CS Lewis and Theistic Evolution – Discovery Institute

Photo: C. S. Lewis, via Asar Studios/Alamy (Celestial Images).

Editors note: To mark the release on November 3 of the new C. S. Lewis biopic,The Most Reluctant Convert,we are running a series of articles exploring C. S. Lewiss views on science, mind, and more.

SPECIAL LIMITED-TIME OFFER:Get a FREE chapter exploring C.S. Lewiss views of intelligent design from the bookThe Magicians Twin

Was C. S. Lewis a theistic evolutionist? He certainly wasopento the possible common descent of humans from lower animals, although he also expressed some reservations (see the full Chapter 6 of my bookThe Magicians Twinfor more details).

But I would argue that regardless of Lewiss views on common descent, it would be misleading to classify himself as a theistic evolutionist as that term is commonly understood today.

Theistic evolution can mean many things, including a form of guided evolution, but many contemporary proponents of theistic evolution are more accurately described as theistic Darwinists. That is, they do not merely advocate a guided form of common descent, but they are attempting to combine evolution as an undirected Darwinian process with Christian theism. Although they believe in God, they strenuously want to avoid stating that God actually guided biological development.

For example, AnglicanJohn Polkinghornewrote that an evolutionary universe is theologically understood as a creation allowed to make itself. Former Vatican astronomerGeorge Coyneclaimed that because evolution is unguided not even God could know with certainty that human life would come to be.

And Christian biologistKenneth Millerof Brown University, author of the popular bookFinding Darwins God (which is used in many Christian colleges), insists that evolution is an undirected process, flatly denying that God guided the evolutionary process to achieve any particular result including the development of us. Indeed, Miller insists that mankinds appearance on this planet was not preordained, that we are here as an afterthought, a minor detail, a happenstance in a history that might just as well have left us out.

In short, many modern theistic evolutionists want to retain a belief in a Creator without actually affirming the guidance of that Creator in the history of life. In their view, the Creator delegated the development of life to a self-contained mindless process from which mind and morals emerged over time. Modern theistic evolutions attempt to strike a third way between materialism and intelligent design with a kind of emergent evolution has all the logical coherence of a circular square, or theistic atheism.

Lewis was familiar with attempts in his own day to imbue blind evolution with some sort of purposiveness while still denying the operation of a guiding intelligence, and he was not persuaded. This was where he ultimately broke with Henri Bergson, a French natural philosopher and Nobel Prize-winner whose anti-Darwinian writings had heavily influenced Lewis.

Bergson, in addition to critiquing natural selection, offered his own alternative to Darwinism, a muddled proposal for a vital force that somehow impels the evolutionary process toward integrated complexity without the need for an overarching designer. Lewis never attacked Bergsons critique of Darwinian natural selection, but after he became a Christian he repeatedly attacked Bergsons non-intelligent alternative. He did the same with George Bernard Shaw, who extolled a similar view to Bergson of emergent evolution, the view that although evolution is not actually guided by an overarching intelligent purpose, purposeful structures that transcend blind matter somehow emerge from the process.

In a section ofMere Christianitythat is too little read, Lewis dissects this supposed third way between outright materialism and a history of life guided by design:

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 mindstrives or has purposes? This seems to me fatal to their view.

In his novelPerelandra, Lewis satirizes the incoherence of the emergent evolution view, which he assigns to the villain of the story, Professor E. R. Weston, a scientist run mad. Lewis gives Weston a speech of non-sequiturs and mumbo-jumbo where he solemnly appeals to the unconsciously purposive dynamism and [t]he majestic spectacle of this blind, inarticulate purposiveness thrusting its way ever upward in an endless unity of differentiated achievements toward an ever-increasing complexity of organization, towards spontaneity and spirituality. Weston ultimately identifies this blind and unconscious purposiveness with what he calls the religious view of life and even with the Holy Spirit.

The hero of the story, Dr. Elwin Ransom, is not impressed. I dont know much about what people call the religious view of life, he replies. You see, Im a Christian. And what we mean by the Holy Ghost is not a blind, inarticulate purposiveness.

Near the end of his life, Lewis read prominent theistic evolutionist Pierre Teilhard de Chardins posthumously published bookThe Phenomenon of Man, which proposed yet another kind of emergent evolution. Lewis filled his copy of the book with critical annotations such as Yes, he is quite ignorant, a radically bad book, and Ever heard of death or pain? (The last comment responded to de Chardins statement that Something threatens us, something is more than ever lacking, but without our being able to say exactly what.)In his letters to others, Lewis called de Chardins book both commonplace and horrifying,and he derided de Chardins position as pantheistic-biolatrous waffleand evolution run mad.

Lewiss rejection of emergent evolution exposes why his way of thinking is ultimately so friendly to intelligent design. Lewis knew that ultimately there is no third way, no half-way house, no magical hybrid: Biological development is either the result of an unintelligent material process or a process guided by a mind, aka intelligent design.

One cant split the difference. One has to choose. That being the case, Lewis thought that a mind-driven process is a far more plausible option than a mindless one.

This essay was adapted from Darwin in the Dock, Chapter 6 ofThe Magicians Twin, edited by John West. For reference notes and sources, please consult the book version.

See the rest here:

CS Lewis and Theistic Evolution - Discovery Institute