{"id":93142,"date":"2021-10-31T23:23:02","date_gmt":"2021-11-01T05:23:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/?p=93142"},"modified":"2021-11-04T00:07:11","modified_gmt":"2021-11-04T06:07:11","slug":"from-the-city-by-the-bay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/danpeterson\/2021\/10\/from-the-city-by-the-bay.html","title":{"rendered":"From the city by the Bay"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

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\"Im<\/a>
The main pathway in Muir Woods National Monument
(Wikimedia Commons public domain photograph)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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***<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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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\u2019s great Central Valley, and then we enjoyed a quiet late afternoon and early evening walk in Muir Woods National Monument.\u00a0 (\u201cThe clearest way into the Universe,\u201d John Muir is reported to have said, \u201cis through a forest wilderness.\u201d\u00a0 In a sense, Joseph Smith might have agreed<\/a>.)\u00a0 Along the way, we also drove past Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s famous Marin County Civic Center in San Rafael.\u00a0 (Have I mentioned that I\u2019m an enthusiastic fan of Frank Lloyd Wright\u2019s architecture?\u00a0 If not,\u00a0 perhaps someday I should <\/em>mention it.)<\/p>\n

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Earlier this evening, I had a lot of fun answering questions and discussing the Interpreter Foundation\u2019s Witnesses<\/em> movie with the elders and sisters and the president of the Utah Ogden Mission; they had seen the film on Saturday night.\u00a0 (I\u2019m guessing \u2014 this is pure speculation, of course \u2014 that evening tracting isn\u2019t very effective at Halloween.)<\/p>\n

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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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This seems to me a very worthwhile project:<\/p>\n

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\u201cOpinion: The untold stories of Latter-day Saint \u2018reconversion\u2019: We\u2019re inundated with loss-of-faith narratives, but what about the ones where people find their faith again?\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

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Which reminds me of yet another worthwhile project.\u00a0 Please don\u2019t forget about the new film on C. S. Lewis that will have its American public debut this coming Wednesday, 3 November 2021.\u00a0 (My wife and I already have tickets for it.)\u00a0 I\u2019m not at all sure, but it\u2019s possible that the Wednesday night showing will be the only theatrical screening of the film.\u00a0 Please go to the link immediately below for further information:<\/p>\n

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The Most Reluctant Convert: The Untold Story of C. S. Lewis<\/a><\/p>\n

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I wish that all<\/em> Latter-day Saints were well acquainted with the works of C. S. Lewis \u2014 and I\u2019m not referring only to the Chronicles of Narnia.\u00a0 I think that such familiarity would do very much good among the Saints.<\/p>\n

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***<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

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And, while I\u2019m speaking of C. S. Lewis:\u00a0 In 1944, Lewis delivered an address to the Oxford Socratic Club. \u00a0Here are two related passages from it:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe whole picture professes to depend on inferences from observed facts.\u00a0 Unless inference is valid, the whole picture disappears.\u00a0 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\u2014in other words, unless Reason is an absolute\u2014all is in ruins.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Here is flat contradiction.\u00a0 They ask me at the same moment to accept a conclusion and to discredit the only testimony on which that conclusion can be based.\u00a0 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\u2019s nest but detected a radical disease in their whole mode of thought from the very beginning. \u00a0The 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. . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI was taught at school, when I had done a sum, to \u2018prove my answer\u2019.\u00a0 The proof or verification of my Christian answer to the cosmic sum is this.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But I can get in, or allow for, science as a whole.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 And this is to me the final test.\u00a0 This is how I distinguish dreaming and waking.\u00a0 When I am awake I can, in some degree, account for and study my dream.\u00a0 The dragon that pursued me last night can be fitted into my waking world.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 But while in the nightmare I could not have fitted in my waking experience.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 Christian theology can fit in science, art, morality, and the sub-Christian religions.\u00a0 The scientific point of view cannot fit in any of these things, not even science itself.\u00a0 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.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

C. S. Lewis, \u201cIs Theology Poetry?\u201d in C. S. Lewis, Screwtape Proposes a Toast, and Other Pieces<\/em> (London: Collins, Fontana Books, 1965), 55, 57-58.<\/span><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n

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I sometimes think about these sorts of things on long drives.\u00a0 We\u2019ve also been reading Terryl Givens\u2019s book about Eugene England.<\/p>\n

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Posted from San Francisco, California<\/p>\n

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\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0 *** \u00a0 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\u2019s great Central Valley, and then we enjoyed a quiet late afternoon and early evening walk in Muir Woods National Monument.\u00a0 (\u201cThe clearest way into the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1019,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1543,5550,8567,1733,26182,11395,26197,26200,26188,26179,26206,26191,26194,26185,26203,641,8564],"class_list":["post-93142","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-c-s-lewis","tag-california","tag-frank-lloyd","tag-frank-lloyd-wright","tag-john-muir","tag-lewis","tag-marin-county","tag-marin-county-civic-center","tag-most-reluctant-convert","tag-muir-woods","tag-reconversion","tag-sacramento","tag-sacramento-california-temple","tag-san-francisco","tag-san-rafael","tag-temple","tag-wright"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom the city by the Bay<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"    ***   We spent a few moments on the grounds of the Sacramento California Temple late this morning, having driven across the Donner Pass\" \/>\n<meta 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