Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis is one of the most interesting and engaging presentations of core Christian beliefs and argumentation. To those, like myself, who were not raised with a Christian background, this book is able to convey a considerable understanding of the basic ideas all Christians hold without delving into the often cryptic, archaic, and heavily metaphorical language of the Bible and of many earlier theologians. Lewis performs for Christianity a similar service that Thomas Aquinas rendered seven centuries earlier in his Summa Theologica; he presents Christian beliefs in a systematic, interconnected way that renders it open to rational scrutiny from the outside and enables each claim to be judged on its merits. This is the mark of serious, respectable philosophy – as distinguished from the all-too-frequent futile attempts to “prove” Christianity by already presupposing it and citing Christian texts as the warrant.

            Many of Lewis’s insights are right on target and entirely capable of being adopted even by atheists such as myself. His defense of marriage is surely one of the most eloquent and powerful in existing literature, and his insight that human nature and human behavior cannot be fathomed solely through external observation but require introspection – the gathering of “inside information” (33) that is accessible to us by virtue of our being men – is one of the most significant of all human ideas. It has been independently advanced by economists of the Austrian school to demonstrate the existence not only of universal economic laws of which we can be certain but also of the possibility of general epistemological certainty about the basic data of our world and our existence.

            Like Lewis, I am an epistemological realist and a moral absolutist. I firmly maintain that there exists an external world whose identity is not contingent on human feelings or desires. Furthermore, there exists a definite, immutable moral law or natural law which is not based on mere subjective or inter-subjective preferences. Where Lewis and I diverge is on the origin and basis for such a natural law. Unfortunately for Lewis, his case for morality’s origin is necessary for him to establish the existence of a God; thus, if his arguments here are flawed, then his entire justification of Christianity’s truth crumbles. This is not to say that all of Lewis’s ideas need to be rejected; rather, many of his claims may be valid – but their validity hinges on something other than Christianity. Indeed, it is a compliment to a thinker like Lewis that many of his insights can withstand the collapse of the system into which he interwove them.

            Let us investigate and analyze Lewis’s description of the natural law and how he connects it to the alleged existence of a God. Lewis writes:

“The Moral Law, or Law of Human Nature, is not simply a fact about human behaviour in the same way as the Law of Gravitation is, or may be, simply a fact about how heavy objects behave. On the other hand, it is not a mere fancy, for we cannot get rid of the idea, and most of the things we say and think about men would be reduced to nonsense if we did. And it is not simply a statement about how we should like men to behave for our own convenience; for the behaviour we call bad or unfair is not necessarily the same as the behaviour we find inconvenient, and may even be the opposite. Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong, or Law of Human Nature, or whatever you call it, must somehow or other be a real thing – a thing that is really there, not made up by ourselves” (30).

            Lewis is correct that the natural law is not subject to human fancy or superficial considerations of short-term convenience. However, he errs in asserting that the moral law is any less factual than the law of gravitation. Both are claims of the same category – which I shall here term conditional facts.

            The law of gravitation is a different kind of fact from the existence of the chair in which I am currently sitting. Instead of describing the existence of some specific entity with specific attributes – such as my chair – the law of gravitation applies to all entities with a certain attribute – namely, matter. Since all entities are necessarily material, the law of gravitation applies to all entities. But what the law of gravitation says is not merely how material entities do behave, but how they would behave under certain conditions. The expression F = Gm₁m₂/r² states that if we have an entity with mass m₁ and an entity with mass m₂ separated by distance r, then the gravitational force exerted by each entity on the other will equal Gm₁m₂/r². But the law of gravitation says nothing about whether specific entities with specific masses m₁ and m₂ and separated by distance r actually exist. It may well be that we are instead examining entities with different masses m₃ and m₄ and separated by a different distance d – in which case F = Gm₃m₄/d² is an accurate description of the gravitational force between them.

            So while the law of gravitation is a fact that accurately describes all entities in existence, its particular manifestation in any given circumstance is conditional on the masses and relative positions of the entities involved. The law poses an immutable if-then causal relationship, but it does not in itself guarantee any specific if.

            The law of morality is a conditional fact just like the law of gravitation; only the specific entities to which it applies are different. The law of morality applies to human beings, and states simply that if human beings behave in certain ways, a certain generally predictable series of consequences will follow. Specific behaviors – which we call moral – result in the long-term prosperity, happiness, and progress of all individuals, whereas the contrary behaviors – which we call immoral – lead to misery, death, and destruction.  This is not a mere subjective preference. The facts of history have demonstrated that certain political systems, such as free-market capitalism, have brought about rising standards of living and increasing human fulfillment while others – such as communism, socialism, fascism, feudalism, theocracy, and “pure” democracy – have led to continued persecution, suffering, stagnation, and debasement of human beings. Strong theoretical explanations abound to explain these unfailingly consistent empirical manifestations and to predict that future incarnations of the immoral political systems will be just as destructive.

            The natural law does not guarantee that any human being actually will behave in such a way as to maximize his and everyone else’s prosperity and happiness, just as the law of gravitation does not guarantee that any two entities will have some specified magnitudes for their masses and distance of separation. But no matter how morally or immorally a given person acts – he continues to follow the natural law, in that he will necessarily experience the consequences of his actions. The specific manifestation of the natural law is conditional on the choices of the particular humans under consideration – but no matter what course of action they choose, they remain subject to the natural law.

            If the moral law is a conditional fact like the law of gravitation, where does the verb “ought” come from? “Ought” is an expression of human preference – but there is, within certain bounds, a definite means of ascertaining that some preferences are better than others. All the moral actions are similar in that they advance the life of at least one individual human without damaging the lives of any individual humans. All the immoral actions are similar in that they act to the detriment of at least one individual human life. So claiming that “X ought to be the case” is tantamount to claiming that “X promotes some individual human life/lives without harming any.” The critic might respond, “Why ought we to favor individual life as opposed to death?” The answer is simple: dead people cannot have preferences. Thus, all questions of what people ought to do – i.e., all questions of morality – presuppose that the people in question are alive, which means that the choice to live is a choice made prior to all moral arguments. It is for morality an axiom; it cannot be proven within the parameters of the system itself, but the entire system must presuppose it as a starting point.

            Thus, Lewis is mistaken in asserting that the moral law is somehow fundamentally different from the physical laws that govern our world. Furthermore, just as the law of gravitation does not require a supernatural entity for its validation, neither does the law of morality. The law of gravitation requires only the entities which it describes: any entities with mass. The law of morality, similarly, requires only the entities which it describes: any human beings.

            Hence, I must dissent from Lewis’s claim that the moral law requires

“… a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know – because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions” (34).

            First, it is untrue that matter cannot give instructions. Whenever a human touches a hot frying pan – a piece of inanimate matter – that matter, interacting with his body, gives him an infallibly clear instruction: “Pull away!” It is true that this instruction requires the human mind and senses to interpret it, but so does any instruction. After all, a verbal command by another person is simply a sequence of sound waves in air – and is considered to only be such by animals while being perceived as possibly meaningful but incomprehensible by another human who does not understand the language in which the command is given. It is only the interpretation on the receiving end that can render any instruction meaningful or effective.  

            In fact, any entity in the universe with even the slightest relevance to the life of an individual constantly emits “instructions” for that individual regarding how that entity ought or ought not to be used. The source of these instructions is the nature or simply the identity of that entity. If it is made of dihydrogen monoxide, it will by that very fact communicate a different set of instructions from an entity made of lead or iron. Yet, as with all instructions, the receiver always retains the responsibility to interpret them and to decide whether or not to heed them. If he fails to heed them, the natural law will unfailingly bring about the appropriate consequences.

            Furthermore, Lewis does not seem to acknowledge the possibility and widespread existence of emergent orders, based on constituent elements that follow a definite set of rules without recognizing that their behavior contributes to a much larger pattern than themselves. Emergent orders are the basis of human biology; they account for how the rule-based behavior of organelles makes possible cells, how the behavior of cells makes possible tissues, how the behavior of tissues makes possible organs, and how the behavior of organs makes possible human organisms. Emergent orders extend to even more macroscopic levels. The behaviors of human beings – each looking out for his own perceived best interest – contribute to the larger regularities of economies, societies, and cultures. None of these orders is “designed” or “arranged” by some higher or more complex entity. Rather, each of them comes about spontaneously over time via the interaction of more basic components.

            Moral behavior is itself an emergent order. Over the course of millennia, human beings observed that certain practices tend to promote long-term survival and prosperity, whereas others act to their detriment. Not only were many people inclined to act morally through the lessons of experience, but a sort of natural selection occurred to weed out many of the most immoral behaviors. Cannibalism, incest, polygamy, and bestiality largely died out among early societies because such actions left their practitioners at a colossal disadvantage in terms of sheer survival. Wherever these actions have been revived, they have led to the downfall of entire societies and cultures.

            Thus, Lewis errs in claiming that the natural law is in any way given to man by some more powerful entity. Rather, the natural law – in morality as in the physical sciences – had to be discovered by humans through a lengthy and arduous process of observation, reasoning, trial, and devastating error. It is still not fully discovered and certainly not fully recognized by the majority of the Earth’s population today – but it continues to exert its ubiquitous effects nonetheless, just as the law of gravitation existed and acted upon generations of men who were unaware of it. No benevolent superior mind exists to help us understand the natural law; that remains uniquely our task and our responsibility to ourselves.

G. Stolyarov II is a science fiction novelist, independent philosophical essayist, poet, amateur mathematician, composer, contributor to Enter Stage Right, Le Quebecois Libre,  Rebirth of Reason, and the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Senior Writer for The Liberal Institute, weekly columnist for GrasstopsUSA.com, and Editor-in-Chief of The Rational Argumentator, a magazine championing the principles of reason, rights, and progress. Mr. Stolyarov also publishes his articles on Helium.com and Associated Content to assist the spread of rational ideas. His newest science fiction novel is Eden against the Colossus. His latest non-fiction treatise is A Rational Cosmology. His most recent play is Implied Consent. Mr. Stolyarov can be contacted at gennadystolyarovii@yahoo.com.

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