Good thanks for clarifying, but I didn’t take to mean that the question was precisely coming from you, rather the professor or the lesson material. In your revised format, then it’s all open to discussion from several points of view of course. I have to believe that man/intelligence/soul came from something beyond man himself, it did not evolve solely from an insect form. This is where God comes into the picture, as brought to us in the Bible.
Yes—the questions in the assignment are open to interpretation, and the vocabulary terms (including the definition of God) may be defined differently, depending upon your worldview as well as various backgrounds. I see no reason to limit discussion, as long as it is honest and respectful, but if a term is confusing, it does make it difficult to share a common frame of reference. So at the simplest, Lewis says this, about coming to a logical conclusion that “God” exists:
“Do not think I am going faster than I really am. I am not yet within a hundred miles of the God of Christian theology. All I have got to is a Something which is directing the universe, and which appears in me as a law urging me to do right and making me feel responsible and uncomfortable when I do wrong. I think we have to assume it is more like a mind than it is like anything else we know-because after all the only other thing we know is matter and you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions. But, of course, it need not be very like a mind, still less like a person. In the next chapter we shall see if we can find out anything more about it. But one word of warning. There has been a great deal of soft soap talked about God for the last hundred years. That is not what I am offering. You can cut all that out.
Note -In order to keep this section short enough when it was given on the air, I mentioned only the Materialist view and the Religious view. But to be complete I ought to mention the In between view called Life-Force philosophy, or Creative Evolution, or Emergent Evolution. The wittiest expositions of it come in the works of Bernard Shaw, but the most profound ones in those of Bergson. People who hold this view say that the small variations by which life on this planet “evolved” from the lowest forms to Man were not due to chance but to the “striving” or “purposiveness” of a Life-Force. When people say this we must ask them whether by Life-Force they mean something with a mind or not. If they do, then “a mind bringing life into existence and leading it to perfection” is really a God, and their view is thus identical with the Religious. If they do not, then what is the sense in saying that something without a mind “strives” or has “purposes”? This seems to me fatal to their view. One reason why many people find Creative Evolution so attractive is that it gives one much of the emotional comfort of believing in God and none of the less pleasant consequences. When you are feeling fit and the sun is shining and you do not want to believe that the whole universe is a mere mechanical dance of atoms, it is nice to be able to think of this great mysterious Force rolling on through the centuries and carrying you on its crest. If, on the other hand, you want to do something rather shabby, the Life-Force, being only a blind force, with no morals and no mind, will never interfere with you like that troublesome God we learned about when we were children. The Life-Force is a sort of tame God. You can switch it on when you want, but it will not bother you. All the thrills of religion and none of the cost. Is the Life-Force the greatest achievement of wishful thinking the world has yet seen?”
Lewis goes on to explain how he came to believe in the God “as brought to us in the Bible,” as you also say (and I agree!) Those who claim that God is unknowable should consider His autobiography, written in nature, in His Word (the Bible) and in His children. Thank you everyone, who has taken time for a thoughtful response!