In Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis makes this statement at the end:
“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.”
Could one say that C. S. Lewis is denying not only the scientific legitimacy of the ID “Movement”, but also “independent” natural theology in general?
Re: “Independent” natural theology:
http://books.google.com/books?id=0qXBpoIE_QwC&pg=PA83&lpg=PA83&dq=independent+natural+theology&source=web&ots=lzRLQ4nHO_&sig=LC-daa499EeMg9ykE-4Oq5_TCJ8&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPR5,M1
A nice explanation.
He's completely right about science and belief, and helped me along many a time.
His best assertion: Jesus was either God, or he was an insane person. The things He said claimed His own divinity and therefore disqualified Him from being just a great human philosopher, prophet or philanthropist.
I keep the assertion in mind because I know that the Moose Limbs venerate Jesus as a great philosopher, prophet, and philanthropist, which He is not.