This attempt to write more simply by Lewis’ stunning essay will probably meet with disapproval by those who prefer to preserve and keep his work in its original form, but I have produced this paraphrase on behalf of the many people I have met who tell me they cannot understand Lewis’ writings. It is not that these people are mentally deficient, but that Lewis demands a high degree of literacy and concentration. He wrote as a professor would write, and he himself admitted that he could not write more simply. His great intellect would not run on a lower gear.
So, with your permission, I shall proceed to ‘knock out’ a rough version of his original essay, in the hope that it may encourage readers to take with them something which makes sense, and then perhaps they might decide to tackle the real thing.
Chapter one MEN WITHOUT CHESTS
“So he sent the word to slay And slew the little childer” – Carol.
The above quote from Carol is relevant because it refers to the sending of a word, or command, and the dreadful damage that word did is then given. A child was killed. Herod gave the word to slay all the children in Bethlehem. God gave the word to slay the wicked Canaanites, including women and children. From a few sounds passing from the mouth of a ruler, comes such violence and death.
We ought to pay attention to what is printed in primary school textbooks. I have just been sent one of them, by someone who will remain anonymous. This book I was sent has the description “for boys and girls in the upper forms of schools”. When I noticed this I wondered what these young kids were being taught, so I had a good read.
I must say I was surprised at some of the comments.
For example, there is the story of Coleridge at the waterfall. In the story, two tourists talk about the waterfall. One of them says it is “sublime” and the other says it is “pretty”. When Coleridge heard these comments, he thought the first comment was good, (he liked it), and the second comment terrible (he was disgusted by it).
The textbook has a few words to say about all this. The writers tell us: “When the man said ‘This is sublime’, he appeared to be making a remark about the waterfall, he was not making a remark about the waterfall, but about his own feelings. What he was really saying was ‘I have sublime feelings”. The textbook goes on to say “This confusion is continually present in language as we use it. We appear to be saying something very important about something; when actually we are only saying something about our own feelings”.
Before we take this any further, let us deal with the first simple problem: the difference between what we see and what we feel. For example, suppose we met someone mean and nasty, we would not say “You are contemptible because I feel contemptible”, we would say “You are contemptible because of the way you behave”. Again, we would not say to a beautiful woman “You are beautiful because I have beautiful feelings”. And again, we would not say “You are attractive because I feel attracted to you” . How we feel about something is very different to what a thing really is. A man may be attracted to an ugly woman, and a woman may consider a mean and nasty man to be charming. Our feelings are one thing and what an object really is, is another thing altogether.
Suppose some intelligent schoolchild reads the comments in the textbook? They may decide, as they have been encouraged to, that (1.) All statements, which describe something as having some sort of value, are really about how the viewer is feeling, and not about the object they are looking at. And (2.) It doesn’t matter how we feel about things, because our feelings are just something personal to us, and not relevant to anyone else.
I must say here that it may not have been the intention of the writers of the textbook to mislead children into the above two paths. They may have only wanted to show, by one example, how some things can be viewed, but the way they have presented their point certainly pushes the reader in that direction. When they say we “appear to be saying something very important” when in fact we are “only saying something about our own feelings”, they are presenting two powerful words: “appear and “only”. The child who reads these two words may not have any idea, not the slightest inkling, of how much philosophy, and politics, and theology and ethics are tied up in such a simple sentence, but who knows what the idea may do later on in life. For example, if you teach children that they are descendants of monkeys, who knows what twisted ideas may follow later on? Once planted, an evil seed can bring forth some terrible crops.
Assumptions drive many people’s lives. Some people assume that life is meaningless, and they live it accordingly. Others assume there is a God who loves them, so they live under that. Some assume they are failures, and adjust everything to suit, while others assume they are intelligent and successful, and live in the heights.
Suppose the tourist who said the waterfall was “sublime” was wrong? Does this change the waterfall in any way? Not a bit. The waterfall continues to cascade its white water, foaming and rippling, catching the light and splashing as usual. But if the waterfall is not “sublime” what is it? Are we to say that from now on, if we ever see a magnificent sight such as a waterfall, we must negate all our feelings and see as a machine might see? Are all awe-inspiring sights to be relegated to ‘natural forces’, or ‘physics’? If we did this, we would be relegating ourselves to a position of having absolutely no relevance to anything.
By abolishing our right to have feelings about anything, we actually abolish ourselves. We make ourselves as meaningless as the object we are looking at.
Before we go any further with this I would like to quote another part of the textbook – an excerpt from chapter four. In this chapter, the writers quote a silly advertisement about a pleasure cruise. If you take this cruise, the ad says, you will go “across the Western ocean where Drake of Devon sailed”, “adventuring after the treasures of the Indies” and bring home a “treasure” of “golden hours” and “glowing colours”. The writers of the textbook make it clear that the advertisement is a good example of a bad example. I think it is a pity they didn’t quote from some of the really great writers, such as Johnson, or Wordsworth, but the point is, their advertisement used words that they have already said are not to be taken as real values.
Let us look at this more carefully. They suggest that a cruise will be much better if it follows the same ocean route as Drake of Devon sailed, but they cannot say why the cruise will be any better simply because it follows Drake’s route.
Again, they use words like “treasures of the Indies” when most intelligent people will realize that what they bring home will not be “treasures” in the sense that the advert seems to mean. The only “treasures” the tourists will bring home will be a few souvenirs and trinkets, a few photos and some other objects, and some happy memories. These are not “treasures” in the sense that the advert implies. So why associate souvenirs with “treasures”?
Again the advert suggests that the travelers will bring home “golden hours and glowing colours”, yet in an earlier chapter the textbook told us that such things are just the personal feelings of the viewer. There is no such thing, says the textbook, as a “golden hour”.
At this point we could quote from some great writers, who have used similar terms. For example, Wordsworth in ‘The prelude’ who described the oldness of London this way: “Weight and power, Power growing under weight”. These words are either true of the city, or false. They are either about a city, which really exists as Wordsworth describes it, or they are just one man’s personal feelings about it, and therefore mean nothing. If they are true, then London really has a great antiquity, an atmosphere of age, an illustrious past built into its buildings, and the appearance of old wealth and history bound together in one glorious scene – or it is something which exists, like a stone on the road, or a passing, ordinary cloud.
If we follow the line of the textbook, we ought to follow it, logically, to all descriptions of things by all the great writers. If we do this, then we will have to omit such words as “wonderful, exciting, gorgeous, magnificent, timeless, attractive, splendid, and so on” because any word which tries to press into an object or scene a quality, is not valid. Objects must not become more valuable the older they are, history must have nothing to do with our feelings, scenes and places must not be respected simply because certain important events happened there, or because significant people lived there. The natural instinct of humans to express respect, admiration, reverence, worship, and adoration must be deleted, because these are just value judgements, and have no relevance to the real world – so says the textbook.
So what are children who read the textbook to think? First of all they will conclude that all the great literature, with its rich variety of metaphor and description, is meaningless. All those expressed feelings, the child will say, are just the feelings of the writer. They cannot be true. If the child understands the textbook, he will say there is no romance in an ocean cruise, and he will not be attracted to anything which is advertised as an “adventure”. If he thinks the way the textbook wants him to think, he will see the ocean as just a huge pile of water, tourism as just a money-losing exercise, and romance as just a figment of someone’s imagination. In this way the child will be robbed, crushed, and deadened.
“So he sent the word to slay And slew the little childer” – Carol.
At this point I would like to mention another little book, written for children, which contains a comment about the horses used by the colonists of Australia. In the quote the horses are described as “willing servants of the early colonists”. The writer of this book makes a comment along the same lines as the writers of the first book, in that he suggests that the horses were not in the slightest bit interested in what the colonists were doing. He says, correctly, that the horses were just doing work. They were not even aware of what they were doing, or where they lived, or why they were harnessed.
True enough, but having destroyed the meaning of the line, he fails to suggest what the writer might have meant by the expression “willing servants”.
By way of illustration, here are some similar expressions, written by Mr. Farmer: The dog enthusiastically helped me catch the rabbits, The cow faithfully supplied her milk, The hens thoughtfully laid eggs every day, The birds dutifully cleared the cabbages of grubs, The weather politely dropped a good rain.
In each of these sentences, the same kind of thought is carried. It was not the animals or weather which did what they did for any good reason, but the Farmer who interpreted things that way, and by so doing he added a dimension to what he was saying which lifted the meaning above the basic physics. In the same sort of way we are told about the weeping horses of Achilles, and the snorting warhorse in the book of Job, and the excited antics of Brer Rabbit and Peter Rabbit.
Over the centuries Men and Animals have developed quite a relationship. Dogs are loved for their faithfulness, cats for their luxuriating elegance, goats for their stubbornness and so on, and the ox has long been a symbol of plodding strength. We speak of the ‘industrious ant’ and the ‘slimy old toad ‘, the ‘wilely fox’ and the ‘busy bee’. So when we speak of the horses as being the “willing servants of the colonists” we are moving into the relationship area. Men who love their horses will always speak in such terms. The horses are not only ‘willing’, but also ‘faithful’, ‘selfless’, ‘dutiful’ and so on. Horses are spoken of with great admiration and respect, despite what the writer of the textbook says.
So what is the child to conclude? That horses are just animals – just objects in a material world without any value except that which is based on our feelings towards them? If this is so, then respect or admiration for a horse is no longer relevant. Horses may be used to do work, they may even be neglected, but they must not be regarded with any ordinate love. The same could be said for all other animals too, and people. That ‘faithful’ dog is just (or merely) a dog, that purring, ‘friendly’ cat is just (and only) a cat. There must not be any value judgements made over these creatures.
As I said before, I doubt whether the writers of the first or second textbook really intended to change children’s attitudes to the external world as dramatically as I have suggested. On the other hand the writers may indeed think that the feelings we have about the world around us are not to be trusted. They may want the human race to throw away such feelings and go forward into the bright, Scientific future relying only on objective truth – just the facts – and maybe even work out a brand new system of morals while we’re at it. If this is what the writers want, then they have moved from teaching English Grammar, to teaching Philosophy.
On the other hand, the writers of the textbooks may simply find good, honest literary criticism too difficult. They may not want to tackle the subject from a literary point of view, compare the words of the books or poems with other books or poems, or deconstruct the quotes using the tools of Grammar. This is, after all, rather difficult. It means having to read widely, and to think clearly and thoroughly. It means having to put things into context, understanding the meaning of the words, and so on. Faced with this difficult task, it is easier to tell children that feeling are just personal reactions, and that reality is an objective thing, separate from how we think it is.
Of course this reduces us to seeing things from the animal level. A cow, gazing over a fence, may look at nothing but the sun rising and a few hills of grass. Humans, it seems, must not see a beautiful sunrise, or soft, tender grass, or feel a gentle caressing breeze.
And then again, perhaps the writers of the textbooks are afraid that if children get too emotional about things they will fall prey to people who manipulate others through emotion. Far better, they may think, to have children viewing the world through stony pragmatism, hard-boiled analysis, emotionless scientific enquiry, than that they should be overcome by, horror of horrors – their feelings!
But there is more to this than what I have said so far. I would like to digress for a moment, and look at the way objects around us were viewed in the past and right up to ‘modern’ times. Let us join Coleridge as he stands with those two tourists again. One tourist describes the waterfall as “sublime” (awesome), and the other as “pretty”.
In Coleridge’s day it was believed that certain descriptions of things matched what they described, such as a “majestic sunrise”, an “awesome mountain”, a “mighty river”. In Coleridge’s day it would have been quite wrong to call a huge river “sweet”, or a mighty waterfall “pretty”. The night skies were “glorious”, and the world of Nature was described in appropriate terms, and everyone agreed on these terms as being best suited to what they described.
Other things were also described with appropriate words. For example, when Shelly described a lyre, he said that it could “accommodate its chords to the motions of that which strikes them”. When looked at objectively, an instrument is but a material object which is either struck, stroked or blown, to make a noise, and music is but sound waves, but most people know that when an instrument is played well it can be used to express human feelings. The lyre could be played well, or badly. People could describe how well or how badly the lyre was played.
If we accept the words of the textbook writers, then we must describe all music, good and bad, as sound waves. We must not make a value judgement. (It is precisely because some people have taken this point of view that we now have ‘modern’ music, which is a random collection of sounds, without form or structure. The textbook writers are correct – if music is just noises, then all noises can be classed as music).
But we are sure that all noises are not music, because we believe the Christian worldview to be the correct one. And this is not an isolated claim. It has much support from many great thinkers in the past. St. Augustine, for example, taught that every object should be accorded that kind and degree of love which is appropriate to it. In other words, a person should love their children more than they love their budgie, and a good meal should be esteemed as far better than a bowl of sand.
Further back we find that Aristotle thought the aim of education was to teach pupils the difference between likeable and unlikable things, so they would be able to respond correctly to the outside world. Once they were trained in these things, they could move into Ethics and make correct moral judgements.
Before Aristotle, Plato was teaching much the same thing. Humans, he said, must be taught what to feel love for, what to feel hate for, what to feel disgust at and awe over. Human emotions, he said, must be attached to the appropriate things. In other words, Plato thought there were such things as beautiful objects, and that human feelings were totally in harmony with the outside world when a person said, “That is beautiful”. In the same way, a human could also say “That is ugly” as a statement of objective truth. It was not an opinion, or merely an emotional reaction. That ‘thing’ really was ugly.
Some of the early Hindu writing follows much the same path. They taught that behind the universe is a supernatural power which comes through everything we see. From this power we see pattern, and design, and the wonderful rituals of Nature. The Hindu word for this was ‘Ria’. From ‘Ria’, they said, ‘comes righteousness, goodness, correctness and order, and even the Hindu gods were supposed to obey it. Plato said that Good was “beyond existence”, meaning that he thought the quality of Good was an eternal one, which existed behind everything he saw around him. Wordsworth also agreed with this idea. He suggested that the stars were “strong” because they came from “virtue” – in other words, he thought the beauty of the stars was caused by a supernatural power.
The Chinese also have a word for the supernatural power behind all things – the ‘Tao’. This power, they believe, is the great invisible reality, which hides behind everything we can see. They call it the Way, and the Road. It is the origin of all matter, all space, all time.
From here on, to save confusion, I will refer to this great cosmic Cause of all things simply as the Tao. The main point I am making by mentioning this power called the Tao is that all these different cultures had the same idea, though they gave it different names. They all believed that something could be good, bad, beautiful or ugly without humans being needed to define it. Some things really ARE beautiful or ugly, good or bad.
Now the important step to take from here is to see that when we use our reasoning to decide whether something is beautiful or ugly, we are not making a personal judgement, which may or may not be correct. We are making a correct judgement. Our reasoning power agrees with what is actually there. For example, some children really are delightful, some sunrises really are glorious, some old dogs really mean. We don’t need to add “But of course, its all relative” because it isn’t relative at all.
All this agrees with the Christian worldview. Christians have been saying, for the last 2000 years, that God is Good, that sin is bad, that Creation is fallen, and that the universe contains a variety of things which can correctly be described as good, bad, beautiful or ugly. Instinctively the great thinkers of the past have come to the same conclusion, only they have used many different words for ‘God the Creator’, such as ‘Ria’ and ‘Tao ‘.
But what happens if someone tells me the sunrise is beautiful, while I think it is ugly? The answer is simple: the sunrise is still beautiful, regardless of how I feel about it. My problem is that I am colour blind, or perhaps in a bad mood. I may take the time to look at the sunrise and consider its qualities for a few minutes. This would soon lead me to accept that, despite my feelings, the sunrise is beautiful, because by reasoning I can agree with what is true, even though my feelings may be going the other way.
In the same way, I can say, by reasoning, that something is bad, or ugly, or mean, or delightful, and these judgements would be correct despite how I felt. Jumping back to Coleridge again, we can say that a waterfall is sublime, even though we may not particularly like waterfalls.
But the textbooks, with which we started this essay, suggest that there is no objective truth ‘out there’. The universe, say the textbooks, has only the qualities which we impose on it. There is no supernatural origin, no ‘Ria’, no ‘Tao’, no Creator God, behind the universe. When we look at the universe we must not feel awe, or love, or admiration, because the universe is empty of these things. It is just a random conglomeration of matter. All life in fact has no value, so we humans must not feel that it has, or if we do, we are only expressing personal opinions.
So the textbooks have built a massive wall between our feelings and our reasoning. On the one hand we may use our reasoning to decide that something is beautiful or ugly, but we must not allow our feelings to share in this conclusion. Why? Because our feelings and our reasoning cannot work together. By reasoning we can only say that something is there. We may not use words like ‘beautiful’ or ‘ugly’, and our feelings must be excluded because they are not reliable enough to trust. What we feel is beautiful, someone else may feel is ugly. The textbooks have divided Man into two, and left him stranded with nothing on which to base his response to the world around him.
The Christian worldview is the remedy for this. Christians believe that God created the universe, their power to reason, and also their feelings. Starting with the Creator God, Christians can now make correct valuations with their reason, and their feelings may follow in agreement.
Let us take a common situation from the times of Rome. A father tells his son “It is a sweet and good thing to die for your country”. The father believes what he says. He reasons that sacrifice for one’s country is a good thing. His feelings agree. In this way the father is passing a value judgement to his son.
The writers of the textbooks would have a different approach. They would say that death is not sweet, or good. They would say that dying for one’s country was really another way of giving someone else the chance to survive. The bare facts of the case would have nothing sweet or good about them. Dying is simply dying, and goodness is a value judgement relative only to the person making it. From the textbook writer’s point of view, death may be bitter and bad to someone else.
But from the Christian point of view, self-sacrifice is a value built into the universe, and so is goodness. To die for one’s country is a virtue, which is echoed in other ways of giving, such as paying the correct tax, keeping the street tidy, working hard all day in proper employment, doing volunteer time for others, giving to charities and so on. Jesus Himself died for the whole world – the supreme example of Goodness in action. So from the Roman’s point of view it was indeed a “sweet” and “good” thing to die for Rome, because the Roman already believed in an external value which was already built into the universe. His own personal value judgement was based not just on his feelings about patriotism, and self-sacrifice, but on something greater than these things, which he believed gave meaning to his understanding of the meaning of “sweet” and “good”.
I would like to say at this point that the writers of the textbook actually thought the Roman father was right to tell his son that it was a good thing to die for his country, but they did this in spite of their earlier comments. They probably had some vague notion that dieing for one’s country could be justified on biological grounds, or suchlike.
Plato and others thought that Man must organize himself in a way similar to a good government: the king at the top rules with Reason, while the body, or Emotion (Feelings) represents the people under him. Between the king and the body must be a Senate, with its seat in the Chest. The Chest is the part of Man which must bring the Emotions and the Reason together. The King must rule the body through the Chest, otherwise he cannot rule well or properly. Hence the title of this chapter – Men Without Chests – I am suggesting that there must not be a wall between Reason and Emotion. People who have abandoned belief in a Creator God (or ‘Ria’ or Tao’ or whatever they like to call the supernatural power and origin of all things), these people have lost their ability to make correct value judgements. These people cannot be sure if they are right or wrong about the world around them through their Reason, or through their Feelings. They have nothing solid or absolute on which to base their value judgements.
In closing I would like to make one more point. It is often said that people who deny the existence of a Creator God are of a superior intellect to those who do not. This is a gross insult to believers, and a shameful waste of praise on unbelievers. Those who say there is no Creator God (no ‘Tao’ or ‘Ria’) cannot avoid using value-loaded words themselves, thus condemning themselves as hypocrites. If there is no external value, then words such as ‘noble, wonderful, creative, dynamic and so on should never pass from their lips. If these so-called Intellectuals really believe all values are merely personal responses, then they ought to be consistent with their own statements.
For example, if there is no such thing as love, except in the emotions of the person feeling it, then we should never say “I love you”. The same must be said about “hate” too, and “injustice”, and “malice, envy, spite, and so on. In a universe empty of values, all values are the same as each other, and meaningless. If all we do is project values from ourselves, then we are at fault, and our existence is reduced to nearly zero.
But think of the repercussions of this sort of thinking. Imagine the schoolboy who accepts the ideas in his textbook. He is urged to “work hard” to “be virtuous” to “tackle an enterprise” and to “aim high”, yet none of these values have any meaning outside of himself. “Success” and “failure” are just two values which he alone can decide on, and so are “working hard” and “being lazy”. If the writers of the textbook were surgeons, they would have removed the heart but still expected the blood to pump, or removed the lungs and still expected the body to breath. If they were breeders of livestock they would have castrated the stallion but still expected it to be fertile.
Chapter two THE WAY.
In this chapter I would like to look at a problem which all humans have – that of ‘labouring under a preconception’. Another way of saying this is ‘inbuilt bias’.
For example, the person who believes in Evolution (monkeys to Man) has already decided many things, so he has a bias towards one particular line of thinking. On the other hand, the Christian who believes in Creation has another bias. Then there is the person who claims to have no beliefs. This belief in no beliefs is also a bias, because the non-believer would have to argue with the believer that they were right and the other wrong.
Then again there are people who want a world free of religion, such as John Lennon. “Imagine there’s no heaven, above us only sky . . .” His bias was clear. The writers of the textbook also have a very clear bias, and while they are busy trying to remove one set of beliefs they are busy trying to replace them with another – their own. Now the question is, which of the two systems is correct? And who is to say that one is wrong and the other right? On what do we base our judgement? The irony of all this is that, having removed a basis for making a correct judgement, the writers of the textbook expect us to accept their own values! How can we do that when the grounds for making a correct judgement have been taken away?
But the matter is even worse than this.
Logically, if everyone accepted the point of view of the textbook writers, the whole of society would fall to pieces. If all traditional values were thrown out, nobody would work hard, or be faithful in marriage, or care about their neighbour, or show kindness, or be upset over injustice, or uphold the law. Every value we traditionally hold dear would have to be ignored, and in its place would be a nation of autonomous individuals, all doing what they wanted to do regardless of the consequences to other people. Even thoughts of revenge would have to be banished, because after all, what would the revenge be against – injustice? There would be no such thing. Value judgements no longer could exist because they imply some universal set of morals, and that would not be allowed to intrude into this new system.
Let us examine the earlier thought of a man dying for his country. What virtues does this display? A short list would include:
• Love of family • Love of country • Self-sacrifice for a greater good • Courage • Expectation of reward in an afterlife for martyrdom
In the case of Jesus, he himself said:
“Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” John 15:13
And God commanded that:
“You shall love your neighbour as yourself” Mark 12:31
The writers of the textbook would like us to think that love cannot be graded into greater and lesser, that patriotism and self-sacrifice are not expressions of love, and that loving a neighbour is an arbitrary decision not based on love at all. They might suggest that dieing for one’s country is a useful thing to do, but that implies the virtue of goodness, because we need to know WHY it is useful. They might say that if some people die for their country, other people will live, but that raises the question “But why should I die, and not someone else?” Again, we head towards a virtue. We mustn’t say that dieing for our country is a “good” thing to do, or a “brave and courageous” thing to do, because we are not allowed to have such feelings.
The Evolutionist, who has banished God from the universe, would have similar problems in justifying patriotism. After all, if all men are but animals, there is no point in defending a country. Migration might be a better remedy, or perhaps simply wiping out the aggressors. Animals have no morals, death is merely death, self-preservation is the most important rule for animals.
Furthermore, we must ask how can anyone define “good” in an empty universe? The only way we can get any value out of the word is by drawing on our own personal judgement, but that means every person in the world could have a slightly different value for the word “good”. There is no universally agreed standard on which to base our values, in an empty universe. Everything is relative.
The Christian worldview brings into this problem a most wonderful solution. The Creator God who made the universe, and who made Man, has also built into Man the basic rules by which Man can discern morals. This inherent ability to know values is called the Law. As Paul says: “(People) show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing (them)” Romans 2:15
But returning to the writers of the textbook, let us, out of interest, see if their reasoning is correct. Let us suppose, for sake of argument, that they are right when they say it is logical for a few people to die for their country so that other people may live. The reason may be for preservation of the population, or it may be because the community from which the martyr comes is seen by him to be worth protecting. Now we have a problem, because on what basis does the martyr decide that the country or the community deserves to be protected? It cannot be on the basis that the “country is good” or that the “community is good”, because there is no standard by which we can say that any country or community is “good”. By cutting off one end of the subject, we lose the other end. We cannot say “therefore” in the middle because the first part has been destroyed.
Perhaps there is another word we can use: Instinct. In its limited sense, this means the inbuilt desire of animals to do things without knowing why. Birds migrate, cats lick themselves, dogs growl at intruders, ducks head for the water as soon as they can float on it, budgies preen themselves, salmon return to the same stream they were hatched in, and so on. Instinct is another word for a mysterious, unknown behaviour, which nobody understands.
But the wider meaning of the word is more important to us here. When we say “instinct” we might mean that the desire to die for one’s country is “instinctive”, that is, built into us. We also have an “instinct” of self-preservation. We instinctively want to do many other things too. We have an instinct for relief of hunger and thirst, relief of pain, a desire for sex, a need for security, a need for love, approval and so on. These are all good instincts, but if we followed the path of the textbook writers we would see nothing wrong in satisfying all these “instincts” whenever we could. (Some exceptions might occur when one instinct clashes with another, such as an instinct for food might go counter to an instinct to not be killed while taking it from someone else).
But the problem with basing everything on instincts is that we cannot be sure if instincts are a good basis on which to base our lives. How can we judge this? How can one person say that instincts are a reliable basis? Some other person might say they are not. And just because a majority may say they are, does not mean they are right. And just because we may have an impulse to do something, why do so many people refuse to obey it – by another instinct? One instinct guiding another, and then a third level of instincts to guide the first two. At this rate we will never find the original instinct on which all the others are built.
But looking at the man and his son again, is it really an instinct built into people to die for each other or for their country? I doubt it. I think most people will do anything to avoid dying, even if it means someone else having to die instead. Most people do not want to die, for any reason. This is obvious by the millions of dollars they spend collectively on life-preserving drugs and operations. I am not belittling the tremendous courage shown by men and women who join the Services, but I am questioning the assumption that people have an instinct to die for other people. If that is an instinct, like all other instincts, then why do most people show such tremendous restraint when it comes to their other instincts? Do we have some instincts for self-destruction working against other instincts for self-preservation? Do we have instincts for fidelity, chastity and self-control at war with instincts for polygamy, hedonism and bestiality? Which instincts are the strongest and which the weakest? Where did this warfare come from? The questions raise too many unanswerable questions, and we are left with yet another value judgement: “I think this instinct is better than that one”.
The solution to this dilemma is found in the Bible. This is how it is explained, in simple terms: God created humans with attributes similar to His own, only on a vastly limited scale. One of these attributes was the ability to choose one course of action against another. When the first humans chose an action which God had forbidden they sinned, or disobeyed God, and thus they brought in a system of rebellion, which became inherent in them and was passed on to their offspring. While God’s image remains in all humans, though marred, the rebellion also lingers within this image. This is where the war between what we know we ought to do, and what we actually do, comes from. Our conscience responds to the Law of God, but our rebellious nature rejects that Law.
What the writers of the textbook and others try to do is banish God and the Law, and then replace both with something else. To do this they use many interesting words, and delve into philosophy, and use intricate intellectual arguments, but in the end they cannot deny their inner instinct to respond to the Law and their conscience. This is why they are always so inconsistent. If they were truly consistent, they would live and speak by what they say they believe. But they never do.
The people who try to ban any external value system have no viable alternative to replace it with, and no basis on which to ground it. Their arguments are as pointless as the following humorous quotes:
• “I hate violence and I will punch anyone who disagrees with me!” • “Love is an illusion except for the love I have for my wife”. • “I cannot stand people who cannot stand things” • “From now on there are no rules – that’s the rule”
You cannot abolish something if you have no grounds from which to abolish it. You cannot throw your sword away and then expect to fight better without it. The approach some people have is just like this. They try to get rid of the Christian worldview, but then they need to keep some of it in order to destroy what they are attacking. Another illustration would be a child who leaves the house and slams the door shut in an attempt to drive his parents from the house. Those who attack the Christian worldview slam the door on God, the Law and their conscience, and then try to say that God has gone – but it is they who have gone.
Taking this point a little further, let us imagine a flat where six ‘radical’ teenagers live. They all like heavy rock music, and they all leave their personal hygiene way down the list of priorities. They are in full agreement over matters of employment (they don’t need it), and clothing (dirt is OK), and relationships (do whatever you like), but there is a problem over the rent. Three of the teenagers think it is wrong that they should have to pay all the rent, while the other three say it doesn’t matter. To whom can any of the teenagers appeal? If the rent-payers appeal to something called ‘justice’ or ‘fairness’, they cannot prove they are right, and neither can the non-rent-payers prove they are right. None of the young people has any grounds on which to base their point of view, other than a ‘sense of right and wrong’. But it is inconsistent for any of these young people to make an appeal in one area (honesty with money) while at the same time ignoring all the other areas (responsibility to others, fidelity, faithfulness, etc) One cannot stand firm on fragments of the universal rules given to us by God, while at the same time refusing to acknowledge them in other areas of life.
Take another example, a grandmother tells a child that it is “bad to steal.” The child asks “Why?” and the grandmother might say: • “Because it is, that’s all.” • “My parents taught me, so now I’m teaching you.” • “Society breaks down if people steal.” • “It’s the best rule.” • “People won’t trust you if you steal.” • “Honesty is the best policy.”
Do you see how, in every one of these examples the most important reason for not stealing has been avoided? In every case given above, the child is presented with relativism – that is, he can conclude that to steal or not to steal is really an arbitrary decision. It comes, he concludes, from the culture, or the society. It is a rule made up by people, for purely rational reasons. It has no basis in any absolute standard. In 100 years time people may have decided that stealing is good.
What the grandmother should have said is: “Because God’s Word, which is the absolute, unchanging standard for all eternity, commands people not to steal. Stealing is sin, and the wages of sin is death.”
In the case of the Roman who advised his son that it was a good thing to die for his country, if there is no absolute standard on which to base this statement, then it becomes a nonsense to say such a thing to one’s offspring. In 1000 years time it might not be a good thing to die for one’s country – society might change its mind. It might be considered a bad thing to care for one’s wife and children. It might be considered foolish to protect one’s community. If people alone are the arbiters of such things, then any rule may be ignored or challenged, and no-one can say who is right or wrong.
Another problem may also arise – that of picking and choosing which rule to keep as most important and which to keep as less important. For example, who deserves the most commitment: the country, the community, the family, or self? And if someone tells us that one or other of these things is the most important, on what can they base this? Once we have left God’s absolutes behind, we have nothing on which to base our values, other than the shifting sands of rationality and feelings.
But when we turn to the Law of God we find that it is the source of the ‘Tao’, or the ‘Ria’ or what some people called ‘Traditional Morality’ or ‘Natural Law’, or ‘First Principles of Natural Reason, or ‘First Platitudes’ . Without realizing it, the whole human race has chosen to practice the principles of God’s Law, but they have given it different names. It is this Law which has come through every society for the last 6000 years, and been practiced in many different forms and in many diverse cultures, but the principles have always been the same.
At times a sharp-worded barb is flung at Christianity, which goes like this: “You Christians think you have a monopoly on morals! No way. People don’t have to be Christian in order to be good, kind, helpful, unselfish, generous, forgiving, honest, diligent and so on.”
To which the answer is “Christian ethics are not different from ‘ordinary ‘ ethics. All good behaviour, all good morals, all fine ethics are universal. Jesus did not start a new morality, nor did the Church invent Christian ethics. Good morals have been with Mankind since Man was created. And since then nobody has been able to invent any new morals, or make the ones we have any better.
But there are people who try to turn their backs on the whole universal moral law and live without it (like the flat-mates who threw out only some of the Law), and make up a new system of ethics, just for themselves. This, as we have already seen, is impossible, and we shall look at the problems they have with it in the next chapter.
Chapter three THE ABOLITION OF MAN
“It came burning hot into my mind, whatever he said and however he flattered, when he got me home to his house, he would sell me for a slave” – John Bunyan.
In this chapter I would like to look at the subject of ‘Man’s Progress’. Before I go any further I would like to say that, in my opinion, much of what Man is doing and has done in the way of ‘progress’ has been very good. Advances in technology, medicine, agriculture and so on have given Man many advantages and blessings. Man is gaining more and more power over the natural world. He has harnessed its wind, water, sunlight and soil. He has built airplanes, ships, submarines and rockets. He is steadily winning the war against disease, hunger and drought. All this is good.
But there is a down side to Man’s ‘progress’ which I think ought to be examined carefully. I’ll pick three examples out of many and explain what I mean through them. 1. The airplane 2. The radio 3. The contraceptive
1. The airplane. Do you own an airplane? Most people in the world do not, and only a small percentage of all the people in the world actually fly in one. It usually costs money to fly, so mainly the people who own airplanes actually benefit from them. Now if you or I pay to fly, are we exercising power over Nature – no. We are admitting that we are too weak to fly, and paying someone else to fly us. The same can be said of ships, submarines, and rockets. In every case, the big, expensive means of transport are inaccessible to most people unless they pay large sums of money.
The next question we need to ask is “Who controls the airplane?” Someone else. Someone who is probably very wealthy. We may think we are exercising power over Nature when we pay to fly, but that power can be stopped if the owner of the airplane decides to deny us a ticket. And is Nature really being overpowered by an airplane? Hardly. All Man is able to do is harness some of Nature’s power to make his airplane fly.
And let us not forget some of the more horrible uses of airplanes. Bombs, poisons, flames, bullets, propaganda. Through airplanes many people have been destroyed or injured. Is this Man’s power over Nature? It seems that, in these cases, Nature has exercised even more power over Man. It is therefore a tentative thing to claim that just because some men have airplanes, nature is being conquered. It is all much like an illusion.
2. The Radio. Millions of people own radios. With these wonderful machines they can receive all sorts of services, but how many people own their own transmitters? Not many. Most people with radios receive only what other people have produced. In this way, while Nature’s powers are being harnessed, only the very few who produce programs, and only the manufacturers of the radios are the ones who benefit. And let us not forget that radios can be used to transmit propaganda, and programs with a bad influence on the listeners. So once again we see that Man’s supposed power over Nature is really a few men’s power over a large number of other people. And if someone claims that by listening to the radio they are exercising power over Nature, they would be wrong. All the transmitting people need to do is stop transmitting and the claimant has no power at all. All the power company needs to do is switch off the power and the householder is helpless. All the manufacturers of radios need to do is stop putting them together. All the suppliers need to do is stop providing the raw materials.
The only way ordinary householders could gain control over Nature would be by all of them producing and transmitting their own programs, but again, they would need a large amount of money to build the transmitters, and they would also need to pay for permission, and they would still need power, so Nature has not been conquered at all. With regard to the radio, all that has happened is a few people have gained control over a large number of people and used Nature as their means, or tool.
3. The Contraceptive. People who use contraceptives prevent babies from being conceived. At first sight this might seem like a good example of control over Nature. If a couple can stop a child from being born, they have exercised awesome power, but what if the child they prevented was ‘destined’ to be a great musician, or teacher, or scientist, or some such thing, and the parent of many children? This would mean that contraception was a power wielded by one or two people over large numbers of others not yet born. Today’s users of contraception are wielding huge control over generations never to be born. (Abortion is similar in its effect – except in this case humans who are already in existence are destroyed before they have any say on the matter. In a sense, the unborn are treated like criminals, tried and condemned without a defense attorney, and killed without a thought for their right to live). Once again, we have a situation where a small number of people control a larger number, with Nature as the medium.
For those who breed plants or animals, the situation is much the same. A breeder can change the future of an industry, or alter the diet of millions yet to be born, or modify the environment of whole countries. With Genetic Modification and Genetic Engineering, Cloning and so on Man has the potential to devastate the whole planet – and all through the power of a handful of people exercising power over many others. But once again, we have the power of a few over a helpless many – is this conquering Nature?
But there is another side to all this, which involves the ‘conquerors -suppose, after many hundreds of years, the human race began to die out. Because of toxins, genetic work, environmental problems and so on, all caused by the powerful few, the number of humans left to carry on dwindled down to a few thousands. These few survivors might consider themselves to be the greatest controllers of Nature, the supreme conquerors, but they would really be the most enslaved. Their lives would be the result of all the controllers who had come before them. Instead of greater freedom and power, they would have the most obvious enslavement and imprisonment. Earlier generations would be their masters. They, not Nature, would be the conquered.
Even today the work of controllers is easy to see. In Education the children are being conditioned by a small number of specialists, in Politics the propaganda is more brazen and oblique, in Psychology and other branches of that discipline the thinking is often shaped by Evolution, as also in Philosophy and even Theology. Advertising tries to mould people into ‘customer-think’. Religions and cults work on their members with half-truths and fictions. Everywhere we look we see minorities trying to alter majorities. These shapers and molders are affecting generations to come, making these future people more like victims than conquerors.
And what happens when Man finally conquers Man? Today the work is going full steam by a handful of highly-trained specialists to alter Man and make Man what some people think Man ought to be: perhaps more intelligent, or better-looking, athletic, slim, brown-skinned, fair-skinned, with or without large muscles, having special abilities, free of genetic defects, longer-lived, slower ageing, large or small, and so on. ‘Designer babies’ have been planned already, or alterations, made in the womb, or specially designed environments for growing babies. And then, when the next generations of ‘modified’ people discover how altered they are, who is the conquered, and who the conqueror? And what if the Greeks had done all the modifications over 2000 years ago? How would today’s generation feel if we were all mutants?
There are moves in this country to add fluoride to the city water supply – is this mass medication, or Man exercising power over Nature? Should a government be able to force its citizens to take certain chemicals, or medications ‘for its own good’? Should a parent have the power to modify his or her child according to the shape and quality they think is best for the child – think of the Nazi Youth Movement, or the Communist’s enthusiasm in conditioning its members, or the common religious habit of training children on spiritual doctrine. Should Educators be allowed to shape and mould children’s minds with ‘conditioning’ beliefs – as a teacher may do, if he or she thinks a certain philosophy, or political party, or moral stance is more desirable than others? Power over Nature comes with a very high cost. It can affect our freedom, our integrity, and the majority’s right to free choice.
A second point must be made. Up until modern times, most moral teaching, or ethic teaching, was based on the idea that morals are universal. The older people taught the younger people the same morals which they themselves had been taught. Children grew up with the principles of God’s Law, and they passed these same principles on to their children.
But what is happening today is a dramatic shift away from this pattern of the old teaching the young. Today the ‘new morality’ is being brought in as a ‘relative’ idea. Children are being told that there is no solid basis for the morals that govern their lives. Right may equally be wrong, and wrong right. Ethics are a said to be the result of social customs, or something else thought up by Man – not the result of a Creator God writing His Law on our hearts.
A lot of the blame for this ‘new morality’ can be laid at the feet of Darwinian evolution. This destructive teaching has as one of its core beliefs the idea that Man is related directly to animals, and not related in any way to God. In fact, for the evolutionist, there can be no God. The universe for the evolutionist is an empty expanse, dotted with random stars, whose existence is the result of an accidental explosion. Man the animal has therefore made up all his own morals, and can alter or abandon them if he wants to. Man is not accountable to God. Sin is a natural, not a spiritual response to cultural rules. There is no absolute Law on which all of Man’s laws can be based. Death is final. Life is a brief moment of consciousness. Science is a study of matter and forces.
From this standpoint, it is logical for Man to want to control and ‘conquer’ Nature and Man too. But where do those who want to control Nature and Man get their set of rules from? And if they decide that Nature should be controlled this or that way, and Man should be controlled this or that way; who can say if their choice of control is correct? Are they right? Are they wrong? They certainly don’t know for sure. They’ve thrown God’s Law out – now they have to make up their own Law, but who can say if they have made up a better Law than the one they have rejected?
The Bible says that there are people who suppress the truth. “For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who hold the truth in unrighteousness” Romans 1:18 This word “hold” means ‘to hold down, or suppress’. One commentator says it is like someone pushing an eager dog away, as the dog jumps up to lick the face. People are confronted with God’s Law but they push it away deliberately. They suppress it, and stop it from exercising their consciences.
And how can any Christian “Prove all things; (or) hold fast that which is good.” (1 Thessalonians 5:21) if it is now impossible to “prove” anything? If “that which is good” is merely some relative value based on society’s personal values, then it is impossible to really know what is “good”.
These people who want to ‘conquer’ Nature and Man are like a crowd of people who have separated themselves from the rest of the human race. They then set about trying to shape and mould the human race according to their own ideas. But these people are outcasts, refugees, and homeless wanderers. Should they be permitted to turn on the rest of the world and try to alter it? They have nothing better to offer the world. The Traditional Morality has served Mankind very well for thousands of years, and it is by far the best system of values ever discovered, so why should we, the human race try to switch to another system of morals – a system which has no solid base, and has never been shown to be better? It is like someone leaving his or her clean, efficient, dependable car on the side of the road and hopping into a stranger’s car to finish the journey. It is like a conductor abandoning a symphony by Beethoven halfway through and trying to finish with some unheard, untried sheet-music posted to him from someone he has never heard of.
And of course it is just like Satan to inspire a thing like this. In the Garden of Eden he asked “Has God said . . .?” and now within the New Morality he is still whispering the same question.
A question we need to ask the people who want to start a New Morality is this: “When you have abolished God’s basis for being kind, on what basis can we expect you to be kind?” “And on what basis will you love, or care, or be generous?” “What will you call virtues, now that you have decided to invent new ones?” We wonder these things, because in some cases we already know what the New Morality will do. For example we know what the people who promote euthanasia, and doctor-assisted suicide think. They consider the ‘rights’ of the sick person so much more important than those of family, doctors, friends and the community. They think it is more ‘compassionate’ to let someone take their life, than it is to allow them a pain-free span of time as they die, for the sake of those who love them to spend those last few days or weeks with them by the bedside. And further down the line we see doctors being the right to ‘kill’ dying people as they see fit.
Even further down the line we may see some more ‘compassionate’ killings – the lame, the handicapped, the mentally retarded perhaps? If, as evolutionists say, humans are but animals, they killing a human is not much more different than killing a worm or snail. Voluntary euthanasia may be replaced by compulsory euthanasia. The State may decide who lives and who dies, which babies born or not born are kept, and which discarded, what the age limit for old people will be, which children with certain low IQs should be kept, and so on. Man controlling Man is a frightening idea, but there are people in the New Morality who want to put it into practice, and they think it is a good idea. “Good”? For whom?
By abolishing the universal Law of God, the would-be controllers of Man and Nature have actually abolished themselves. If we follow the logic of their ideas through, by abolishing the Law of God from Man, they also abolish the God who gave it. That leaves them with Man the animal, and no morality except his own to guide him. Man is therefore meaningless in a material desert, with no future, and no past. A nothing, in an empty universe, without hope, or reason for hope.
One is reminded of the words: “In those days there was no king in Israel, but every man did that which was right in his own eyes.” Judges 17:6
It is human nature to want to reject God. Inherent in all humans is a desire for autonomy, to ‘do our own thing’, to live like a gypsy, wild and free, always heading out on the road, without having to obey anyone but yourself, free as a bird. There are many movies, and books with this sort of theme, all feeding the same general fantasy of a world where any desire may be indulged in without any adverse consequences. ( i.e. Bond and his women). It starts at birth – even a baby a few weeks old will test the rules. Children resist their parents’ authority for years, constantly wanting their own way, and teenagers often ‘break out’ as soon as they can, trying out bizarre clothes, fashions and styles of living. Younger and older adults often become hardened rebels, drinking, smoking, swearing, gambling, jumping in and out of relationships, avoiding responsibilities, abandoning children and spouses, quitting jobs, continually moving on. The New Morality appeals to most people because it offers them the sort of irresponsible freedom they want. It gives them some “leaves” to hide behind, just as Adam and Eve tried to hide from God.
If Man can ‘conquer’ Nature, then Man is in control, and not God – is this not so? The more Man can take control of his planet and himself, the less room there is for thoughts of God. This also appeals to most people. The thought of having to one day face a God and give an account is irksome and repellant to sinners.
Nature and the New Morality. We have to be careful when we use this word Nature. It has several different shades of meaning. In a general way, when we say “Nature” we mean the things around us – the mountains and skies, the land, trees, plants and animals, the sun and planets, and the starry heavens. All the things in our environment which can be weighed, measured and timed.
Thanks to the labours of many scientists over the years a huge amount has been discovered about Nature. Forces and laws and processes have been discovered. Chemical bonds have been worked out, and molecules, atoms, and sub-atomic particles have been identified, and named. What Science has done is reduce what people traditionally called “beautiful” to a page of formulae. The further Science takes us, the less we can justify our feelings of awe, and our wonder at the beauties and glories of Nature. Thanks to Science we can look at some beautiful aspect of Nature and say “Oh that, it is just refraction, or waves, or chemical reactions . . .” Science has reduced everything to statements of fact. It’s a bit like someone pulling a brand new Ferrari to pieces and laying all the nuts and bolts on the floor of the garage. “See? It isn’t really a top-design car, its oil and metal and rubber!”
Those who support the New Morality are enthusiastic about Science when it goes in this direction. They say: “See, we told you there was no spiritual dimension. Its all just molecules and atoms! There’s no God in there, or out there, and no Law of God – just plain old Matter!” The whole universe is now known to be much the same in every direction – atoms and more atoms, physical laws and forces, mathematical, so Science seems to have reduced all things to formulae and equations.
But there’s a catch. Man may use Science to reduce everything to atoms and molecules, but isn’t Man also made of the very same atoms and molecules? In scientific terms there is no difference between Man and the universe. So how can Man claim to have ‘conquered’ Nature, when he himself is also Nature? Man has ‘conquered’ nothing. Man has reduced himself to the same equations and formulae he uses to reduce Nature. Nature, through Science, has now conquered Man.
Now let us follow this line of thought to its logical conclusion. Science has declared Man to be nothing more than Matter (atoms and molecules), therefore: • Mankind is nothing but Matter arranged into human shape, • Mankind is as insignificant as Matter, • Mankind may do to Matter whatever he likes, • Mankind may also do to Mankind whatever he likes, • It is neither moral nor immoral to manipulate Matter, • It is totally permissible to manipulate humans in any way those in control may think fit.
And so we have the New Morality, with its agenda to change things to suit the plans that hide in the heads of the controllers. These people (a comparatively small number of rich and powerful people) have detached themselves from God and from God’s law, and now, like willful children, they want to turn on their parents and do experiments on them. And there is no limit to what they would like to do. They want to change the genetic makeup of life, get rid of all humans they deem useless, alter the Earth’s climate, breed people and animals and plants in strange ways, and so on.
At this point someone may suggest that it is only in Communist countries where this sort of thing goes on. Those regimes have rejected God, and given all power and authority to the State, and the State has, in many cases, treated its citizens in callous and brutal ways. The State, of course, does not see these acts as ‘callous’ or ‘brutal’ because it has adopted the new Morality. It sees them as ‘improvements’. The minority in power, at the point of a gun, does with the people whatever it wants, treating them like soft clay, kneading, cutting and dicing the population as raw material. Many people protest, because they have God’s Law in their hearts – they know such behaviour is a violation of universal principles, they suffer because injustice is a real thing. East Germans escape to West Germany to get away from the Communists, prisoners escape from Germany to England and then fly back in bombers, oppressed minorities fight for freedom, and so on. The desire to be free, with democratic rights is inherent in the human heart, despite what those of the New Morality may say, and no amount of brainwashing will ever extinguish it altogether.
But what about other countries? Yes, it is much the same in Democratic countries, only not so obvious. Traditional values are constantly being challenged or debunked – one has only to watch TV for a while to see it. Some programs deliberately revolve around immoral subjects in order to be provocative. One comedy many years ago had a character called Archie Bunker. Archie and his wife represented wholesome values – right was right and wrong was wrong, men were men and girls were girls. A huge number of viewers agreed with this morality. But in the storyline there was a daughter and her boyfriend. These two younger people represented the New Morality. From the younger generation came talk of drugs and other immoral subjects, and they often wore unusual fashions – the young man had long hair and beads. All these violations brought a swift response from Archie, and the audience laughed every time. But in an interview, the scriptwriter admitted that he was manipulating the audience to laugh, not at Archie, but at his ‘old fashioned’ and ‘outdated’ morality. Since the Bunkers the war against Traditional Morals has gone on with incredible persistence. Today we hear profanity, and blasphemy, and we see explicit sex, violence and immoral behaviour, regularly on the screen. We hear Bart Simpson disrespectfully calling his father by his first name, and we have programs devoted to promoting homosexuality. Satan’s war against God’s Law is unremitting and ferocious.
The meaning of words is changing too. When I was young “wicked” meant “sinful” but today it means “exciting.” “Family” used to mean “a man and woman married with a child or children” but now it means “any two adults of any sex living together with children from any number of marriages or partnerships”. There was a time when “bad men” were “killed”, but now we “liquidate unsocial elements”. “The dead” are called a “body count” and the number of fallen is counted in “body bags”. Some who is “thrifty” and self-controlled with their money is referred to as showing “sales-resistance”, and to be “pragmatic” used to be a harsh criticism, but now it a highly praised virtue. “Love” has come to mean “physical love” or sex, “truth” is seen as whatever we may interpret something to be, “charity” is used to mean “something for hopeless bludgers”, “assisted suicide” is called “euthanasia” – which means “good death” in Greek, and so on.
Some may say that all the above is really an attack on Science. I am not blaming Science for what has happened. Science has done an honest job, in the field in which it is qualified. It has examined the world and found the truth. Science is not Theology or Philosophy. It has one job, and that is to find out what the universe, and the world, and Man are made of. This is what Science has done. Man is made of atoms, and everything in the universe operates by predictable laws. There is nothing wrong with Science in this respect.
But what some people have done is say, “This is ALL the universe and the world and Man are”. That is a wrong conclusion. These things are not ALL there is. Man is far more than atoms. Man is a glorious creature with abilities far beyond anything Science can measure or define. Man has a conscience, and Man reflects the Creator God in character.
In fact, working from Science, we have today a new field of study called Intelligent Design, (or the anthropic principle). This view shows that everything seems to be set up in such a way as to make life possible on Earth. The elements, the bonds between chemicals, the size and position of the sun and Earth, the very fact that water doesn’t shrink when it freezes, all point towards the possibility that (perhaps) all these things were designed by some great Mind. The fact that the universe must have had a beginning also suggests an original designer. Another scientific line of thought, called irreducible complexity also points towards a Designer – this is based on the fact that in living things (such as the eye) all the parts had to appear, all in the right place, and the right size, all at the same time, in order for the whole mechanism to work. Like a mousetrap, all the different parts have to assembled into a working trap, otherwise the trap would not work, and extinction would follow.
Science and Magic. There are some who claim that a few hundreds of years ago, everyone believed in Magic, until Science came along and debunked it. The 16th century, they say, was a magical time, until Science gradually grew up and took over, in the 17th and 18th centuries. But the truth is, both Science and Magic grew up together, like twins. The aim of both was to discover at least two things: pure knowledge, and how to subdue the world to the wishes of men. This is why on both sides we have the two ‘icons’ of (a) the great magician or wizard (or witch), commanding Nature to obey his/her magical power, and (b) the brilliant scientist, surrounded by his machines, commanding the elements to do his bidding. In both cases the desire is to subdue reality to the wishes of Mankind.
One area of the Science today has to do with analyzing everything, including Man. This kind of Science has not found a soul, or spirit, and it has never detected God or the conscience. Things which cannot be measured, or weighed, cannot be recorded, hence the conclusion by Science that these things do not exist. People who believe in Magic claim that invisible things like God and conscience are real, but their method of approach is ‘unscientific’. We live in an age, here in the Western world, where Science is the great authority, and if Science says Magic is bunk, then it must be. The technician in the white coat is always right – he is the priest for this new age.
In conclusion.
We have come a long way in the last 200 years. Science has galloped away so rapidly there is a whole generation who feel totally left behind, threatened and surrounded by strange new ideas. Almost every week there is a ‘breakthrough’ mentioned on the News, which, if it were mentioned 100 years ago would be hailed as a wondrous miracle. Yet so many advances are being made in so many fields that ‘breakthroughs’ are commonplace. Marooned and confused, a whole generation sits and wonders at the regular advances in technology.
Science continues to analyze, record, state what it has found, and move on. Every time it discovers something it records it. The universe is being plotted and all the stars numbered. The Earth is being mapped and described. Man is being worked out, gene by gene, cell by cell, and gradually the results are coming in. Eventually, I suppose, everything will be explained.
But there is a great danger in this path, because waiting at the end of is a monster. The closer we come to explaining everything, the closer we are to being devoured by that monster.
Imagine, if you will, that the building you are in has clear walls. Everything around you is so clear that the whole building disappears from sight. Now imagine the scenery around you also becomes clear and transparent. Gradually everything disappears, and objects further away also begin to fade. Finally everything disappears. This is a picture of what Science is doing today – it is explaining everything, and making what we thought was real fade and disappear.
There are people going about today, who have listened to Science and accepted Science as the only truth, who think they have no meaning in the universe. They see themselves as animals, atoms and accidents. Science has robbed these people of value, and given them absolutely nothing back. They have no solid foundation to base their lives on. They go through their days in a vacuum – eating, sleeping, working, eating, sleeping, working, day after day, with no promise of a future, and no reason for being born. All is accidental, random chance.
If they ask Science about Morals, Science tells them there is no such thing. If they complain about a bad conscience, Science tells them about biological things, if they express a desire to worship, Science tells them about evolution and instincts. At every turn Science blocks the way and sends the poor seeker back to the Table of Elements, or the Darwinian psychologist or the Educationalist, or the Political Instructor.
This is where Christianity must come in, because it answers all the questions. Christianity shows us, from the Bible, that God is real, that God created the universe, that Matter is something which can be examined carefully by good science.
Christianity also reveals Jesus, the Son of God, who came to die for sinners. Jesus also answered the problem of a bad conscience by providing cleansing, and power to live a godly life by giving us the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed us that there is a deeper reality in the universe, called spirit, and that Man is far more than a heap of atoms. In Jesus every problem finds its solution. Christianity is not Magic, it is reality. The same God who created the universe, also created Man. It was no accident that any of us were born, and our future holds the bright prospect of eternity in a glorious Kingdom. There is nothing wrong with Science’s method of analyzing everything. Where it totally fails is where it rejects anything it cannot analyze. There is a lot more to Man than atoms, and a lot more to this universe than a few billion scattered stars. Behind it all is a Heavenly Father, intelligent, loving, righteous, who cares for every detail, and whose huge desire is to draw all He has made into his everlasting arms. …………………………
Lewis adds an Appendix to his book, in which he lists some of the ways in which God’s Law written on men’s hearts has been expressed through the ages. He quotes proverbs and moral statements from such sources as ancient Egyptian, ancient Jewish, old Norse, Hindu writers, Babylonian writings, ancient Chinese, Roman, old English and others. The result is a confirmation of what he has already said, that all humans have had, right from the start, a sense of right and wrong, because God has planted this moral code in our hearts from the time of Creation.
