C. S. Lewis and Myth 2018

So far I've read the first three books, chronologically, of the Chronicles of Narnia. I haven't read them in some time, so much of it feels new to me. The first thing I can think to comment on it is the depiction of Jesus as Aslan in the story. If the Christian God is real, and I hope that He is, I also hope that C.S. Lewis touches well upon His nature in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe with the following quote "Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he’s good. He’s the King, I tell you”. Another thing that really interested me when reading of Narnia so far is what Lewis writes about myth in Myth Became Fact . “If God chooses to be mythopoeic–and is not the sky itself a myth–shall we refuse to be mythopathic? ” Was he inspired to write Narnia because of his beliefs on myth? Did he feel that there was a lack of properly Christian myths, outside of ‘original’ Christian Myth? I like to think so. And if the fact that we’re now studying him a...

     I was very intrigued by the feeling experienced by Digory in the concluding chapter of The Magician's Nephew.  Digory had just seen this absolutely compelling apple that had been given to him from Aslan to give to his mother to make her well, then after she ate it he kept the core because it was so astonishing.  Digory took the apple out of his pocket and it made all the other vibrant colors in the room look bland, this apple of Narnia surely was something special.  Then after Digory had left his mother, everything in the world looked so dull that he almost felt no hope, his only hope was that of which he found remembering Aslan and his majestic face.  I think that this is a common response to intense religious experience as well.  People will often bear witness or experience something so profoundly amazing or beautiful that after the encounter all of their surroundings look so mundane compared to the amazing experience they had just had....

During our first class, I found myself entering a process of asking a question, and finding answers that beg further questions. I'm sure this is a common enough occurrence, as answers are rarely straightforward or absolute in philosophy. Or perhaps they are. I am by no means an expert. Can we have knowledge? I do not know. In my class on experimental design, my professor said that to scientists, there is objective reality and apparent reality, and apparent reality is distorted by human elements: Our tendency towards myth, superstition, bias, and fallacies gets in the way. And that it is our job as scientists to minimize those tendencies in order to get as close as possible to objective reality. But in light of this class, it seems to me that such knowledge that a scientist may obtain is ultimately an approximation, a guess made with flawed data. I believe many scientists themselves will agree with that sentiment, albeit while arguing about the severity of the distortions our huma...

Welcome to the Fall 2018 C. S. Lewis and Myth class blog. Make sure to start the blog with your name and the subject of the entry in the post title area. Blog entries will be considered informal writing assignments and as such will be graded more in relation to content than style. Blog entries will contain questions and answers to questions, as well as reflections that relate to daily classroom discussions, completion of exercises, and reading assignments. Any questions you have while reading or completing assignments should be written in your blog. Reflections may relate to connections that you make between discussions in this class and those in other classes, between arguments raised in the readings in this class and those raised in other classes or from informal conversations. You are encouraged to apply the ideas learned in this class to activities that take place outside of the class. These applications make great reflections. You should bring questions from the bl...