Chinny Hong
New Member
Darwin in the Dock: C.S. Lewis's Limited Acceptance of Common Descent
Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor.
C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19
In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his friend Anglican nun Sister Penelope in 1952, he mentioned his previous speculation that the first human being was descended from "two anthropoids."21
Nevertheless, Lewis did not exactly go out of his way to champion the animal ancestry of humans. When pressed on the subject by evolution critic Bernard Acworth in the 1940s, Lewis backpedaled, replying that his "belief that Men in general have immortal & rational souls does not oblige or qualify me to hold a theory of their pre-human organic history -- if they have one."22 A few years later, Lewis relished the exposure of "Piltdown Man" as a hoax. Originally touted as evidence for the long-sought "missing link" between apes and humans, the Piltdown Man's skull was discovered in the 1950s to be a fake forged from the skull of a modern human, the jawbone of an orangutan, and the teeth of a chimpanzee.23 Lewis wrote to Bernard Acworth that although he didn't think the scandal should be exploited, "I can't help sharing a sort of glee with you about the explosion of poor old Piltdown... one inevitably feels what fun it wd. be if this were only the beginning of a landslide."24 He wrote another correspondent, "The detection of the Piltdown forgery was fun, wasn't it?"25 Interestingly, four years before the definitive exposure of Piltdown as a fraud, Lewis had already published a poem that labeled the fossil the "fake from Piltdown."26> His final Narnian story, meanwhile, completed a few months after the Piltdown scandal hit the headlines, features as the villain an ape who insists he is really a human being -- perhaps Lewis's whimsical commentary on "poor old Piltdown."27
Read more…
Common descent is the claim that all organisms currently living have descended from one or a few original ancestors through a process Darwin called "descent with modification." According to this idea, not only humans and apes share an ancestor, but so do humans, clams, and fungi. Common descent is a hallowed dogma among today's evolution proponents, held with quasi-religious fervor.
C.S. Lewis clearly believed that Christians can accept evolution as common descent without doing violence to their faith. This is what Lewis was getting at when he wrote to evolution critic Bernard Acworth, "I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if evolution is true."18 In Lewis's view, whether God used common descent to create the first human beings was irrelevant to the truth of Christianity. As he wrote to one correspondent late in his life, "I don't mind whether God made man out of earth or whether 'earth' merely means 'previous millennia of ancestral organisms.' If the fossils make it probable that man's physical ancestors 'evolved,' no matter."19
In The Problem of Pain (1940), Lewis even offers a possible evolutionary account of the development of human beings, although he makes clear he is offering speculation, not history: "f it is legitimate to guess," he writes, "I offer the following picture -- a 'myth' in the Socratic sense," which he defines as "a not unlikely tale," or "an account of what may have been the historical fact" (emphasis in the original). Lewis then suggests that "[f]or long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself... The creature may have existed for ages... before it became man."20 Elsewhere, Lewis seemed smitten by the idea of embryonic recapitulation, the discredited evolutionary idea that human beings replay the history of their evolution from lower animals in their womb. And in a letter to his friend Anglican nun Sister Penelope in 1952, he mentioned his previous speculation that the first human being was descended from "two anthropoids."21
Nevertheless, Lewis did not exactly go out of his way to champion the animal ancestry of humans. When pressed on the subject by evolution critic Bernard Acworth in the 1940s, Lewis backpedaled, replying that his "belief that Men in general have immortal & rational souls does not oblige or qualify me to hold a theory of their pre-human organic history -- if they have one."22 A few years later, Lewis relished the exposure of "Piltdown Man" as a hoax. Originally touted as evidence for the long-sought "missing link" between apes and humans, the Piltdown Man's skull was discovered in the 1950s to be a fake forged from the skull of a modern human, the jawbone of an orangutan, and the teeth of a chimpanzee.23 Lewis wrote to Bernard Acworth that although he didn't think the scandal should be exploited, "I can't help sharing a sort of glee with you about the explosion of poor old Piltdown... one inevitably feels what fun it wd. be if this were only the beginning of a landslide."24 He wrote another correspondent, "The detection of the Piltdown forgery was fun, wasn't it?"25 Interestingly, four years before the definitive exposure of Piltdown as a fraud, Lewis had already published a poem that labeled the fossil the "fake from Piltdown."26> His final Narnian story, meanwhile, completed a few months after the Piltdown scandal hit the headlines, features as the villain an ape who insists he is really a human being -- perhaps Lewis's whimsical commentary on "poor old Piltdown."27
Read more…
