C.S. Lewis & Intelligent Design

[Music] [Music] you [Music] a few months after being discharged from the Army at the end of World War one a twenty-year-old CS Lewis published his first book a cycle of poems titled spirits in bondage the opening poem Satan speaks provided a grim portrait of nature that might startle many of Lewis's later readers I am nature the mighty mother I am the law he have none other I am the flower and that you drop fresh I am the lust in your icky flesh I am the battles filth and strain I am the widows empty pain I am the sea to smother your breath I am the bomb the falling death I am the spider making her net I am the Beast withdrawals blood wet Lewis is passionate even angry atheism during his early years was inspired by what he referred to as the argument from undesigned the idea that nature's cruelty and waste supplies the best evidence against a belief in a benevolent creator Lewis's attraction to the argument from undesigned reflected personal tragedies such as his mother's death during his childhood but it also showed the impact of writers like HG Wells who nourished the young Lewis's imagination with depictions of a universe that was vast cold and impersonal even after Lewis accepted Christianity the argument from undesigned made him sceptical of some traditional arguments for the Christian God based on the intelligent design of nature Lewis never thought that the evidence for intelligent design alone could get you to belief in a Christian God and in that way he was similar to many modern intelligent design theorists who think that the evidence for intelligent design is important in defeating materialism and can actually help you understand that there is a need for a transcendent intelligent cause but determining whether that cause is God or what other attributes he may have goes beyond just the scientific evidence and requires evidence from philosophy and history and other forms of argument and so Louis although he appreciated intelligence EIN always thought that it was a more limited argument and in that way he's anticipated many of the arguments of current Intel design theorists despite Lewis's skepticism of some arguments for God's existence based on intelligent design he ended up offering several positive arguments supportive of intelligent design in nature the story of hell Lewis went from believing and being convinced by the argument from undesigned to understanding that the universe displayed evidence of intelligent design is really intriguing it basically is the story of how Lewis had to confront evidence throughout nature and the human world that really didn't fit with the materialist worldview and that evidence ultimately persuaded him that there needed to be something more than materialism and really brought him to believe that there really was design in the universe Lewis's first argument supportive of intelligent design was the argument from natural beauty from early on Lewis's pessimistic view of nature as cruel and wasteful was balanced by the longings nature stirred within him for Lewis our experience of beauty in nature pointed to the reality of something beyond nature Adams dead could never thus stir the human heart of us unless the beauty that we see the veil of endless beauty be in Lewis's view the longings provoked by earthly beauty could not be accounted for by a blind and mechanical universe they required a transcendent cause outside of nature this cause was not necessarily personal but he did go beyond undirected matter and energy as a consequence it put intelligent design back on the table as one of the options for discussion [Music] Louis's second argument supportive of intelligent design was the argument from morality it was really the moral law that got Louis thinking about how the argument from undesigned ultimately was unsatisfactory because if we really think that the universe is evil or that it's cruel where do we get that standard from if the universe is just what it is and it just is put together because a blind matter in motion it couldn't be anything else then where do we get off expressing outrage at it it's just the way it is so if we really think that there is a moral right and wrong as most people do and we want to hold that belief we really have to come up with some explanation other than blind matter in motion in fact the moral law who has thought pointed towards the need for a transcendent cause for morality and that transcendent cost for morality opens the door to considering intelligent design as the explanation for morality Louis's third argument supported that intelligent design was the argument from reason the argument from reason is just the argument that in a naturalistic worldview reason isn't going to fit because in the last analysis everybody's thoughts are going to be the result of non rational causes you're basically trying to say that human reasoning the very kind of reasoning that produced the Origin of Species that produced Einstein's theory of relativity that adds subtracts divides numbers and so forth what you're saying is all of that is ultimately the product of irrational causes non rational causes that is an incoherent position okay because it says that somehow you can derive intelligence from that which is not intelligent [Music] Lewis's fourth argument supportive and intelligent design was the argument from functional complexity according to Lewis modern science especially Darwinian biology has schooled us to think that crude and simple things in nature naturally develop into more complex and sophisticated things the Acorn turns into the oak tree the egg turns into the owl the human embryo turns into a full-fledged human being sometimes evolutionists even point to technological development as an example of the same process the early locomotive engines supposedly evolved into the much more complicated modern train engine or the simple boat evolved into the steamship or passenger ship Lewis called this evolutionary view an optical illusion what we really see in nature according to Lewis is simpler and less functional things habitually springing from things that are more complex functional if anything it's a process of devolution not evolution every acorn originally drops from a fully developed oak tree every owls egg comes from a fully developed owl every human embryo requires two fully developed human parents the same is true with technological evolution the modern train engine didn't simply magically evolve from a simpler train engine according to Lewis it sprang from something far greater the mind of man and Lewis thought that just like we have to go outside the physical sequence of train engines to find the originator of the engines we need to go outside the ordinary course of nature to find the originator of nature the intelligent designer Louis's argument from functional complexity is an explicit argument for intelligent design Lewis's argument from functional complexity was based on his belief that an effect could not be greater than its original cause but another way a copy could not be better than the original this was a platonic idea that Lewis founded many evil writers such as beau hideous I think his most consistent argument was the argument from a copy and the original you see in fiction nonfiction all over the place and he argues there that if we consider the source of an idea it's not possible for the idea to contain more information than could be found in the some of its causes Lewis an informal way seems to have anticipated some of the ideas of buildups key here because you know but build apps key is has published many many works that support the idea that you really can't get new information out of undirected causes you have to go to some intelligent source and Lewises various versions of this argument from the copy and the original always take you back to some source that already contained information in addition to making his own positive arguments for intelligent design lewis answered some common objections to intelligent design such as the idea that it's an obstacle to scientific progress it's commonly argued that intelligent design is a science stopper but CS lewis pointed out that he thought it was a science starter according to Lewis early scientists looked for regularities and laws in nature because they thought there was a legislature behind nature far from frustrating the progress of science the belief in design helped inspire it according to Lewis the fact that many modern scientists reject intelligent design is what should concern us if they no longer believe in a lawgiver behind nature why should they continue to expect nature to act reasonably or to be able to find regularities in nature another objection to intelligent design answered by Lewis was the idea that the laws of nature make design are necessary sometimes people argue that the laws of nature can create highly complex biological features without the need for intelligent design but Louis point out that the laws of nature can't do anything themselves they require input from outside the laws of motion don't make the billiard balls move is the player with the cue who hits the ball that makes the balls move the laws of nature describe what will happen given certain inputs but they don't explain away the need for the inputs in the first place perhaps CS Lewis's greatest contribution to the debate over intelligent design was his support for open discussion and debate I don't think most people really realize how dedicated Louis was to the idea of open inquiry and free debate in his own life in fact while he was at Oxford University he helped found a group called the Oxford Socratic Club whose reason for existence was to debate the merits and the evidence for Christianity they met every week and lots of students went to it and faculty and they hashed out the arguments pro and con and they adopted as their motto an injunction from Socrates that we should follow the argument wherever it leads and it was before this group that a young graduate student presented a paper eloquently arguing for atheism that student went on to become one of the world's leading academic atheists his name was Antony flu flu was never convinced by Lewis's arguments for theism but he admired CS Lewis and especially Lewis's dedication to following the argument where it leads and he adopted that motto as his own motto so much so that near the end of his life Antony flew shocked many of his colleagues and people around the world by declaring that he thought the evidence now show that there was a God he had followed the argument where it led and it led him to belief in God and what was really determinate of that was some of the organs for intelligent design the integrated complexity of the organic world is just inordinately greater you know all the creatures complicated pieces of design just like Lewis flu had followed the argument where it led and it led him to intelligent design in an age of increasing dogmatism in the name of science CS Lewis's defense of the unhindered search for truth is just as relevant for us today as it was during his own lifetime maybe even more so as Lewis knew it's by continuing to pursue the argument that we can discover new worlds explore new wonders and grasp new truths choose to be self-evident that all men are created [Music] [Music] you

Channel: CS Lewis

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Keywords: John G. West, Discovery Institute, C.S. Lewis and Evolution, Evolution, Charles Darwin, CS Lewis, intelligent design

Id: 3dqR3eVwoqA

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 18 2013