[asa] C.S. Lewis on ID

Dear all,
 
Speaking of Mere Christianity, I thought this quotation at the end of book 1
is particularly relevant to the ID discussion.
 
   "Ever since men were able to think, they have been wondering what this
universe really is and how it came to be there. And, very roughly, two views
have been held. First, there is what is called the materialist view. People
who take that view think that matter and space just happen to exist, and
always have existed, nobody knows why; and that the matter, behaving in
certain fixed ways, has just happened, by a sort of fluke, to produce
creatures like ourselves who are able to think. By one chance in a thousand
something hit our sun and made it produce the planets; and by another
thousandth chance the chemicals necessary for life, and the right
temperature, occurred on one of these planets, and so some of the matter on
this earth came alive; and then, by a very long series of chances, the
living creatures developed into things like us. The other view is the
religious view. According to it, what is behind the universe is more
like a mind than it is like anything else we know.
     That is to say, it is conscious, and has purposes, and prefers one
thing to another. And on this view it made the universe, partly for purposes
we do not know, but partly, at any rate, in order to produce creatures like
itself-I mean, like itself to the extent of having minds. Please do not
think that one of these views was held a long time ago and that the other
has gradually taken its place. Wherever there have been thinking men both
views turn up. And note this too. You cannot find out which view is the
right one by science in the ordinary sense. Science works by experiments. It
watches how things behave. Every scientific statement in the long run,
however complicated it looks, really means something like, "I pointed the
telescope to such and such a part of the sky at 2:20 A.M. on January 15th
and saw so-and-so," or, "I put some of this stuff in a pot and heated it to
such-and-such a temperature and it did so-and-so." Do not think I am saying
anything against science: I am only saying what its job is. And the more
scientific a man is, the more (I believe) he would agree with me that this
is the job of science- and a very useful and necessary job it is too. But
why anything comes to be there at all, and whether there is anything behind
the things science observes-something of a different kind-this is not a
scientific question. If there is "Something Behind," then either it will
have to remain altogether unknown to men or else make itself known in some
different way. The statement that there is any such thing, and the statement
that there is no such thing, are neither of them statements that science can
make. And real scientists do not usually make them. It is usually the
journalists and popular novelists who have picked up a few odds and ends of
half-baked science from textbooks who go in for them. After all, it is
really a matter of common sense."
 
 
I wonder if that means that C. S. Lewis is also part of the conspiracy to
deny the scientific legitimacy of the ID movement.
 
Marcio

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Received on Sun Nov 23 19:30:52 2008