The Oxford Socratic Club was a student club that met from 1942 to 1954 dedicated to providing an open forum for the discussion of the intellectual difficulties connected with religion and with Christianity in particular. The club was formed in December 1941, at Oxford University, by Stella Aldwinckle of the Oxford Pastorate and a group of undergraduate students. A student by the name of Monica Shorten had expressed a need for such a club. The society was to follow the practice of Socrates to "follow the argument wherever it led them." As all inter-college clubs at Oxford had to have a "senior member of the university" as a sponsor, Aldwinckle implored C. S. Lewis to be its first president. Lewis enthusiastically served as president from 1942 until he left for Cambridge in 1954. Basil Mitchell succeeded Lewis as president in February 1955. The first meeting was held on 26 January 1942, and the club disbanded in 1972. The Oxford Socratic Club met on Monday evenings during term from 8.15 pm to 10.30 pm, with many undergraduates lingering long afterward. Many of the most notable figures of Oxford University presented or responded to papers, including G.E.M. Anscombe, Antony Flew, Iris Murdoch, Austin Farrer, A.J. Ayer, D.M. MacKinnon, C.E.M. Joad, E.L. Mascall, Gabriel Marcel, Frederick Copleston, I.M. Crombie, Basil Mitchell, R.M. Hare, Michael Polanyi, Gilbert Ryle, J.L. Austin, Dorothy Sayers. Commenting on the Socratic Club at Oxford, C.S. Lewis stated, "In any fairly large and talkative community such as a university, there is always the danger that those who think alike should gravitate together into 'coteries' where they will henceforth encounter opposition only in the emasculated form of rumor that the outsiders say thus and thus. The absent are easily refuted, complacent dogmatism thrives, and differences of opinion are embittered by group hostility. Each group hears not the best, but the worst, that the other groups can say.”
Famous debates
24 January 1944, C.E.M. Joad and C.S. Lewis, "On Being Reviewed by Christians" This debate involved a presentation by Joad that was based on his recent book, published in November 1942, God and Evil, which contained his arguments for theism, but also against Christianity. Joad was at this time taking a closer look at Christianity because of the evil he saw in Nazi Germany. He cited Lewis many times in his book, which was undoubtedly one of the reasons he was invited to address the Socratic Club. Joad later became a Christian. 2 February 1948, Elizabeth Anscombe and C. S. Lewis, "The Self-Refuting Nature of Naturalism" Catholic philosopher G.E.M. Anscombe debated Lewis about a portion of Lewis's 1947 book, Miracles known today as the Argument from Reason, in which he stated that since naturalists claimed all of nature to be irrational, that would make the claim of the naturalists also irrational and therefore contrary to reason. She claimed that he had mistakenly equated non-rational causes with irrational causes and confused the concepts of cause, reason, and explanation. John R. Lucas later helped in a rerun of this debate, which ended up vindicating Lewis. Victor Reppert's book, C.S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea, further supports Lewis's original argument.
