Those ranked against you are worrying about the coming Charientocracy, and unless you live in Iran, it's a good deal more likely to happen.

Well, according to A larger world: C.S. Lewis on Christianity and Literature.

Just as theocracy is the worst form of government because it ironically destroys genuine religion, "charientocracy," the rule of the artificially "cultured," is inimical to all the goods that culture can really give.

Now, get those kids off my lawn and leave my pink flamingos alone!

Your authoritarian dick-waving is tiresome. As a wise man once said, the unexamined life is not worth living, and the idea that ignorant nomads who thought that blood sacrifice was anything other than plain barbarism have already given all the answers you need in a handy, easy-to-read instruction book is, for brevity's sake, just plain stupid.

I read Carson's little screed, and it falls somewhere between "irrelevant" and "backwards." Governance ain't free, and tax is the price of citizenry, fucking duh. You wanna join the club? You gotta pay your club dues. What is so hard to understand about this? Sure, we'll disagree on exactly how our club ought to behave, and that's why we do things like, I dunno, vote on it. And discuss, and explain our positions, and seek to change minds, and all that effort that is so obviously beneath one of your station (that's what happens when you're high on God-smack, right?). Sure, it's never gonna be perfect; who cares? We can be satisfied with getting a little better each time. The idea that welfare weakens recipients is also stupid; people weaken themselves, and if someone refuses to step up and take responsibility for his or her own life, well, there's nothing that anyone can do about it. If you think that such people should be left to die in the street, well, that's your opinion.

I'm just grateful that I live in a more civilized nation than that.

It's not clear what sort of government C.S. Lewis would prefer -- if any at all.

For you, yes. The rest is more than you can bear.

Son, you don't know what I've borne already. Why don't you stick to things you do know: fear, blind faith, the acceptance of that which you have been spoonfed.

With those posting above, I join in asking for your "answers". I share their skepticism as to your provision of them, as well.

I am sure you *do* find it interesting. That doesn't say much about what you find interesting. Why don't you move along and read what I provided at that link?

Has anyone ever noticed that the people who are quickest to refute any suggestion that there might be sensible answers to these twenty questions are the ones who seem least likely to have anything better to do?

Ebonmuse, that's mostly because we don't want to waste our time explaining our faith to people...

No one, especially not someone like me, is going to bring it to you as though it were a dish prepared 'just the way you like it'. I don't serve you, I serve Another.

You show such hostility at the mere idea of being asked to justify your beliefs. How interesting that is.

Anyway, as far as C.S. Lewis goes - when he was writing as a Christian apologist, he certainly did defend the position that God could not have done otherwise than create a world full of evil and suffering. However, when he was writing as a fantasy author - when the need to defend Christian beliefs was perhaps not uppermost in his mind - he took a substantially different view.

I didn't step in here to explain Lewis. Go read him for yourself. Look for those answers yourself. No one, especially not someone like me, is going to bring it to you as though it were a dish prepared 'just the way you like it'. I don't serve you, I serve Another.

Here. Read this through. http://www.thefreemanonline.org/columns/c-s-lewis-on-compelling-people-to-do-good/

It won't change your mind. It's not meant to. But it will answer the question about Charientocracy - and what Lewis himself felt about Theocracy.

And where did C.S. Lewis address any of Ebonmuse's questions?

Also, Centurion13, you try to use C.S. Lewis's lunatic, liar, or lord argument about "many of the best and brightest of our race", when your religion traditionally teaches that most others of them are so terribly deluded that they deserve to be horribly tortured forever and ever and ever, all because they had not believed in whatever is the One True Sect of Xianity.