timdiggerm said:
C. S. Lewis said:
Consider for a few moments the enormous aesthetic claim of its chief contemporary rival — what we may loosely call the Scientific Outlook, the picture of Mr. [H. G.] Wells and the rest.
Would that derided rest include the doctors to whom the good C.S. went calling during bouts of ill health? Would it include that untrustworthy group that assisted in bringing about so many cures and improvements to mankind's miserable lot so that today the majority who may exist within the nations that embraced such a Scientific Outlook may now live in a style that would surely have been the envy of many a past king?
Supposing this to be a myth, is it not one of the finest myths which human imagination has yet produced? The play is preceded by the most austere of all preludes: the infinite void, and matter restlessly moving to bring forth it knows not what. Then, by the millionth millionth chance — what tragic irony — the conditions at one point of space and time bubble up into that tiny fermentation which is the beginning of life.
Given that current astronomical discoveries have increasing led to the insight that the basic formative impetus for life are seemingly to be found in abundance throughout the depths of space, and particularly around stars, such a tone of mockery in relation to the topic at hand appears not only dated, but self-rebutting...
Further, given the magnitude both of space and time, does it truly seem so startling that life might have resolved into being through mere happenstance? For surely such a concept must appear no less whimsical than the notion of a creative impulse of infinite duration, complexity, and power (comprised entirely of Love, no less), that may have, after an undefinable eternity, finally settled upon the creation of humanity with its myriad basic design flaws?
Is not one who might attempt a proper understanding of eternity necessarily then forced to allow for several plausible considerations surrounding such a creative narrative:
1) Such a creative god must almost certainly have designed a chosen race an infinite number of times.
2) Such a creative genius must have had an infinite time during which to perfect said design.
3) Any design flaws must therefor either be of purposeful intent, accidental error, or willful negligence (from 1 & 2).
3b) Such designs cannot be the result of accident if said god is to be perfect in nature.
3c) Such designs cannot be the result of willful negligence if said god is to be considered just, lawful, all-loving, and/or otherwise perfect in nature.
4) Such design flaws must needs be the result of purposeful intent (from 3, 3b, 3c).
5) Purposefully creating mankind with design flaws may serve several purposes:
5b) For reasons of entertainment
5c) For reasons of malice
5d) For reasons of study
6) If for the purpose of entertainment God cannot be considered perfect, for a perfect being is, by its nature, to have no lack for which entertainment might be conceived a necessary remedy.
6b) If for the purpose of malice, God cannot be considered good.
7) If God is perfect and good, it must be for the purpose of study (from 5 & 6).
8) If God has then created mankind with express design flaws for the purpose of study, is He not then to be considered a scientist?
9) If God is a scientist, is it likely wise to mock or eschew the scientific method as Lewis appears to propose?
Everything seems to be against the infant hero of our drama— just as everything seems against the youngest son or ill-used stepdaughter at the opening of a fairy-tale. But life somehow wins through. With infinite suffering, against all but insuperable obstacles, it spreads, it breeds, it complicates itself, from the amoeba up to the plant, up to the reptile, up to the mammal. We glance briefly at the age of monsters. Dragons prowl the earth, devour one another, and die.
Seemingly Lewis passes over the alternatives without much fair consideration:
1) God created the dinosaurs with their vicious teeth and claws and was content to watch them maim and gore one another for millions of years before finally getting around to bringing about Adam & Eve.
2) God created so many different creatures at once upon the world that it was veritably bursting with incompatible life forms that immediately set about destroying one another in predictable layers so as to provide the perfect level of confusion for later paleontological research. Adam & Eve survived the continuing bloodbath of nature and, through their descendants, set about taming the horrifically dangerous wilderness God had purposefully made.
Then comes the theme of the younger son and the ugly duckling once more. As the weak, tiny spark of life began amidst the huge hostilities of the inanimate, so now again, amidst the beasts that are far larger and stronger than he, there comes forth a little naked, shivering, cowering creature, shuffling, not yet erect, promising nothing, the product of another millionth millionth chance. Yet somehow he thrives. He becomes the Cave Man with his club and his flints, muttering and growling over his enemies’ bones, dragging his screaming mate by her hair (I never could quite make out why), tearing his children to pieces in fierce jealousy till one of them is old enough to tear him
As mankind apparently descended from a social ancestor such scenarios seem less likely to have been universal given the ultimate "finished" product. Further, such an unstable mankind seems hard-pressed to have survived through to lunch, let alone to have paused long enough to have left numerous cave art showing it had the ability to perceive its surroundings and reason its way from one day to the next.
, cowering before the horrible gods whom he created in his own image.
Such as Yahweh?
But these are only growing pains. Wait till the next act. There he is becoming true man. He learns to master Nature. Science comes and dissipates the superstitions of his infancy. More and more he becomes the controller of his own fate. Passing hastily over the present (for it is a mere nothing by the time scale we are using), you follow him on into the future. See him in the last act, though not the last scene, of this great mystery. A race of demigods now rules the planet
Is such to suggest that Lewis subconsciously harbored a very deep respect for the scientific method after all?
— and perhaps more than the planet — for eugenics have made certain that only demigods will be born, and psychoanalysis that none of them shall lose or smirch his divinity, and communism that all which divinity requires shall be ready to their hands. Man has ascended his throne. Henceforward he has nothing to do but to practise virtue, to grow 10 wisdom
To grow 10 wisdom what, exactly? It is hoped Lewis is not referring to teeth... (yes, I realize it should be in).
, to be happy. And now, mark the final stroke of genius. If the myth stopped at that point, it might be a little bathetic. It would lack the highest grandeur of which human imagination is capable. The last scene reverses all. We have the Twilight of the Gods. All this time, silently, unceasingly, out of all reach of human power, Nature, the old enemy, has been steadily gnawing away. The sun will cool — all suns will cool — the whole universe will run down. Life (every form of life) will be banished, without hope of return, from every inch of infinite space. All ends in nothingness, and “universal darkness covers all.” The pattern of the myth thus becomes one of the noblest we can conceive. It is the pattern of many Elizabethan tragedies, where the protagonist’s career can be represented by a slowly ascending and then rapidly falling curve, with its highest point in Act IV. You see him climbing up and up, then blazing in his bright meridian, then finally overwhelmed in ruin.
Such a world drama appeals to every part of us. The early struggles of the hero
AKA the Israelites...
(a theme delightfully doubled, played first by life, and then by man) appeal to our generosity. His future exaltation gives scope to a reasonable optimism,
...being given a savior...
for the tragic close is so very distant that you need not often think of it — we work with millions of years.
...death, and an eternity confined to the worship of God...
And the tragic close itself just gives that irony, that grandeur, which calls forth our defiance, and without which all the rest might cloy.
Would that be the apparent pointlessness of worshiping a perfect being for all eternity (after death) that purposefully invested its creation with design flaws so that it could study what might befall such a race?
Or would that be the apparent pointlessness of worshiping a perfect being for all eternity (after death) that purposefully invested its creation with design flaws for no discernible reason given its ability to see the future as clearly as the present and so to have known the results of said flaws upon their inception?
There is a beauty in this myth which well deserves better poetic handling than it has yet received; I hope some great genius will yet crystallise it before the incessant stream of philosophic change carries it all away. I am speaking, of course, of the beauty it has whether you believe it or not. There I can speak from experience, for I, who believe less than half of what it tells me about the past,
It is to be wondered what Lewis would have thought had he lived on to the present day and seen the evidence of which he had no knowledge then. Had Lewis been able to plumb the depths of the information now at hand would he have been so ready to embrace such ignorance as professed above?
and less than nothing of what it tells me about the future, am deeply moved when I contemplate it.
Why?
The only other story — unless, indeed, it is an embodiment of the same story — which similarly moves me is the Nibelung’s Ring. Enden sah ich die Welt.
I read that this morning and thought it was relevant to this thread.
It is an interesting read. Thank you for this...it has been quite a while since last I analyzed it.
