OK, so critiques of C. S. Lewis were immediately raised upon mentioning him in my introduction, so it seemed an interesting starting point for a discussion. Specifically,
By formal training or by skill? By formal training he was neither, but an expert in Classics and English literature, though much of his training and education certainly taught him both skills. By skill I suspect Lewis himself would disagree with you on that were he alive to defend himself (though I suspect he probably wouldn’t bother defending himself). But again, you piqued my curiosity - I’d be very interested in hearing which specific arguments or discussions he presents that make you feel that this claim is warranted?
Forgive me if I’m being pedantic already, but these kinds of absolute claims I find difficult to logically defend - for myself, the scholar I find most atrocious in scholarship especially in making specious claims is Bart Ehrman - but I would never go so far as to claim that “every argument” Ehrman makes is specious - not even close, that would simply be uncharitable not to mention near impossible to prove. For one I’d have to claim complete knowledge of each and every argument he’s ever made, and I’d have had to thoroughly fact check each and every one to make such a sweeping claim. That said, I’d agree that when any author or scientist has made enough unjustified, specious, or illogical claims, then one begins to be justified in losing trust in said author as a whole.
I’d be very curious if you could give me a few of the most significant arguments of Lewis that you find specious.
But since you asked me first for an argument I found impressive, here’s one to get started with… from Chapter 1 of Miracles:
Here is an example of the sort of thing that happens if we omit the preliminary philosophical task, and rush on to the historical. In a popular commentary on the Bible you will find a discussion of the date at which the Fourth Gospel was written. The author says it must have been written after the execution of St Peter, because, in the Fourth Gospel, Christ is represented as predicting the execution of St Peter. ‘A book’, thinks the author, ‘cannot be written before events which it refers to’. Of course it cannot–unless real predictions ever occur. If they do, then this argument for the date is in ruins. And the author has not discussed at all whether real predictions are possible. He takes it for granted (perhaps unconsciously) that they are not. Perhaps he is right: but if he is, he has not discovered this principle by historical inquiry. He has brought his disbelief in predictions to his historical work, so to speak, ready made. Unless he had done so his historical conclusion about the date of the Fourth Gospel could not have been reached at all. His work is therefore quite useless to a person who wants to know whether predictions occur… It is no use going to the texts until we have some idea about the possibility or probability of the miraculous. Those who assume that miracles cannot happen are merely wasting their time by looking into the texts: we know in advance what results they will find for they have begun by begging the question.