Thursday, October 1, 2009

C.S Lewis's surviving BBC radio address

Here is an audio recording of one of my favourite authors. It would have been recorded mid way through last century.

EPM, check out the english accent! Bring you home for a bit ay? (unless you are Scottish or something) :)



and a part 2 (another subject)

19 comments:

  1. Very interesting, Daniel- I'd never heard CS Lewis' voice before. He was a skilled writer, and the Chronicles of Narnia are wonderful stories, with characters endearingly human.

    Of course, he was wrong about a lot of things- for instance, his famous "liar, lunatic, or Lord" trilemna for pigeonholing Jesus is simply shortsighted: there are lots more than three possibilities here. But that's perhaps for another Bat-time, another Bat-thread.

    This brings to mind another man who made recordings for BBC radio programs: Alan Turing, the father of the computer, whose work in cracking the Enigma code was instrumental in the Allied victory, but who was harassed for being gay and poisoned himself. By all accounts, he was a riveting speaker with an unusual voice; but alas, all the radio programs seem to have been recycled: there is no existing recording of Alan Turing's voice. Sad.

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  2. CS has an accent very unlike my own.

    Obviously he's got the 'Oxford don' thing going on (sounds a lot like my old school master) but I think there's a bit of something else in there; probably Northern Irish.

    I'm from the northeast of England, so my accent is far less posh sounding; rough around the edges and descending into unintelligible after a few pints...

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  3. Nice. It is good to hear from those who come before us.

    I especially like the point he made that theologians have believed and that the Bible has taught that time had a beginning and G-d is outside it. It is funny how science didn't come to that conclusion until the 1920s. However, that's the way it's always been. Science is always catching up with the Bible. Kind of makes you wonder if those in science are getting thier ideas or perceptions from secrectly reading the scriptures of G-d. :-)

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  4. LOL,

    EPM,

    I like english accents. Have you heard much of the kiwi one? We can be very rough and choppy :)

    ND,

    Yes, there are many amazing scientific points made in the Bible that were previous to the scientific points being discovered.

    Hey Zilch,

    Yeah, I have never met someone with the ability to write as cleverly C.S. Lewis. It's almost like reading poetry and not, so clear and yet detailed and clever. What he can say in one sentence, it would take me to write a page :)

    As far as Lord, Liar, Lunatic...I think it is a valid argument. I would like to do a post on it sometime. The only other possibility I have heard atheists add is "legend", but that obviously, I think is a bit far fetched to say that Jesus was a made up character. I am not sure whether legend means "made up as God, He was just a man" or He was a made up "person".

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  5. I especially like the point he made that theologians have believed and that the Bible has taught that time had a beginning and G-d is outside it. It is funny how science didn't come to that conclusion until the 1920s.

    No Doubt: no doubt, there are some scientists who have come to that conclusion. But science hasn't come to the conclusion that God is outside time: science doesn't deal with the existence of God at all.

    Yes, there are many amazing scientific points made in the Bible that were previous to the scientific points being discovered.

    Is that so, Daniel? Name one. And sorry, I won't accept "the Universe had a beginning" for two reasons: one, it's not very impressive to choose the right guess of two possibilities: either the Universe had a beginning, or it didn't; and two, in the scientific view, "the Universe" simply means "everything", which includes God if God exists. And Christians teach that God had no beginning, so they don't really say that everything had a beginning.


    As far as Lord, Liar, Lunatic...I think it is a valid argument. I would like to do a post on it sometime. The only other possibility I have heard atheists add is "legend", but that obviously, I think is a bit far fetched to say that Jesus was a made up character. I am not sure whether legend means "made up as God, He was just a man" or He was a made up "person".


    Hey, a fourth "L"! Never heard the Tesseralemna expressed that way. "Legend" could of course mean either of the possibilities that you mention. I would also add the possibility (a pentalemma?) that Jesus existed, but was misquoted. Perhaps you can help me come up with an "L" word for that.

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  6. Zilch,

    no doubt, there are some scientists who have come to that conclusion.

    My point is that science is usually a day late and a dollar short when establishing even the basics of science itself. Please don't get me wrong, science has its place, but they'll never get the exclusive over G-ds Word.

    But science hasn't come to the conclusion that God is outside time: science doesn't deal with the existence of God at all.

    Actually, that's not quite correct. Atheistic Science doesn't recognize G-d. However, even atheistic scientists do recognize a force that they do not understand and that my friend is G-d. Scientists that look at the complete picture do indeed include either G-d or some external force. Just because atheist deny any possibility of G-d is indeed short sighted and is selling a flawed product.

    Yes, there are many amazing scientific points made in the Bible that were previous to the scientific points being discovered.

    Is that so, Daniel? Name one.


    The Hydrological Cycle, in the book of Job, wasn't discovered until the 1600s by science. That's one!!!! :-) However, there's a lot more where that came from.

    Shalom My Friend,
    Keith

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  7. Here is another one:

    http://www.windmillministries.org/frames/CH23-6A.htm

    God told Moses to circumcise on the 8th day...did you know that it is on that day that the blood clotting reaches over 100%.

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  8. Never mind that circumcision is barbaric...

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  9. Keith: please tell me exactly where in Job the hydrological cycle is explained, and we can look into it. But I'll tell you right now: taking an already known fact and then looking for something in the Bible that might be construed to mean the same thing is not very impressive, for two reasons: one, all sorts of vague statements, for instance that wind has "weight" in Job 28:25, can be enlisted to one's cause, because they will fit almost any scientific finding; and two, because people back then weren't dummies, and did have a fair amount of practical science: it's not surprising that Bronze Age people would eventually come upon the optimal day for circumcision after having circumcised tens of thousands of boys: it would have become a piece of cultural knowledge that they are least likely to bleed to death if circumcised on the eighth day. Science, yes, but not surprising, and not proof of God at all.

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  10. Who said I was giving proof?

    It is evidence of God.
    Evidence is not proof, proof is not evidence.

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  11. "Never mind that circumcision is barbaric..."

    Funny that, people still do it today. Apparently it is quite healthy.

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  12. Er, sorry, Da Bomb, I cannot even accept it as evidence for the existence of God. And if the Bible is the Word of God, it's surprising how much stuff God got wrong, for instance in the order of Creation in Genesis- not to mention the fact that Genesis 1 has a different order than Genesis 2. But if you believe that the Earth is older than the Sun, and the Sun older than all the other stars, there's probably not much point in any further discussion about the "truth" of the Bible.

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  13. Zilch,

    I think it's this bit;

    JOB 36: 27-28 NIV:
    "He draws up the drops of water, which distill as rain to the streams; the clouds pour down their moisture and abundant showers fall on mankind".

    Cheers,

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  14. Thanks, Matt. I guess that is the hydrological cycle in a nutshell. But it is a very small nutshell, and the observation could have been made by any Bronze Age (or earlier) person: the sun causes mist to rise from damp earth, and clouds shower rain on us. Sorry, science was not scooped. Now, if bats turned out to actually be birds, I'd be impressed...

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  15. You're such a skeptic, Zilch!

    The Bible talks about everything from the internet to stem cell research - it's like the science textbook of the future....written in the past!

    I mean, the bits where it's wrong are clearly metaphorical and/or poetic, but the bits that science has shown to be correct, they're definitely scientific and correct. Why it depends on science for validation I do not know...

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  16. Yeah, it's really a pity that none of these Biblical truths were understood until after scientists worked them out for themselves- think of the work that could have been saved! All that time wasted in tedious gathering of data, painstaking experimentation, and mind-racking theorizing could have been spent reading Scripture!

    Actually, when you think about it, it's quite a coincidence that all these Biblical truths are either stuff people obviously knew anyway, stuff that wasn't "understood" as being about modern science until after science demonstrated it, or simply wrong. It's almost as if God didn't edit the Bible carefully...

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  17. Da Bomb,

    Getting back to accents....

    I have to say, I can't stand Ray Comfort's accent, it makes my ears bleed. However, I love the Flight of the Conchords and find their accent quite nice to listen to - is there a dialect or regional difference between the two that I wouldn't know about?

    Cheers,

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  18. LOL, Ray Comfort may have a slightly different accent because he has been in America for a while. Probably not true Kiwi.

    Flight of the conchords would be more accurately a Kiwi accent.
    The manager has an emphasized accent :) real heavy, but obviously put on.

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