Were Lewiss proofs of the existence of God from Miracles refuted by Elizabeth Anscombe?
On 2nd February 1948, Elizabeth Anscombe read a paper criticising the third chapter of C.S Lewis’s Miracles to the Oxford Socratic Club. Anscombe was a student of Wittgenstein, a student of philosophy but also a convert to Catholicism. At the Socratic Club debate, she argued against Lewis’s position: she was not attacking his faith, but the philosophical validity of his argument. Lewis must have accepted the criticisms, since he later rewrote the chapter: changing the title from ‘Naturalism is Self-Refuting’ to the less ambitious ‘The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism.’ According to George Sayer, Lewis’s friend and biographer, Lewis regarded the debate as a defeat, and felt humiliated by it. ‘He told me that he had been proved wrong, and that his argument for the existence of God had been demolished….The debate had been a humiliating experience, but perhaps it was ultimately good for him. In the past, he had been are too proud of his logical ability. Now he was humbled….’I can neve
On 2nd February 1948, Elizabeth Anscombe read a paper criticising the third chapter of C.S Lewis’s Miracles to the Oxford Socratic Club. Anscombe was a student of Wittgenstein, a student of philosophy but also a convert to Catholicism. At the Socratic Club debate, she argued against Lewis’s position: she was not attacking his faith, but the philosophical validity of his argument. Lewis must have accepted the criticisms, since he later rewrote the chapter: changing the title from “Naturalism is Self-Refuting” to the less ambitious “The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism.
