C.S. Lewis on Evolution
Apr 16th, 2008 by ljkim
Some of you have heard me refer to this… Well here’s the full quote (more or less):
“Thousands of centuries ago huge, very heavily armoured creatures were evolved. If anyone had at that time been watching the course of Evolution he would probably have expected that it was going to go on to heavier and heavier armour. But he would have been wrong. the future had a card up its sleeve which nothing at that time would have led him to expect. It was going to spring on him little, naked, unarmoured animals which had better brains: and with those brains they were going to master the whole planet. They were not merely going to have more power than the prehistoric monsters, they were going to have a new kind of power…
Now it seems to me that most of the popular guesses at the Next Step are making just the same sort of mistake. People see (or at any rate they think they see) men developing greater brains and getting greater mastery over nature. And because they think the stream is flowing in that direction, they imagine it will go on flowing in that direction. But I cannot help thinking that the Next Step will be really new; it will go off in a direction you could never have dreamed of. It would hardly be worth calling a New Step unless it did. I should expect not merely a difference but a new kind of difference. I should expect not merely change but a new method of producing the change…
…The Christian view is precisely that the Next Step has already appeared. And it is really new. It is not a change from brainy men to brainier men: it is a change that goes off in a totally different direction–a change from being creatures of God to being sons of God. The first instance appeared in Palestine two thousand years ago…” C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
So how are you evolving?
[About the photo: It's a little blurry but I like this picture because it's like the diagram they have at the museum of Natural History going from primate to homo sapien... We're either evolving into Debbie (who happened to be visiting that day), or into Jason who was clearly caught off guard for the photo, and me in the middle, a work in progress. Either that or it shows the various states of readiness for the photo... I think I was in the middle of eating something when it happened.. or various states of hair length, or something...I just found this in a file of iPhone photos, so if either of you don't like looking at it after a while - let me know and I'll switch it to something else...]
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can i be the primate?