Re: [asa] C.S. Lewis on ID

Kind of sounds like a rejection not only of ID but of independent natural theology in general.

Shalom
George
http://home.neo.rr.com/scitheologyglm
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Marcio Pie
  To: 'ASA'
  Sent: Sunday, November 23, 2008 7:29 PM
  Subject: [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 21:56:13 2008