Meditations in a Toolshed

Reading has never been (and probably never will be) an interest of mine. I hate having to sit down and read through text; I'd rather be engaged in hands-on activities. So I found it odd when I was sitting comfortably, reading this CS Lewis essay. Unlike most university essays, I feel that Lewis wrote this in a very welcoming fashion. He doesn't try to cram his ideas together, and end up confusing the reader. He uses simple words and examples to get his points across. However, this is not to say his ideas are simple and easy. He takes the simple experience of a lightbeam in a toolshed and expands it to encompass all sorts of topics.
When I started to read "Meditations," I thought it was going to be somewhat of an argument about the difference between a believer having the experience (looking along the beam) and an atheist or non-believer criticizing Christianity (looking at the beam). I was pleased to be wrong. I liked Lewis' examples such as the man in love and the mathematician. Also, the physiologists that are looking the neural activity causing their experiences. The part I liked most is probably the point Lewis brings up about stepping into another experience.

The cerebral physiologist may say, if he chooses, that the mathematician's thought is “only” tiny physical movements of the grey matter. But then what about the cerebral physiologist's own thought at that very moment? A second physiologist, looking at it, could pronounce it also to be only tiny physical movements in the first physiologist's skull. Where is the rot to end?

He answers the question and brings up the central idea of his essay.

The answer is that we must never allow the rot to begin. We must, on pain of idiocy, deny from the very outset the idea that looking at is, by its own nature, intrinsically truer or better than looking along. One must look both along and at everything. 

While the essay deals with people criticizing Christianity without actually experiencing it, I'm surprised that nothing was actually written about God or Christianity. It simply takes the principle and applies it to other areas.


A question I have in mind is if the same can be said, when turned around, for atheism. As many of us are probably brought up in a religious environment, are our criticisms against atheism discredited because we were never raised in a non-religious environment? What then does that say about absolute truth? Or am I stretching it a little too far?