Not that I am, FRiend.
My comment refers back to post #134 where YHAOS copies & pastes a listing of 27 quotes from FReepers allegedly "mocking" Christians, with YHAOS special emphasis on the words "demonic possession".
I merely pointed out that if those quotes were seriously "mocking" Christians, then the quote about CS Lewis you refer to even more seriously mocks science.
Indeed, let's look at that quote again:
The quote goes on to equate these "lies" with the "fiendish aim" of "another spirit" for which "compromising priests" are serving its "diabolical purposes".
I'd call that a mocking of science far greater than any mild chiding of certain Christian beliefs by posters on Free Republic.
betty boop: "I'm a Christian. I don't "mock" science.
Rather I think science is one of the most glorious human activities in the world.
I don't even "mock" Darwinism.
To critique it for its shortcomings is not to "mock" it; it is to take it seriously."
So, does that mean you disavow the use of CS Lewis' words in the article here?
If so, then I commend you, FRiend.
Strangely enough, when many of the same of what you now call the “allegedly” mocking of Christians, was introduced to you, by yours truly, in 2009 on FR (see February of 2009, How Much Longer Can They Sell Darwinism?), you had no objection, just excuses for the misbehavior of Atheists attempting to use Science as a shield. Apparently you’ve decided that tactic doesn’t work, so you’ve now opted instead for denial. Obfuscation and denial are all you have. Hence my reference to “great billowing clouds,” which apparently drives you crazy.
Dawkins, and his many acolytes (fans), have been found guilty of violating the very canons of the science they pretend to praise as superior to any possible religion or other code of ethics.
Your denial efforts notwithstanding.
Dear BroJoeK, who's quote is this? It doesn't "sound" like C. S. Lewis' language at all. [I do not see much use of strictly denotative language in his works: He is a great literary artist who typically employs symbolic language.] I thought, well, if a statement like this exists in C. S. Lewis' body of work, then I'd likely find it in The Abolition of Man. Having just skimmed that work, I could not find that statement or anything like it.
Plus there is this problem: Lewis was far too gracious a man to ever "mock" anyone or anything. That was definitely not his style.
This may simply be a case of someone attributing something to Lewis. If so, I'd like to know who, what, and in what context. I'd be glad to look into this matter further. Would you kindly give me the cite for the above statement?
But this quibble is about the authorship of a statement. I gather that's not really what you're interested in. So, "Indeed, let's look at that quote again."
Primarily, this is a statement about evolution. It doesn't directly specify Darwinian evolution, but seems to imply it. I can give you my analysis, but can only do so from my own point of view — which I suspect may be very close to C. S. Lewis' own.
For openers, speaking as an orthodox Christian, in no way do I find the idea of "evolution" objectionable in principle. From the cosmic perspective, it seems very clear to me that the Creation, or the universe as you may prefer to call it [hopefully we won't quibble about terms, at least not yet] is a process that unfolds in space and time, from a beginning, progressively developing its potentialities as it "evolves."
The Darwinian claim that Christians find objectionable is that evolution is fundamentally a random process. This is not to say Christians deny that there is a certain amount of randomness in nature. Certainly I don't. But the point is, randomness cannot serve as an organizational principle governing the evolutionary process. Undisciplined by law, randomness just continues to be random. The point is, randomness has no principle whereby it can produce its own organizational laws, such that it can cease to be "random," and actually evolve into "something."
But then it will be argued, Natural Selection is Darwin's organizational principle. A "natural" selection is one that is elicited by environmental pressure, acting on random mutations of already-existent organisms about which we know nothing apart from the fact that they already exist. That is to say, Darwin's theory is not a theory of the origin of biological beings (i.e., the origin of life); it is a theory about how existent beings change morphologically, or speciate, over time.
Thus we are left with the squishy proposition that the natural environment, which is itself ever changing, acts on a random flux of biological possibilities, for the purpose of — selecting for reproductive fitness. How banal a final cause could there be than that?
For make no mistake about it: "Survival of the fittest" is a final cause, though a rather puny, paltry one. I doubt many Darwinists would ever admit this, of course. Just as they reject out of hand the idea there could possibly be "design" in nature, even if it very much looks like there IS design in nature.
So they say this is just "apparent" design. Which is like saying that nature is engaged in a full-time job of fooling us; and yet Darwinists still place their faith in natural selection, even though nature itself has no lawful principle to stand on that Darwin's theory bothers to elucidate; and which seems to play the jokester in this "apparent design" business.
And at the apex of Darwin's evolutionary chain is Man — who Darwinian thinking easily justifies as "a vicious predatory animal."
Notwithstanding all of the above, a whole lot of people out there think Darwin's theory is the sine qua non biological theory! Worse than that, they believe it is a theory of man.
Contrast the characterization of man as a "vicious predatory animal" with the characterization of man conveyed in a couplet I found recently in a Roman Catholic missal:
Yet you have made us little less than gods,No wonder dogmatic, bitter-ender, materialist (and oftentimes atheist) Darwinists, and thoughtful Christians have such difficulty seeing eye-to-eye: They do not even stand on the same ground of Being. It is just on that point that I aver that Darwin's theory is a very great lie, in that it falsifies not only the order of nature, but the order of man and society.
With glory and honor you have crowned us
Gave us power over the work of your hands,
Dominion over all that you have made.
I do not "mock" Darwin's theory in saying any of this. I hold it too dangerous to the well-being of human persons and societies to dismiss it by such cheap means.
Generally, Christians do not believe the universe is a random development. They believe it is a consequence of God's Word in the Beginning, the Logos, which specifies the organizational principles of the universe that guide (but do not completely determine) its evolution in space and time.
What I find truly fascinating is that recent findings in scientific physical cosmology seem to corroborate God's statements in Genesis 1. In physical terms, we hear of the Singularity, or even (to my ear) of what David Bohm called the "implicate order" that was initiated "in the beginning" in the Big Bang/inflationary universe concept.
I could wish that modern-day biologists were so "open-minded."
Must close for now. Thank you so very much for writing, BroJoeK!