Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Latter-day Saint
From the city by the Bay

From the city by the Bay

Last updated on: November 4, 2021 at 12:07 am by Dan Peterson

From the city by the Bay 2021-11-04T00:07:11-06:00 Dan Peterson

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The main pathway in Muir Woods National Monument
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)

***

We spent a few moments on the grounds of the Sacramento California Temple late this morning, having driven across the Donner Pass and down into California’s great Central Valley, and then we enjoyed a quiet late afternoon and early evening walk in Muir Woods National Monument. (“The clearest way into the Universe,” John Muir is reported to have said, “is through a forest wilderness.” In a sense, Joseph Smith might have agreed.) Along the way, we also drove past Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael. (Have I mentioned that I’m an enthusiastic fan of Frank Lloyd Wright’s architecture? If not, perhaps someday I should mention it.)

Earlier this evening, I had a lot of fun answering questions and discussing the Interpreter Foundation’s Witnesses movie with the elders and sisters and the president of the Utah Ogden Mission; they had seen the film on Saturday night. (I’m guessing — this is pure speculation, of course — that evening tracting isn’t very effective at Halloween.)

***

This seems to me a very worthwhile project:

“Opinion: The untold stories of Latter-day Saint ‘reconversion’: We’re inundated with loss-of-faith narratives, but what about the ones where people find their faith again?”

Which reminds me of yet another worthwhile project. Please don’t forget about the new film on C. S. Lewis that will have its American public debut this coming Wednesday, 3 November 2021. (My wife and I already have tickets for it.) I’m not at all sure, but it’s possible that the Wednesday night showing will be the only theatrical screening of the film. Please go to the link immediately below for further information:

The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C. S. Lewis

I wish that all Latter-day Saints were well acquainted with the works of C. S. Lewis — and I’m not referring only to the Chronicles of Narnia. I think that such familiarity would do very much good among the Saints.

***

And, while I’m speaking of C. S. Lewis: In 1944, Lewis delivered an address to the Oxford Socratic Club. Here are two related passages from it:

“The whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts. Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears. Unless we can be sure that reality in the remotest nebula or the remotest part obeys the thought-laws of the human scientist here and now in his laboratory—in other words, unless Reason is an absolute—all is in ruins. Yet those who ask me to believe this world picture also ask me to believe that Reason is simply the unforeseen and unintended by-product of mindless matter at one stage of its endless and aimless becoming. Here is flat contradiction. They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based. The difficulty is to me a fatal one; and the fact that when you put it to many scientists, far from having an answer, they seem not even to understand what the difficulty is, assures me that I have not found a mare’s nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. The man who has once understood the situation is compelled henceforth to regard the scientific cosmology as being, in principle, a myth; though no doubt a great many true particulars have been worked into it. . . .

“I was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to ‘prove my answer’. The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this. When I accept Theology I may find difficulties, at this point or that, in harmonising it with some particular truths which are imbedded in the mythical cosmology derived from science. But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole. Granted that Reason is prior to matter and that the light o that primal Reason illuminates finite minds, I can understand how men should come, by observation and inference, to know a lot about the universe they live in. If, on the other hand, I swallow the scientific cosmology as a whole, then not only can I not fit in Christianity, but I cannot even fit in science. If minds are wholly dependent on brains, and brains on bio-chemistry,and bio-chemistry (in the long run) on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance than the sound of the wind in the trees. And this is to me the final test. This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking. When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream. The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world. I know that there are such things as dreams: I know that I had eaten an indigestible dinner: I know that a man of my reading might be expected to dream of dragons. But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience. The waking world is judged more real because it can thus contain the dreaming world: the dreaming world is judged less real because it cannot contain the waking one. For the same reason I am certain that in passing from the scientific point of view to the theological, I have passed from dream to waking. Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions. The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself. I believe in Christianity as I believe that the Sun has risen not only because I see it but because by it I see everything else.”

C. S. Lewis, “Is Theology Poetry?” in C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, and Other Pieces (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1965), 55, 57-58.

I sometimes think about these sorts of things on long drives. We’ve also been reading Terryl Givens’s book about Eugene England.

Posted from San Francisco, California

Marin County Civic Center

Most Reluctant Convert

Muir Woods

reconversion

Sacramento

Sacramento California Temple

Previous Post

October 30, 2021

Happy Halloween! ("Ways of Remembering the Dead")

Next Post

November 2, 2021 "Tamid: Zacharias and the Second Temple"

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 March 2014 August 2013 February 2012

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

Who was lowered through a roof to be healed by Jesus?

Select your answer to see how you score.

A paralyzed man Jairus' daughter A blind man A leper