by postodave » March 14th, 2010, 7:17 pm
It's a while since I was a regular contributor here - since John closed down the Religion, Science and Philosophy forum I've felt that this site was missing something vital. There is only so far you can go in discussing Lewis before you get into stuff that is not about Lewis for the reasons which Rus has explained above. We never had many debates with atheists on this site but the ones we had were interesting and never as far as I can remember strayed into regions where the discussion could be called offensive or abusive. The debate that got RSP closed down was between two Orthodox Christians disagreeing about Orthodoxy. I don't think there is any significance that the Christians in question were Orthodox, they could have easily been Reformed or Catholic. The point is that which such debates take place people more or less accuse each other of not being Orthodox (or Reformed or Catholic or Biblical or whatever) enough. And these are often more fierce than debates between Christian on Atheist debates. After all we Christians expect atheists to disagree with us, we even expect different types of Christians to disagree to some extent but when it is someone who in theory shares the same position as us we feel undermined, as if our solution to the world's woes might not be THE solution after all. But perhaps there is a different psychology behind this the closer the perspective the fiercer the debate thing.
Anyway it was, in my opinion and after due reflection, a huge mistake by John to close down RSP. Debate between Christians and atheists (but not inter or intra denominational debate) was a vital part of what Lewis was about and it is not really possible to discus Lewis's ideas without straying into these broader debates about the limits of reason and science, about the nature of time (is Lewis's brand of neo-platonism valid? I think not because it tries to give positive content to the concept of God being outside time rather than treating that apophatically) and so on. I would like to join in such a discussion but not if it is in danger of being shut down at any moment because someone steps over a line visible only to John and Sven.
So I drew my sword and got ready
But the lamb ran away with the crown