Photo: Caleb Woods, 2017 (Unsplash).
C.S. Lewis & Objective Value by Joel D. Heck
C
. S. Lewis once wrote about the objective nature of goodness, truth, and beauty in The Abolition of Man. He called this concept the Tao, choosing a Chinese term to make the point that these values are not the exclusive property of Christians but are universally held values. The Tao is “the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.” Lewis argued that the Tao is a common core of values to be found in the ethical teachings of all major cultures throughout history, a fact that supports the validity of those values.
Fact vs. Opinion Too often, however, people confuse an opinion about something with that something’s actual nature. In an exercise designed to show the difference between fact and opinion, or between raw data and values, Mark Roberts constructed a critical thinking exercise (see Michael Matheson Miller’s essay in The Magician’s Twin). Roberts asked students to identify which of the following six statements were facts and which of them were opinions: 1. Mozart was born in Salzburg. THE CANADIAN LUTHERAN | January/February 2024
9
