More on C.S. Lewis’ Pool Table Analogy
Kevin R. Henke
September 23, 2022
In Lundahl (2022a), Henke (2022b), Henke (2022t), Henke (2022u) and Lundahl (2022q), Mr. Lundahl and I have extensively discussed the pool game analogy presented in Lewis (1960, pp. 90-92). In Henke (2022b), I made the following comments, which are further quoted in Henke (2022v):
“The pool (billiards) analogy from chapter 8 of Lewis (1960) and summarized by Lundahl (2022a) is totally ineffective in defending the existence of the supernatural. It only illustrates that a physicist would have difficulty making predictions about a pool game if a human (not a supernatural being) unexpectedly decided to hit one of the balls in the middle of the game. Although the conditions of the pool game might change, notice that Mr. Lundahl admits that no “laws of movement” were violated in this account. That’s because humans, and not God, demons, angels, or other supernatural agents, were playing in this game. When humans play pool, we’re stuck obeying the laws of physics. Now, if God exists, he, by definition, is not necessarily forced to obey natural laws. He supposedly created natural laws and if he can create natural laws, then supposedly he can make exceptions or undo them. God could play pool by either using his supernatural powers or he might simply restrict himself to using only natural laws. If he exists, he could do anything he wanted to. God could remove the effects of gravity from a pool ball and cause it to pass through the ceiling or allow the atoms of the ball to pass through the table, but humans can’t do these things.” [my emphasis]
Lundahl (2022q) makes the following comments on the bolded sentence of Henke (2022b):
“It so happens, the analogy was not about a game of pool. It was about a table otherwise used for that game and balls on that table also for the moment not so used : and the physicist was predicting how the balls would reflect the waves of the cruiser. And the point is, the only cause of the movement of pool balls that physicist was concerning himself with was ultimately how the waves set the balls in motion. I e, the predictions of the physicist only concern the causality of the waves combined with the added subcausalities of friction on pool table, collision, balls being set in contrary motion when the wave changes the direction of the slant of the pool table and so on. And the analogy was on how these predictions of the physicist are very much like the predictions made from natural law : because the natural laws we do have are based on reularities of observations within certain limited causalities as relevant.”
C.S. Lewis attached other important meanings to the pool game analogy that Lundahl (2022q) does not mention here. The reader can refer to our essays cited above for those discussions.
Reference:
Lewis, C.S. 1960. Miracles, 2nd ed., printed 1974: Harper One: HarperCollinsPublishers, 294pp.