C.S. Lewis - from atheism to theism

Lewis: The new Psychology was at that time sweeping through us all. We were all influenced. We were all concerned about fantasy, or wishful thinking. I formed the resolution of always judging and acting with the greatest good sense.

Walter Hooper: He was saying that all youth at that time were trying to escape from wish fulfillment dreams. They got that from Freud. And they wanted to in one way spit on the images of their youth, and go onto they knew not what. But, anyway, leave that behind because it was juvenile.

Lewis: I was at that time living like many atheists; in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was equally angry with him for creating a world. Why should creatures have the burden of existence forced on them without their consent?

Lewis: All the books were beginning to turn against me. Indeed, I must have been as blind as a bat not to have seen, long before, the ludicrous contradiction between my theory of life and my actual experiences as a reader. The most religious were clearly those on whom I could really feed.

Lewis: I can only describe it as the Great War between Barfield and me. When I set out to correct his heresies, I find that he had decided to correct mine! And then we went at it, hammer and tongs, far into the night, night after night.

Duriez: Barfield believed that the imagination plays a very important part in how we know. He rejected the model that science is the only way to truth, to acquiring truth. He felt that the imagination was laid behind even the work of science. It gave meaning to propositions. And so he felt that Lewis was missing out in his whole approach to reality on what made knowledge possible.

Peter Kreeft: When Lewis talks about joy, he talks about something that he labels the central theme of his whole life. But what he means by joy is not the satisfaction of a desire, but a desire that is more desirable than any satisfaction.

Lewis: There was no doubt Joy was a desire. But a desire is turned not to itself, but to an object. I had been wrong in supposing that I desired for Joy itself. All value lay in that of which Joy was the desiring. The naked other. Unknown, undefined, desired. I did not yet ask "Who is desired?"

Kreeft: The very experience of Joy that Lewis had was an arrow that led to the target of belief in God. Lewis argued innate, deep desires do not exist unless they correspond to something that can satisfy them. If there is hunger, there is food. If there is sexual desire, there is sex. If there is curiosity, there is knowledge. So if there is the desire for this thing that is beyond this world, there must be something beyond this world.

Lewis: The fox had now been dislodged from the wood and was running in the open, bedraggled and weary, the hounds barely a field behind. The odd thing was that before God closed in on me, I was in fact offered what now appears to be a moment of wholly free choice. I was going up Headington Hill on the top of a bus. Without words, and almost without images, a fact about myself was somehow presented to me. I became aware that I was holding something at bay.

I felt myself being given a free choice. I could open the door or keep it shut. I chose to open. I felt as if I were a man of snow at long last beginning to melt. Drip-drip. And presently trickle-trickle.

I had always wanted, above all things, not to be interfered with. I had wanted — mad wish — to call my soul my own. I had been far more anxious to avoid suffering than to achieve delight.

You must picture me alone in that room at Magdalen, night after night, feeling, whenever my mind lifted even for a second from my work, the steady, unrelenting approach of Him whom I so earnestly desired not to meet.

Total surrender, the absolute leap in the dark, were demanded. I gave in, and admitted that God was God ... perhaps, that night, the most dejected and reluctant convert in all England.

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[Jesrael1986M]

I see atheists look incredulous when CS Lewis says "I was angry at God". Yet they will cheer Christopher Hitchens when he says something like "I will not submit to this cosmic dictator" (who according to him, doesn't exist). Look at the atheist's posts on youtube, blogs, etc.. you'd have to be blind not to notice the seething anger in most of them. The two basic principles of Atheism:

1. There is no God.

2. I hate Him.

[kindofcoolstuff]

The apparent transformation of others lives (mine included) is what keeps me believing. Just my opinion - you don't have to believe it so don't flip out. And if you want to flip out at me then message me because I'm not going to debate publicly about it

[Albertanator]

@Jesrael1986M Beautifully said my friend!!!

[slicingwater]

@Jesrael1986M Well yeah, you can hate a fictional character. For one I think Paris is a Jerk and unhonorable idiot. And that traitorous Iago, deserves what he got. It makes it so much interesting and fun to see the hero triumph over the villain. Except in your Bible God who has the personality of all of those characters combined and not only that never recieves the penalty for all the atrocities he's comitted.

[deathpill100]

the close-mindedness and bigotry on this video is so overwhelming that I'm not gonna try and argue, it'd be a waste of time. I'm just gonna ask a question. how many of you recognize the Church is a corrupted, rotten to the core man-made construct?

[zacrichey]

@canesrule96 "If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore creatures with no eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be a word without meaning." -C.S. Lewis

God isn't some being who "sets" rules. God is the rules himself. He is all that is good. He IS Truth. What he designed (the particulars) is His work, which glorifies and testifies to a creator. msg me back if you reply.

[TheHabbadasher]

@Sage80 Oh yes, they're awfull those pink elephants. I don't mind elephants of course but I don't get why they have to be pink. What's wrong with say, green or perhaps red. This may seem a tad bit racist, but it's just how I feel on the issue. If it was up to me every pink elephant in the world would be forcibly repainted.

[Sage80]

why do atheists live on youtube? though making up only a tiny percent of the population, they seem to overwhelm the youtube community, and post comments on every video they don't agree with.

[Sage80]

@TheHabbadasher you often feel rage for pink elephants?

[SX1995able]

@Jesrael1986M What bugs me about Atheists is how they complain about how religious people spread their propaganda and shove their beliefs down everyone`s throat. Atheists do the exact same when they make those posts, movies, clips etc. I don`t care what your beliefs are. I`ll be cool with you (anyone), but be careful to not be a hypocrite.