an argument with so many disagreeable premises
Lewis forgot one very important possibility: Legend.
"[Jesus] certainly existed, as virtually every competent scholar of antiquity, Christian or non-Christian, agrees, based on certain and clear evidence" - Bart Ehrmann, 2011.
The trilemma may be a bad argument, but the consensus of modern scholarship is that Jesus was at least a real person - not a legend.
@@giovoncolon9104 When did I state a mysticism position? The subject doesn’t have to be ficticious for legedary development to occur.
There could very well have been a real person on which the stories about Jesus are based. But that doesn’t exclude the possibility the stories themselves are legend.
Hence: Lewis forgot one very important possibility: Legend.
(Oh, and the irony hasn’t escaped me when you’re quoting a scholar who doesn’t believe any of the supposed miracles happened and believes these are legend … to try and discredit the possibility of it being a legend)
@@giovoncolon9104 Most scholars will agree that Jesus was a real person, but about the most you can get them all to agree on is that he was a) publicly baptized by John the Baptist and b) crucified. This leaves basically the entirety of his teachings up for speculation over what he actually said and meant. So Jesus was a real man, but he could have, for instance, never explicitly claimed to be the Christ, that was just embellishment by his followers, and the rest is history. So in that scenario, Jesus himself was never Lord, Liar, or Lunatic, but his legacy is now defined by Legend.
@@giovoncolon9104 There are real people around whom a fictional lore is built.
@@GapWim I think that the amount of claims that first christians made around the figure of Jesus are just so many that we would have textual arguments against many of them, which didn't happen. You know, for a legend to take roots you need around 100 years (a full generation), in the meanwhile the people that supposedly were present in those stories were still alive, and these could simply say "I was there and that didn't happen", the pauline scriptures are made around 35 years after the death of Jesus, in 35 years most people would be alive to be able to say "that's not true" yet nobody claimed that these stories were false, and there were a lot of stories.
The only thing I know that has been claimed to be false is about the birth of Jesus, there was a guy called Celso who said Jesus was the son of Panthera, but an early christian apologist named Origenes proved that theory to be false. See what happened there? There was debate over a supposed event, that should happen around most of these stories because they involved many people, yet, I haven't seen anybody trying to say that some random story like the miracle at the wedding of Cananea was false.
At first glance, it seems to rely on some pretty big generalities.
For example, is it truly impossible that an insane person could not be a good teacher?
Or that Christ was not a con man, but lying for altruistic reasons? That he might have allowed himself to be killed to further his message?
Maybe he also just didn't die. If he was a con man, maybe he conned everybody into thinking he'd been crucified. There is actual reason to think this: A guy helps him carry the cross at one point, several heretical Christian traditions hold that he switched places with someone, and Islam says that Jesus wasn't actually killed at all but that God played a deception on everyone so they thought they'd killed him when in fact they'd killed someone else.
"Jesus faked his death by getting someone else crucified in his place" might be a bit of a stretch (though still less so than "Jesus actually resurrected"), but if we presume Liar Jesus for the sake of argument and call him an outright con man, then why WOULDN'T he try to fake his death or otherwise escape it? To argue this ruins the Liar theory, one has to argue that there is no chance whatsoever that Jesus could've bamboozled his executioners... and there are traditions that seem to argue he did just that, including one largely believed by Catholics that would at least give him the opportunity to do so.
And he doesn't even have to have succeeded! He just has to have tried, and then not given up the game once he'd become unable to escape.
@Uryvichk If you're doubting the veracity of the scriptures, why not just assume none of it happened?
@@tcorourke2007 *Everything* must be correct, true, accurately recorded, or else *none* of it is true? C'mon now. And the gospel of Matthew was written in *70 AD* at the earliest? But everything is perfectly accurate?
@@LionKimbro No, but we cannot have a meaningful discussion about a narrative without agreement as to what said narrative is.
Your last argument, implies that Jesus was an utilitarist, that's an interesting point of view. I've been thinking about and I have a question I'm trying to answer, is there any proof that Jesus was utilitarist even in a single action?
Highly imperfect ("false trilemma") but still useful.
Dude, you sounded very serious in this video. It seems you had a rough day.
About the series, I'm excited about it. It's a really interesting topic.
Wait, what?
He could have just been mistaken, he may have been fictional, he might not have claimed to be divine... 3 other possibilities off the top of my head.
Also, I remember Resa Aslan pointing out that modern theories of truth weren't around in the time of Jesus so he might not have understood what you meant if you asked him "Is that true?"
To say Jesus did not claim to be divine is just outright ignorance of scripture and the sayings that are recorded of him.
I don't think he could've been fictional realistically talking. The pauline scriptures are just 30 years after the death of Jesus, most people that met Jesus were still alive (I think). Wouldn't they say something like "I was there and that didn't happen", yet nobody say that about any particular event, miracle or word of Jesus.
"He could have just been mistaken"
Alright, prove and demonstrate how Jesus could have been mistaken that He is God if He is not insane.
"he may have been fictional"
Do you know that historians will actually laugh at you for saying that? 99% of historians, even the secular and atheist ones like Bart Ehrman agree that there really was a 1st century Jewish rabbi who lived in Galilee named Jesus, and who was crucified by Roman authorities and had disciples. Bart Ehrman, who is a secular, atheistic, non-Christian scholar and historian wrote an entire book called "Did Jesus Exist" where he argued for the existence of Jesus and showed evidence that Jesus really did exist.
I view this as either incomplete or too narrow. As "there are more than three options".
I think he had too little faith in liars, lies, and too much faith in people being rational and not following a lunatic, or couldn't think of a person saying their truth but being incorrect.
I think Jesus could have believed himself to be telling the truth, but incorrect, therefore he would not be a liar, yet he would not be telling the truth.
I think there's a difference between claiming to be the son of God (or something divine) and being God itself.
I think, people can still follow lunatics, regardless of the one being followed being a lunatic.
I think a liar can still be a good moral teacher and not be a conman.
He could have also been misunderstood or misrepresented.
Folks, you do realize that this can easily be said about Joseph Smith (the founder of The Church of Latter Day Saints, or Mormonism), Mary Baker Eddy (Christian Science), and even L. Ron Hubbard (you-know-what). The problem with the trilemma, imo, is that it makes too many assumptions to be really useful. Maybe humans aren't rational, maybe "reason" doesn't really do all that much, and because of that, maybe "lunatics" and "charlatans" actually provide a useful service in spite of themselves. Certainly an awful lot of people have gotten solid benefits from all those sects and religions I've mentioned.
For me, the main point is that there is no good, credible, extrabiblical, contemporary evidence that this "Jesus" character, as described, ever existed.
They never claimed to be God or the son of God though.
@@joseloera5849 hmmm. According to a lot of Biblical scholars, neither did Jesus. According to them, if you carefully and critically read all the Gospels, Jesus NEVER refers to himself as "God/Son of God/etc". That was later writers (like "Paul" or whoever that was) and later traditions that ascribed that to Him.
All those other dudes and dudettes did say they were *inspired* by God, however, through intenso visions and such. Much like those Apostles and the tongues of flame which made them speak other languages fluently (supposedly).
Could all just be utter nonsense. Certainly that's my view. But apparently, people gotta believe in *something*, be it Jesus or "science".
" ..What is man? A miserable little pile of secrets..." Lord D.
An answer to the trilemma that is often overlooked for both versions in the "more options" category is that if we accept the existence of the supernatural, then there are other solutions that are supernatural variants of the normal options, and cannot be distinguished by any observer from the "Lord" option. For example in the claim that Jesus wasn't a liar because then he wouldn't have been willing to die on the cross, what if he was a powerful mage and cast a delayed resurrection spell on himself? One need not be omnipotent in order to have sufficient magical power to keep one's soul in the world and regain control of one's body. Of course, maybe he never died at all. A powerful sorcerer might be able to cast powerful illusions on a big crowd, or maybe grab a random stranger, morph his flesh to look like the sorcerer, then mind-control him from a safe distance. The puppet gets crucified, put in a tomb, then the sorcerer opens a portal into the tomb, drags the corpse out, and walks out himself. Creating fake wounds would also be simple for such a sorcerer. As far as the original version of the trilemma goes, he could definitely still be a good moral teacher. Maybe he used sorcery to look at possible futures, and saw that the moral lessons he wanted to pass were super critical for humanity but the only way they'd take root and become widespread enough is if he pretended to be divine? He'd be a liar and manipulator but if the alternative was that we'd have gone extinct by now or worse, I think many people would say he made the more moral choice. Sounds far fetched, but I am not a clairvoyant sorcerer. Maybe there really are clairvoyant sorcerers, and they're reading this right now and think this sounds mundane and they don't get why I'd think its far fetched.
Similar answers work for both lunatic options. When the supernatural gets involved, any "list of options" argument for anything flies right out the window because we simply have no good grasp on what different types of supernatural beings are truly capable of.
This sounds like an argument to nonbelievers, but after watching this, I think it is aimed at people on the fence or who already have accepted many things as fact (that he existed, that he is important, that he is was a nice guy). To a nonbeliever or adherent of another religion, the 4th option is "Irrelevant"
Jesus is a legend. He was likely a real man, but the gospels were not written by contemporaries, but by second-hand oral histories. They are often contradictory as one would expect. More importantly, they were written by members of a religious sect eager to deify its figurehead.
I think that Jesus claiming to be God was added in when people wrote down the story almost a generation later.
Well, on the one hand, it's clearly a false trilemma. It seems fairly obvious (for those whose religion doesn't require them to accept biblical inerrancy) that, on closer examination, the gospels are clearly unreliable accounts (since they have numerous contradictions, including whether the buy ever claimed to be god). So legend or myth is clearly an option.
On the other hand, humans are complicated, and so I don't think Lewis' three options actually contradict each other.
And on the third hand, I don't think he was a good moral teacher, to begin with. In fact, he comes off - to me - as a pretty typical cult leader. Consider the verses about how people should follow him to the detriment of their family, for example.
I waspresented with this as my faith began to crumble. That these were not the only possibilites was immediately obvious. Assuming that he has his roots in a real person is it just one? Was he misrepresented? Liar, lunatic, lord, lumped together or legend? And probably a few more besides with enough Ls to fill a Welsh dictionary.
The first form of the trilemma
Liar, lunatic, god are not the only options. Obviously.
A good and moral teacher can lie because sometimes lessons are best learned with a lie (exposed once the point has been made in most cases but not always) like a magician teaching us perception or someone saying they can't help when they could have but the student needed to learn how to do it on their own. Not to mention how, as long as the lie is done in aims of better conveying the message, and without any desire to harm or bolster one's self.
Jesus could have been a lunatic as many mentally unwell people throughout history have gathered a following. And because those who are mentally ill CAN have a good or moral understanding of things and have a good or moral message to teach, we must allow for the possibility.
The second form of the trilemma
Madman, conman, God are not the only options. Obviously. Especially considering the delayed, translated, second hand accounts we have and what we know of humans, the man would dissolve behind the legend.
The conman premise is faulty cause it relies on the assumptions that,
1: he had the option to avoid the crucifixion once the ball had been started.
2: assuming that he didn't con everyone with a stand-in (by paying the stand-ins family or something) who was killed so he could rise from the dead 3 days later.
The madman premise is faulty too because we have tons of evidence that people follow crazy people in large groups. (Look at most of the cults we have information on now)
I mean... he could have just been wrong.
I don't think you gave this argument a fair shake or followed the earliest history of Christianity. In terms of the Lord part in "Liar, Lunatic or Lord", the oldest sources outside the Gospels (35 AD to early 2nd century) from the pre-Pauline Christ poem in Philippians, Thallos, Josephus, Pliny the Younger, the Talmud, and possibly even the more recent 2008 Jesus bowl discovery imply Christ was thought to be a wise sorcerer and moralist, either equal to God or at least capable of supernatural power and connected to otherworldly events. That's likely then how His contemporaries viewed Him. You also ignore the largest beliefs of Christians, e.g. Catholics, upholding the divinity of Christ.
A stronger case against Lewis would've directly faced his main point about whether or not it makes sense for such a person sharing the events in Jesus' historical timeline during Ancient Rome to have had mental problems or lied about calling themselves God. Instead, it makes far more sense for many people to lay down their lives for a supernatural entity at this time rather than a new philosophical idea. Romans too would have seen fake displays of divinity. Why would so many sacrifice themselves for this particular one unless they saw something they couldn't explain that was real? So Jesus wasn't a crazy person. As Pliny and Josephus point out, early Christians (60 AD to 100 AD) were very moral. So Jesus wasn't a lying conman either. These points are the forceful implication and emotional appeal of Lewis's argument, which I don't think you did justice and don't explain. The points above are a beefed up informal take on your second version of the argument, but with less straw. Although, Lewis may have meant something more nuanced and closer to your first formulation:
1. Jesus was a great moral teacher.
2. If Jesus is not God, then he was a mad fool or he was evilly lying.
3. If Jesus was a great moral teacher, then it is not the case he was a mad fool or evilly lying.
C. Therefore, Jesus is God.
However, I think the wild possibilities you give as counterexamples to this such as selfhelp gurus, suicidal utilitarians, and Rabbis needing therapy really just fall into the categories of liar or lunatic. Moreover, the possibilities are unfounded since historical sources support Jesus being a great moral teacher as He was "obedient unto death," and early Christians "the most equitable of the citizens," "[who would] not to do anything that was ill: but that they would commit no theft, or pilfering, or adultery; that they would not break their promises." Moreover, Jesus was connected to the divine to boot; "in the form of God [...] equal to God [...] coming in the likeness of humans," did "startling deeds," and the earliest Christians sang "hymns to Christ as to a god" (Pre-Pauline Philippians Christ poem, Josephus, and Pliny).
Lastly, the mockery of Christ at Christmas with the graphics are offensive personal attacks. Maybe you can try to attack on a fairer field with less ironic appeals to experts as a "skeptic".
First off, this argument has been dismissed by most prominent Christian apologists, Christian theologians, and biblical scholars (William Lane Craig, John Robinson, John Hick, Larry Hurtado, Craig Evans, Bart Ehrman, Gerd Lüdemann, ... the list goes on) as deeply flawed and a "unsound argument for Christianity" (WLC's words, not mine). Most educated Christians that have studied this in depth reject the argument, so accusations of bias on my part are farfetched.
Second, you should watch the whole series before critiquing my argument, as I address a number of your points throughout. It seems ironic that you accuse me of giving it short shrift if you have only watched the first of four videos on the argument (here's the full series if you missed it ua-cam.com/video/fAuNgR8UBcI/v-deo.html)
Third, there are plenty of texts that document all sorts of magic performed by ancient heroes. Anyone with a background in the classics is aware that the lines between fiction and non-fiction were not clearly drawn in the ancient world. We should not treat those accounts as any more historical than the Odyssey, likely with some grains of truth, but largely fabricated. There are plenty of contemporaneous texts confirming the truth of various Greek myths, but I doubt you think that is a reason to believe in Zeus.
Fourth, even if people in that age were attempting to accurately represent the world as they saw it, that is far from proof of its truth. Tabloid magazines are contemporaneous evidence of lizard people walking among us, but it does not make them true. A frightening number of people today believe such claims, or other conspiracy theories. But having evidence that a lot of people in 2022 think the earth is flat, does not mean that it was flat in 2022.
Fifth, following from the last point, simply because many people believe something does not make it true. (ua-cam.com/video/oE4gR0cFKw4/v-deo.html). Not to mention the fact that the majority of the world is not Christian so even if we thought that "most people believing X makes it true", it would follow that Christ was not divine, because most people think he was not.
With all of that out of the way, let me see if I can address the thrust of your argument. I would encourage you to read the passage in Mere Christianity where Lewis makes this case, as he is clearly not targeting the people that were living at the same time as Jesus, but rather modern readers who claim that Jesus was a good moral teacher but not divine. But let's address your framing for now. I mention this as an alternative framing of this argument, and I address it as well in the other videos in the series. I would encourage you to watch those to better understand those arguments. I make the case that many people lie for good reasons e.g. maybe Jesus knew that claiming to be God while preaching a good moral philosophy would make it more likely that people would actually be good, than just preaching a philosophy alone, so he lied for the purpose of doing good. I also make the case that many people follow those that we might consider insane, even to their deaths (one need only look at the thousands of Russians that have been killed following an insane leader into Ukraine, the hundreds that have killed themselves in suicide cults, etc.). We are more educated than the ancient Romans, and have more methods to test the accuracy of claims, and still thousands of people follow lunatics every day. I won't give you a full summary of the other videos, I encourage you to simply watch them yourself.
You clearly misunderstand the counterexamples, and once again should watch the rest of the videos before responding. The "guru" argument for example, is not the claim that Jesus was a self-help guru. Rather this argument claims that when Jesus claimed he was God (which most Christian scholars think he never actually did), he meant that God is in everything (in line with the gospel of Thomas, which was excluded from the bible because the Church disagreed with it, your historical texts are cherry-picked propoganda).
To the question of the historical sources, Lewis is not claiming "on evidence it is more likely that Jesus was not lying", he is claiming that "it is logically impossible for Jesus to be a liar and a good moral teacher". So your claims are tangential (returning to the first point that anyone who has seriously studied this argument finds it unsound). People who don't believe Jesus was divine, think that those who claimed he was a wizard are probably unreliable sources too. Not to mention all of the gospels that tell a different story that the Church scrubbed from the Bible (read the gnostic gospels if you want a less biased history).
Finally, if you consider the graphics offensive, you are quite thin-skinned indeed, and lack an appreciation of the importance of free speech in an open society. Lewis asks us to truly consider the possibility that Jesus was a liar or a lunatic. Would you have me address his argument without truly considering these possibilities? It is a poor argument to claim that "Anyone who disagrees with me is being mean, so no one should disagree with me." Lewis offers these possibilities, not I. And what better time than to do it on Christmas, when thousands of non-Christians are being forced into religious rituals by their governments, families, and employers? Being forced sometimes at the penalty of death to worship an idol they do not believe in? When they are being confronted by this very argument and others like it? Shouldn't they have access to something to counteract these fallacies? Shouldn't they have representations of Jesus that fit their view of him? If Lewis's argument is correct, then anyone that is a non-Christian, but respects the teachings of Jesus, must think of him as a liar or a lunatic. There are millions of Christian representations of Jesus, what is wrong with giving the other two-thirds of the world a few images to represent their viewpoint?
@Carneades.org Ehrman is a pop scholar, and Craig has an ideological axe to grind too. What they say just doesn't mesh with St. Paul and Jesus' contemporaries holding him as God or supernatural, especially in light of the otherworldly events of the Gospels. Simply appealing to authority here, dubious as it is, fails. If one wanted to appeal to authority, why not go with two millennia of church teaching and with what the vast majority of Christians believe in the world's largest religion rather than people who want sell books to evangelicals?
I won't address all your points, but Lewis is making an informal argument. I don't see a modal necessary operator here. Instead of showing it's possibly false, you need to show it's actually not the case. The weird anachronistic counterexamples then weaken your argument. If you read Ehrman, you could have relied more on Jesus possibly being a Jewish apocalyptic preacher. However, Ehrman dismisses Jesus' being supernatural out of hand as ahistorical. It also doesn't explain the historical sources I mentioned implying He was miraculous.
Again, don't make offensive images with nothing to do with your argument. It's a piss-poor move by a neutral skeptic.
"Jesus was not a madman as he would not have gathered as much of a following if he was insane."
Haha.Yeah sure. Totally. Nobody insane has ever amassed a large following before. Totally out of the question :P
I'm eagerly awaiting the video series, especially since I was brainwashed into thinking this very trilemma had merit.
It's wortth noting that the trilemma is not necessarily a trilemma if you don't pre-suppose the Christian conception of god - it would be logically possible to have an insane god who was a compulsive liar.
People don't follow crazy people? Lol 😂
Man, this is such a bad argument. We follow and worship crazy people all the time, and in my opinion, insane people can indeed make good moral teachers. Conmen can also make for good moral teachers as well since actions are not globalizing.
This argument is one of the worst examples of a false dilemma out there. It should not be taken seriously by anyone who considers themselves a thinker and is only impressive in that it has nonetheless managed to spread like a viral disease.
"Your comment is very bad. Nobody should pay any attention to it. I'm shocked it has 5 likes."
Sound familiar?
@@tcorourke2007 No, not really. Because what I said is actually correct.
@@Stonefallow I didn't ask you if it sounded "correct", I asked if it sound familiar.
It should, because I merely stated disapproval without any rationale, same as you did.
You make terrible arguments for someone who watches philosophy videos.
When are the arguments coming? I too can make many statements of value without reason.
@@tcorourke2007 Who cares if it sounds familiar? I criticized a logical fallacy because it is fallacious. You're criticizing my criticism because you like the fallacy. It's not the same and you're still wrong.
To us presently so "Jesus IS a story"
Our direct experience with Jesus is certainly as a story or as you say a legend or as we could say as a myth
I know I'm even sometimes wrong about things in my direct experience and so this I have a basic I don't know-ism about anything where or when I never was or haven't been
Soberly it is not intellectually dishonest for me to say that there are three glasses on the table in front of me but I know I may be dreaming actually. On the other hand for me to say I know what's going on in the Ukraine war or what the Republicans Or democrats or really about or not or what 9/11 was or not all I know is that I see those things on a TV program for me.
Also about Miss or Jesus being a mess I basically think humans are mythological creatures, we live in the messages we give and receive listen to me talk about "us" now, we can't help it whoever holds the mic or the talking stick around the fire has the authority of our mind to some degree
Please, do not draw Jesus (peace be upon him) with big nose. He is a respected figure in Islam religion.
In Islam religion texts, Jesus is a profit sent to the Israelites. He never claimed that he is god and son of god. His message has been forged to be to be a began false religion.
I think you, and people that share your beliefs, should not draw Jesus with a big nose. People with other set of beliefs should be able to hold their set of beliefs and draw Jesus with a big nose, without being told not to.
@@nik021298 I believe, "Please, do not..." is a request, not a telling of one what to do.