RE: Endgame (Was RE: [asa] Jerry Coyne's ...)

In that quote- CS Lewis was talking as the 'next step' being spiritual, born-again, new creatures in Christ. I was referring to earlier context when he talked about the brain being something new as an evolutionary weapon- when we would have thought bigger animals or more armour would have been the next step if we analyzed the dino's in their hey-day.

He says, biologically, the greatest thing so far is the brain. The next step, of course, is spiritual, but I was talking just biologically.

...Bernie

-----Original Message-----
From: asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu [mailto:asa-owner@lists.calvin.edu] On Behalf Of Murray Hogg
Sent: Friday, January 30, 2009 5:29 PM
To: ASA
Subject: Re: Endgame (Was RE: [asa] Jerry Coyne's ...)

Dehler, Bernie wrote:
> George: " Why are you so sure that what's needed now is better brains? "
>
> The brain is what makes humans the dominant species. Bigger brains wins over muscles- there's no animal alive that can beat humans in a fight (put 10 tigers and 10 people in a sizeable jungle to fight it out, and the humans will win). CS Lewis kind of talks about this in the last chapter of "Mere Christianity."
>

<cite>
Now it seems to me that most of the popular guesses at the Next Step
are making just the same sort of mistake. People see (or at any rate they
think they see) men developing greater brains and getting greater mastery
over nature. And because they think the stream is flowing in that direction,
they imagine it will go on flowing in that direction. But I cannot help
thinking that the Next Step will be really new; it will go off in a
direction you could never have dreamed of. It would hardly be worth calling
a New Step unless it did...

...if you care to talk in these terms, the Christian view is
precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is really new. It
is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change that goes
off in a totally different direction-a change from being creatures of God to
being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand
years ago. In a sense, the change is not "Evolution" at all, because it is
not something arising out of the natural process of events but something
coming into nature from outside.

C.S. Lewis, "Mere Christianity", (Glasgow: Collins, 1977 reprint), 182-83.
</cite>

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Received on Mon Feb 2 11:31:36 2009