In an effort to learn a bit more about CS Lewis' views on evolution, I stumbled across this YouTube video:
I highly recommend it to everyone, with the note that I agree with almost everything reported about Lewis' outlook.
Please listen to it carefully, and indeed go back and listen again if you miss something.
One key point in Lewis' objections to evolution is the same point often stressed on this and other threads: evolution cannot have been truly "random".
I would say there is nothing truly "random" in nature -- unpredictable, certainly, and often seemingly chaotic, but those are only because we humans often just cannot grasp either G*d's methods or His purposes.
The video also emphasizes Lewis' abhorrence for atheistic-Darwinism as exemplified, we would say, by international, national and even democratic socialism.
Bottom line: Lewis was not opposed to the idea of common descent, but did reject the idea of randomness in evolution's progress.
That is also my opinion.
In the beginning, The Creator had the full image of The Word and not as we saw Jesus before the resurrection but as Jesus phase shifted with the manifestation of faith cum reality as He entered into His Glory with resurrection and ascension. [Think blueprints to an architect.]From our perspective it has taken around fifteen billion years to reach this reality and be passed on to the rest of God's Creation made in His image. From God's perspective the creating has taken roughly six and one half doublings of the Creation in which God is bringing forth His Glory.
When I first read Gerald Schroeder's explanation of this duality I was struck by the beauty of it, since it fit with one of my starting axioms, that God will not lie to us with the Bible, that we just do not comprehend how things reach entire truth expressed.
Put another way, God had in the beginning a being through Whom He would be manifested in the Creation He Creates, and a simple tweaking of the materials brings this being Whom God indwells into being in the Creation. With a bow to Alamo_Girl, God supplies the message and as Creator Sovereign has every right to tweak the message along the way, so that the creation brings forth what He, The Creator, intends and 'had' with Him in the Beginning.
I suppose it could be called 'guided evolution' ... but without a real analogy since even a sculptor must have materials from which to sculpt his works.
Jeepers, did we watch the same video, dear BroJoeK? I agree that Lewis accepts the idea that "evolution cannot have been truly 'random'"; also that he did not deny the idea of evolution in principle.
But I do not get the sense that he embraced the idea of common descent on the basis of what was presented in this splendid video: Thank you ever so much for the link, BroJoeK!
Rather, I thought this video was in large part a devastating critique of the epistemological basis on which Darwin's theory rests — epistemology being the "science" of knowledge itself — of what we know, how we know it, and how we validate it.
I took some notes:
C. S. Lewis is quoted as saying, "Darwin and Spencer themselves stand on a foundation of sand, of gigantic assumptions and irreconcilable contradictions." It is said he "dismissed evolution as a myth." But here I think he must mean Darwinian evolution. For it seems Lewis had no difficulty with the idea of evolution as a process "guided by a mind."
One gathers from this video that the main sticking point for Lewis is that he cannot conceive of a purely material process proceeding "blindly" or "accidentally," without purpose or goal, that could ever explain or account for the evolution of man, who uniquely possesses reason and conscience — which, by the way, material nature does not.
To put it another way: As Eric Voegelin once noted, "a universe containing intelligent beings cannot have had less than an intelligent cause."
Then we get into the real meat of Lewis' objections to Darwin's theory on epistemological grounds.
In effect, it seems Lewis characterizes the ToE as premised in an epistemically prior commitment which is tantamount to a dogmatic statement about the nature of biological reality: Reality is through-goingly material and purposeless, thus whatever happens in it occurs by accident. And yet, by a brilliant (yet still quite mysterious) succession of accidents, we arrive at the "descent of man."
Lewis will have none of this. He is depicted as being deeply troubled by the "fanatical and twisted attitudes" of Darwin's dogmatic defenders. He charges them with dealing in "supposals," not facts. He says that science is much more than the discovery of new facts. He suggests that it is possible and desirable for science to look at the accumulated body of facts and seek a newer, better explanation of the facts already on hand, as warranted by new understandings.
At the same time, Lewis notes that "an existing scientific paradigm or model limits you, blinds you in the asking of questions." That Darwin's theory of evolution in particular "restricts what kinds of questions you can ask about nature."
Indeed. That is my very frustration with the theory: It seemingly prohibits all questioning outside of an acceptable, severely limited domain where everybody already agrees with everybody else. Absolutely hermetically sealed minds here!
Must close. Did you and I both "agree" about the depiction of C. S. Lewis and his stance on Darwin's theory and of materialist science more generally, as we viewed in this wonderful video? You did say, "I agree with almost everything reported about Lewis' outlook."
But can you agree with what I wrote above?
What I find strange is it seems you agree with Lewis about his objection to "randomness." But jeepers, dear BroJoeK, that's one-half of Darwin's entire theory, right there.
How does this "compute?"