I was debating with a fundie friend of mine a week or so ago, and he brought out the tired old “trilemma” argument (Jesus was either Lord, Liar, or Lunatic). He then went on to claim that in a debate some years ago, C.S. Lewis “stumped” Ghandi with it. This seemed like a fundie urban legend, so I wanted to check it out.
A preliminary Google search on the matter turned up only five hits, none of which purport to be the record of some historical debate.
Can anyone shed any light on this?
P.S.: For further reading on the (IMHO) fallacy of the trilemma check out this excellent article on the Internet Infidels site, by Jim Perry.
My first response is “So what?” Gandhi was no expert theologian or Hindu apologist. Furthermore, as an ecumenical Hindu, he probably had no objection to the idea of Jesus as one incarnation of the divine. Thus to say that Lewis “stumped” him would be a misrepresentation of the situation.
My second response is to tell your fundie friend to provide evidence for his assertion. It’s not your job to disprove every silly thing people tell you.
No need to use any big guns on your friend’s claim. It’s easy to show that Lewis and Gandhi never met. (Um, and though I know that it’s not polite to point out misspellings, I should warn you that you won’t get any useful searches on Gandhi’s name unless you spell it right.)
Lewis first mentioned the trilemma in his talks on British radio. These talks were first published as The Case for Christianity in 1942, so the talks were within a year or so before that. (They’re now available in his book Mere Christianity.) Gandhi was killed on January 30, 1948. Lewis didn’t leave the U.K. during that period. I don’t know if Gandhi visited the U.K. during that period, but I don’t recall him ever engaging in debates on religious matters.
If you know anything of Gandhi’s life, he was never a strong advocate for any religion. He tried to decrease the fighting between the Hindus and the Mostlems, and he championed the cause of the untouchables. He was killed by someone who thought he was a traitor to his caste.
I’ve read nearly all of Lewis’s works and much of the books about him. I’m sure I’ve never seen any mention of him meeting Gandhi. I know enough about Lewis’s life to say that while, for instance, he once met and informally debated Arthur C. Clarke, there’s no record that he ever met Gandhi.
Thanks for the info, and thanks for the correction on Gandhi’s name. This does seem to indicate that there is a low probabililty they ever met.
Opus~
Good point re: the burden of proof. This guy is usually pretty educated in his positions though, and I didn’t want to just dismiss his claim out of hand without having evidence of my own to reply with.
Makes me wonder; even if the discussion did take place, it strikes me that Gandhi was the sort of man that, just because he declined to answer the question, didn’t mean he had been proved wrong or caught out, maybe he just didn’t think it was important enough to be bickering about (if the discussion did take place).
I’m inclined to agree. It reminds me a lot of that oh-so-annoying “buddha nature of a dog” koan. That said, next time i’m presented with the trilemma I’m going to respond, “mu”
Don’t know about Gandhi, but my response would be to object to the 3 options. The 2 non-supernatural choices seem to omit a lot of options/combinations.
Also, always nice for a well-intentioned objective debate to start of with derogatory characterizations of the disfavored options.
Arguing about whether the trilemma is true seems to me to be turning this question into a Great Debate. If you’re going to do that, this thread should be moved to GD. As I said before, it’s not necessary to resolve the nature of the trilemma in order to answer the OP. The answer to that is simple - Lewis never debated Gandhi, nor did he ever meet him.
