On Obstinacy in Belief

This is the name of a paper presented by CS Lewis in 1955, and can be found here:

https://thesewaneereview.com/articles/on-obstinacy-and-belief

It is a curious paper. What exactly is Lewis trying to argue here? As far as I can tell he is admitting that Christian's believe with a certainty the evidence does not warrant, but that is fine because he, as a Christian, is certain his belief is right.

He starts by comparing Christian thinking and scientific thinking, but quickly shifts to a scientist and a Christian. This is important to his argument because then he can point out that some scientists are Christians, so therefore they must be the same. Some scientists have bad judgement outside of science or hold to beliefs with a certainty that is not proportionate to the evidence.

To me, the issue is religious thinking against scientific thinking. One man can be both Christian, believing absolutely the resurrection with scant evidence, and at the same time a scientist, thinking string theory is merely a viable possibility. People are complex and can and do think about different things in different ways, and religion does seem to bypass reason.

Some quotes from the paper:

And no one, to the best of my knowledge, uses the word “believe” about things he has found out. The doctor says he “believes” a man was poisoned before he has examined the body; after the examination, he says the man was poisoned. No one says that he believes the multiplication table.

What a remarkable view of science! A doctor examining a patient is using science, but not doing science. And a multiplication table is maths! Why could he not find an example that is actually science?

When Einstein proposed relativity, it was just a hypothesis that might be true. The confidence we now have in it was gained after many years of experiment. It is not the first time Lewis has shown a very superficial understanding of science.

Of course he uses hypotheses or supposals. I do not think these are beliefs. We must look, then, for the scientist’s behavior about belief not to his scientific life but to his leisure hours.

This is Lewis saying the scientist does not use scientific thought all the time, and therefore..? It does not undermine science itself if the practitioners have time off sometimes.

It may be asked whether belief (and of course disbelief) of this sort ever attaches to any but theological propositions. I think that many beliefs approximate to it; that is, many probabilities seem to us so strong that the absence of logical certainty does not induce in us the least shade of doubt.

Sure. I believe I am sat on a chair. I have utter conviction in that. But here is the thing - I am sat on it so I know the chair is there. There is, it seems to me, a fundamental difference in my belief that I am sat on a chair and the Christian's belief that Jesus was resurrected.

It is not the purpose of this paper to weigh the evidence, of whatever kind, on which Christians base their belief. To do that would be to write a full-dress apologia. All that I need do here is to point out that, at the very worst, this evidence cannot be so weak as to warrant the view that all whom it convinces are indifferent to evidence.

I think this can be disputed. The vast majority of theists adopt the religion of their culture - whether Hindu, Muslim or whatever. Why is that? Because they get indoctrinated as children. Lewis is a great example; his material grandfather was a priest and he was baptised. Although he became an atheist at 15, he returned to the fold in his thirties. Why to Christianity, not Hinduism or Islam? Because of his childhood conditioning.

If I am right (and I may not be), then the evidence may well be so weak to warrant the view that all whom it convinces are indifferent to evidence.

Many of them have been scientists. We may suppose them to have been mistaken, but we must suppose that their error was at least plausible. We might, indeed, conclude that it was, merely from the multitude and diversity of the arguments against it.

But many scientists are Muslims or atheists or whatever, and see the same evidence. At the very least, this indicates that the evidence is ambiguous, and certainty is not warranted.

I therefore ask you to substitute a different and less tidy picture for that with which we began. In it, you remember, two different kinds of men, Scientists who proportioned their belief to the evidence, and Christians who did not, were left facing one another across a chasm. The picture I should prefer is like this. All men alike, on questions which interest them, escape from the region of belief into that of knowledge when they can, and if they succeed in knowing they no longer say they believe.

The picture certainly is less tidy because there are people who are both Christians and scientists. I would suggest it is messy because people think differently when doing science or religion. When doing science, they believe proportionately. But when it comes to religion they abandon that principle, believe utterly despite it not being warranted.

What Lewis describes above assumes Christianity is true.

He is saying that his belief in the resurrection is knowledge - and (depending on how you define knowledge) that depends on whether it is true.

And all these beliefs, weak or strong, are based on what appears to the holders to be evidence; but the strong believers or disbelievers of course think they have very strong evidence. There is no need to suppose stark unreason on either side. We need only suppose error. One side has estimated the evidence wrongly. And even so, the mistake cannot be supposed to be of a flagrant nature; otherwise the debate would not continue.

This assumes there is good evidence for the resurrection. That is a big assumption.

Suppose it is not true, but religion has clouded Lewis' judgment? Every day we see people claim there is strong evidence for Christianity, and yet time and time again that "evidence" is personal feelings or assume the Bible is true.

But then I do not admit that a hypothesis is a belief. And if we consider the Scientist not among his hypotheses in the laboratory but among the beliefs in his ordinary life, I think the contrast between him and the Christian would be weakened.

Here Lewis is saying religious beliefs should not be treated the same as scientific hypotheses. Why not? He does not say. At best, all he can offer is that even scientists may be guilty of doing similar - outside of science. So what? People are fallible and believe things that are not true. We all know that - everyone on this forum thinks all Muslims believe something that is not true

But the Christians seem to praise an adherence to the original belief which holds out against any evidence whatever. 

So he does acknowledge this to some degree.

From here onwards, Lewis is saying why it is good to have utter confidence in religion, despite the lack of evidence to warrant it, which seems a reversal on his original point.

In getting a dog out of a trap, in extracting a thorn from a child’s finger, in teaching a boy to swim or rescuing one who can’t, in getting a frightened beginner over a nasty place on a mountain, the one fatal obstacle may be their distrust. We are asking them to trust us in the teeth of their senses, their imagination, and their intelligence. We ask them to believe that what is painful will relieve their pain and that what looks dangerous is their only safety.

Note that in his analogies, the belief is warranted. How about the con artist who asks for complete trust from his victim. Strangely Lewis does not give that example (though, in fairness, he does later).

No one says afterwards what an unintelligent dog or child or boy that must have been to trust us.

Only if it turns out to be true. If someone gets scammed on the internet, we certainly would say that. It very much depends of whether the claim is true or not.

Some of it is more like the evidence on which the mountaineer or the dog might trust his rescuer: the rescuer’s voice, look, and smell.

I think this is the most damning sentence in the article. It is an admission that the evidence really does not warrant the certainty, and that it is founded instead on hope, on wishful thinking.

When you are asked for trust you may give it or withhold it; it is senseless to say that you will trust if you are given demonstrative certainty. There would be no room for trust if demonstration were given. When demonstration is given what will be left will be simply the sort of relation which results from having trusted, or not having trusted, before it was given.

Here is Lewis excusing God for not making himself apparent - for God doing such a good impression of something that does not exist.

Does it ever cross his mind that, if the gospels are true, God gave just just proof to the disciples? God demonstrated that certainty. Did the disciples then lack room for trust?

I want at this point to return to the start of the paper:

We have been told that the scientist thinks it his duty to proportion the strength of his belief exactly to the evidence; to believe less as there is less evidence and to withdraw belief altogether when reliable adverse evidence turns up. We have been told that, on the contrary, the Christian regards it as positively praiseworthy to believe without evidence, or in excess of the evidence, or to maintain his belief unmodified in the teeth of steadily increasing evidence against it. Thus a “faith that has stood firm,” which appears to mean a belief immune from all the assaults of reality, is commended.

As far as I can see, Lewis has ended up agreeing with this statement; he is admitting that Christians do not have the evidence that would give them certainty, but hold their faith with that certainty anyway.

So what exactly is his point?

That Christians believe in the resurrection with an obstinacy that is not warranted, but that is okay because he obstinately believes the resurrection is true?