Photo: John S. Murray (public domain)
C.S. Lewis public figure — reconstructed profile
This is a reconstruction from published statements, not a real account. Only questions with a documented position are answered, and each one cites its source below. Spotted an error? Bring a better citation to the forum and it gets fixed.
Author of Mere Christianity (1952) and Surprised by Joy (1955). Positions reconstructed from his published works — not a member.
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Kindred % · overall match
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Twin % · thinks like you
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World % · lives in your world
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Life % · lives like you
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Opposition % · opposite poles, held with certainty
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Bubble
Positions & sources
| Question | Position | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Which comes closest to your actual position on God? | I am certain a god or gods exist | Mere Christianity (1952). |
| Humans came to exist by: | Evolution, with a god or higher power guiding the process | "The Funeral of a Great Myth" (1944); Miracles (1947). |
| Your organization has a 40-year-old rule nobody can explain. Following it costs staff about 100 hours a week in total. Stipulate: you have authority to drop it, the records of why it began are lost, asking around has turned up nothing, and no one objects. You: | Keep it until someone finds the original reason | Surprised by Joy (1955); "On the Reading of Old Books" (1944) — do not abolish what you do not understand; inherited practice may embody what the present cannot see. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Take a religion you don't hold. Stipulate: your honest probability that its afterlife claims are true is 1 in 1,000. Its doctrine says weekly attendance at a two-hour service suffices for a reward you'd value above everything else in your life combined; belief is not required. Non-attenders suffer nothing, and the service isn't unpleasant. You: | Decline, mainly because attending without belief would compromise my integrity | Mere Christianity (1952) — faith as holding to what reason has accepted; manufactured belief for advantage is excluded by his account of honest faith. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Your 10-year-old asks you directly, "Is there a God?" Stipulate: no one else is listening, and they'll remember your answer. You say: | My view, stated as plainly as I'd state a fact | Letters to Children (written 1944–1963) — he answers children's questions about God directly and plainly, stating his own belief without hedging. (scenario answer — inferred from their documented positions, not a recorded statement) |
| Organized religion's overall effect on society has been: | Strongly positive — a foundation of morality and community | Mere Christianity (1952). |
| God exists | Certainly true | Mere Christianity (1952). |
| Conscious existence continues after death | Certainly true | Mere Christianity (1952); The Great Divorce (1945) — heaven and hell as realities. |
| Prayer can change what happens in the world, beyond its effects on the people involved | Certainly true | Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer (1964) — a book-length defense of petitionary prayer's genuine efficacy. |
| Human beings arose entirely through unguided natural processes | Probably false | "The Funeral of a Great Myth" (written 1944; Christian Reflections, 1967) accepts common descent, but Miracles (1947) insists the process was neither entire nor unguided. |
| Consciousness is produced entirely by the brain | Certainly false | Miracles (1947), "The Cardinal Difficulty of Naturalism" — reason and consciousness cannot be a mere product of non-rational matter. |
| With the past exactly the same, our choices could have gone otherwise | Certainly true | The Problem of Pain (1940); Mere Christianity (1952) — free will as God's deliberate gift, central to his theodicy. |
| Some actions are wrong no matter what any person or culture believes | Certainly true | Mere Christianity (1952), Book 1 — the Moral Law; The Abolition of Man (1943) — the Tao. |
| Eating meat is morally wrong | Probably false | The Problem of Pain (1940), ch. 9; "Vivisection" (1947) — cruelty to animals condemned, but dominion permits eating them. |
| We owe a stranger overseas as much as we owe a neighbor | Probably true | Mere Christianity (1952), Book 3, "Charity" — Christian love extends to all neighbors, including enemies and the distant. |
| Long-standing traditions usually contain wisdom we can't see | Certainly true | "On the Reading of Old Books" (1944); Surprised by Joy (1955) — the attack on "chronological snobbery": old books and traditions correct each age's characteristic blindnesses. |
| Human life has a purpose beyond the one we choose for it | Certainly true | Mere Christianity (1952) — human beings are made by and for God. |
| Most people are basically good | Certainly false | Mere Christianity (1952) — human nature is fallen and "bent": the doctrine of original sin. |