The Argument from Desire

Don September 14th, 2009

One of C. S. Lewis’s many interesting contributions to Christian Apologetics is the “Argument from Desire,” which appears in Mere Christianity.  Nature does not create desires that have no fulfillment.  A duck wants to swim; well, there is such a thing as water.  People get hungry; well, there is such a thing as food.  So if I find myself with desires that nothing in this world can fulfill, then I must have been made for another world.

Is this argument valid?  Maybe.  My hunger does not prove that I will get any bread, or that any given loaf exists; but it does prove I was designed to need nourishment.  John Beversluis contends that the argument fails as a syllogistic proof and refuses to consider it as anything else.  I’m not sure he is right on either count, but I’m pretty sure he’s wrong on the latter.   

There are more conclusive proofs for the existence of God than the Argument from Desire; but I do think that the argument has value. It points to a critical difference between human beings and other animals. A cat which is full and warm is perfectly contented. It just curls up and goes to sleep. A human being is mighty ill at ease if he is not full and warm, but when he has satisfied those desires he will pretty soon start asking, “Is that all there is? What’s next?”

I think we can say at minimum that the existence of beings who cannot ever be completely contented by the fulfillment of their physical wants is consistent with Christian Theism and less consistent with Naturalism. By itself it might not be a “proof” in any rigorous sense, but it is an important indicator and helps to confirm the conclusion we are led to by the cosmological, teleological, and moral arguments, by Lewis’s Argument from Reason, and by the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Christ.

One of Lewis’s forerunners in the Theology of Desire, George Herbert, described the human condition well in his poem “The Pulley.” The Argument from Desire in Mere Christianity can at least serve to focus our attention on the reality Herbert describes:

When God at first made Man,
Having a glasse of blessings standing by,
“Let us,” said he, “poure on him all we can;
Let the world’s riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.”

So strength first made a way;
Then beauty flowed, then wisedome, honour, pleasure.
When almost all was out, God made a stay,
Perceiving that, alone of all his treasure,
Rest in the bottom lay.

“For If I should,” said he,
“Bestow this jewel also on my creature,
He would adore my gifts instead of me
And rest in Nature, not the God of Nature;
So both would losers be.”

“Yet let him keep the rest,
But keep them with repining restlessness.
Let him be rich and wearie, that at least
If goodnesse leade him not, yet wearinesse
May tosse him to my breast.”

If like Lewis we examine our own history of desires and their fulfillment or lack thereof, I believe we will find that the results are consistent with Herbert’s perspective, and are less well explained by Naturalism. The Argument from Desire may not be a proof, then, but it is an indicator and a confirmation.

Longing but not (yet) satisfied,

Donald T. Williams, PhD

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