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Sarah Palin and C.S. Lewis

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Sarah Palin, a fan of C.S. Lewis
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Sarah Palin is far from being classified as being an intellectual. One example of her lack of intellectual ability came out when she was running on the ticket with John McCain in 2008 and she was asked by Charlie Gibson, "What insight into Russian actions, particularly within the last couple of weeks, does the proximity of this state give you?" They were talking about the conflict that was then going on between Russia and Georgia. Palin responded (video), "They're our next-door-neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." How being able to see Russia from Alaska could give any possible insight into actions by the Russian government is beyond comprehension. It is not a very reasonable answer.

When recently asked by Barbara Walters about her reading list, Palin said she reads C.S. Lewis when she needs "divine inspiration." Many people only associate C.S. Lewis with the Narnia collection of fairy-tale books. Joy Behar for example responded, "Aren't they children's books?"

C.S. Lewis was one of Christianity's most influential apologists. His famous book Mere Christianity has sold millions and is a keystone of Christian apologetics. The influential Christian magazine, Christianity Today, in 2000 listed Mere Christianity as the most influential book of the 20th century. In Mere Christianity Lewis attempts to reconcile Christianity and the Bible with reason. An objective read of the book makes it very clear that he fails miserably. And it also makes the reader seriously doubt whether Lewis really was himself a true intellectual.

When I first read Mere Christianity I could not believe that it was taken seriously. In it Lewis does not offer one valid reason to be a Christian or to believe the Bible is the word of God. Throughout his book he is always painting himself into a corner from which he cannot be rescued logically. For example, Lewis attempts to make the point that there is a universal right and wrong which is given to us by the god of the Bible. As a Deist, I believe there is a universal right and wrong, but that it is only found in our conscience.

 To make his point, Lewis writes, "Men have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked." It appears Lewis never read the Bible, or, perhaps, he possessed a memory of convenience. Numbers 31:15-18 has Moses himself castigating the Israeli army for NOT slaughtering the women and little boys of a vanquished people. Verses 17 and 18 have Moses ordering the troops, "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves."

 Not only does this contradict Lewis' false belief and false teaching of a Bible-based "Law of Nature" that men have "always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked" by showing that Moses and his army of Hebrew terrorists and rapists kept "the women children" alive for their own purposes and pleasures, it also demonstrates without question that Moses and gang were genocidal blood thirsty murdering maniacs who raped and slaughtered helpless and innocent children. This, in itself, should make any thinking person reject the Bible as a source of meaningful moral guidance. And as far as the grotesque and bloody Bible being "the word of God," only a madman would believe such a claim after being made aware of the senseless and unnecessary violence and wholesale slaughter and rape it promotes and which it pretends was committed on orders from God. As Thomas Paine asked in The Age of Reason , "Is it because ye are sunk in the cruelty of superstition, or feel no interest in the honor of your Creator, that ye listen to the horrid tales of the Bible, or hear them with callous indifference?" Perhaps it is this Biblical superstition which has caused the callousness Paine wrote of that has infected Palin and others in the religious right, to the point of being so pro-war and anti-God-given reason.

When I wrote An Answer to C.S. Lewis' Mere Christianity and delved deep into the book and the mind of Lewis as it regarded God, religion, and Christianity, I couldn't believe he is considered a true intellectual. For example, I don't know of any intellectual who believes in witches. Regarding this topic, Lewis wrote in Mere Christianity, "I have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief about facts. For example, one man said to me, 'Three hundred years ago people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?

But surely the reason we do not execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or bring bad weather-, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so because he believed there were no mice in the house."Â

This twisted thinking and double-talk makes Lewis' duplicity very obvious. He's very strongly implying in this paragraph that he does not believe in witches who have supernatural powers, while at the same time he's promoting as the word of God the Bible, which states witches are real- as is clear from Exodus 22:18 which instructs Bible believers to kill witches. This Bible verse reads, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." This ignorance promoted by the Bible has caused the needless excruciating suffering of thousands of innocent people who were burned alive or hanged for being witches. Even today there are people who die because Christians or other "revealed" religionists believe they are possessed by devils, demons and evil spirits. The Bible is a source of mental illness which has caused parents to murder their own children and to withhold medical care from them to the point of actually killing the innocent child.

Sarah Palin and C.S. Lewis actually do make a good pair.
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Bob Johnson is a paralegal and a freelance writer in Florida. He was raised Roman Catholic, but after reading Thomas Paine's The Age of Reason, he became a Deist. In 1993 he founded the World Union of Deists and in 1996 he launched the first web (more...)
 
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