CS Lewis humiliated. The argument from reason debunked. The SciPhi Show.

In this episode of the SchiPhi show, philosophers Daniel Linford and Alex Malpass join me to examine C. S. Lewis’s famous Argument from Reason, a key argument in Christian apologetics that claims naturalism undermines the reliability of human reasoning. They explain the structure of Lewis’s argument and why it has been influential in debates about whether reason can be fully explained within a naturalistic worldview. The discussion then turns to Elizabeth Anscombe’s well-known objection, which argued that Lewis had confused the causal explanation of beliefs with the logical grounds that justify them. Linford and Malpass explore how this criticism challenges the core of the Argument from Reason and discuss the famous exchange between Lewis and Anscombe at the Oxford Socratic Club. Approaching the issue from an atheist philosophical perspective, the video argues that naturalistic accounts of cognition do not undermine rational thought. Linford and Malpass conclude that while Lewis’s argument raises interesting philosophical questions, it ultimately fails to show that reason requires theism.