evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-24--C. S. Lewis, Science, and Science Fiction

Editor ’ s note : Published on August 16 , 1945 , C. S. Lewis ’ s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020 , putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewis ’ s non-fiction work , The Abolition of Man .
To mark the former book ’ s three-quarter century anniversary , Evolution News presents a series of essays , reflections , and videos about its themes and legacy .
James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland , MI .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Spirituality : The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition .
This post is adapted from Chapter 10 of The Magician ’ s Twin : C. S. Lewis on Science , Scientism , and Society , edited by John G. West .
See also • “ The Abolition of Man and the Advent of the Posthuman “ • “ Why C. S. Lewis Wrote The Abolition of Man “ It would be easy to read the third lecture of The Abolition of Man as an attack on science , a view that appears @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Lewis .
But , was Lewis an enemy of science ?
The apparent answer to this question is no , for he followed scientific developments and spoke respectfully even of scientists with whom he disagreed , such as J .
B. S. Haldane .
Lewis was curious about and sought to grasp contemporary scientific theories , and was willing to embrace what he took to be legitimate scientific insights .
He corresponded for a time with Sir Arthur C. Clarke , himself a scientist .
Lewis also fashioned the tough-minded physical chemist Bill @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a “ real scientist.
” Bill “ The Blizzard ” has no patience with science as modern magic or social programming , a position for which his colleagues at the N.I.C.E .
( National Institute for Coordinated Experiments ) label him a reactionary , and for which he is murdered.1 In short , Lewis respected scientific work that pursued knowledge of the natural world .
Science , for Lewis , was a means of seeing and thus of appreciating nature , and the inviolability of nature was the principal value guiding its investigations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , or scientism , developed out of an impulse to see through nature by deconstructing its processes until everything in it — including the human being — was explained as a matter of mere physical causality .
Scientism ’ s ultimate goal is placing all of nature under human control .
Because he feared the rising influence of scientism , Lewis maintained a deep suspicion of some scientists , some scientific projects , and all centralized scientific planning .
These suspicions are evident in several of his essays and letters , and in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ villainous genius in the first two of these books is a diabolical scientist with the suggestive name , Weston , while a cabal that includes scientists works its devilry in That Hideous Strength .
Weston exports murder and other sins to Mars in Out of the Silent Planet ( 1938 ) , and becomes the devil incarnate in Perelandra ( 1943 ) , seeking to provoke a human fall from grace on Venus .
These are not subtle literary gestures on Lewis ’ s part , and each targets scientists and scientific programs @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in 1943 — the year he delivered the lectures that became The Abolition of Man — Lewis makes clear his antipathy toward the hubris-driven scientific agenda he saw emerging in the West : Lewis ’ s reference to “ a cancer in the universe ” seems aimed at the human race rather than the scientific caste that he says he lives among .
But , Lewis perceived a link between the two , a bridge spanning the gulf separating academic science and the general public .
Again , it was not scientific research @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scientists had adopted to guide their work , notions such as naturalism , evolutionism ( evolution as incremental improvement ) , and technological determinism .
Of even greater concern to Lewis was the ethical error of thinking that objective moral principles can be discovered in an absolute external to the Tao .
To pursue such a possibility was to place oneself outside the universal Tao , to sever one ’ s connection to human moral history , and thus to cease to be a fully human .
Lewis was not principally concerned to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ writing .
Unlike most intellectual leaders of his day , he was acutely aware of the power of popular narrative and mass media to mould public conceptions of science and even to shape political policy .
His unlikely entry into the science fiction arena was an effort to address , in a genre slighted by literary scholars , ideas he considered dangerous enough to attack by direct argument in The Abolition of Man .
Ongoing human evolution and the inevitable conquest of space — two popular ideas that concerned Lewis deeply — had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon .
Lewis perceived a spiritual threat in such entertainments , a tendency toward heresy following the avenue of the imagination .
Not only did science fiction promote dubious technological goals such as propelling a fallen human race into space , but it also suggested omnipotence and omniscience outside of God , redemptive prospects other than the Crucifixion , and a future determined by human motive rather than divine will .
According to Lewis , the greatest threat to public attitudes was the mistaken view , often @ @ @ @ @ @ @ absolutes could be discovered within the scientific enterprise itself .
The science fiction with which Lewis was familiar portrayed in vivid narrative a Western scientific project that was ethically self-justifying .
To answer such errors would require fashioning similarly compelling narratives in which scientism was exposed as a dangerous moral fraud , and in which transcendent values external to science were ultimately triumphant .
Lewis ’ s three works of science fiction represent a sustained and perhaps unprecedented effort by a major intellectual figure to participate in a public controversy by answering opponents @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The Abolition of Man articulates the intellectual basis for Lewis ’ s fictional assault on dogmatic science : Over all human enterprise across the millennia stands the moral unity of the Tao , a timeless and universal expression of value reflecting the moral nature of God himself .
The Tao is not exclusively expressed in a single spiritual tradition , but reflected in all enduring religious and philosophical traditions .
Each generation bequeaths the Tao to the next ; we might ignore it or seek to reason it out of existence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it .
To seek to operate outside of its influence is to retreat to fallible reason following dangerous ideologies .
Lewis warns readers of a day in the near future when institutionalized science , ignoring the Tao , decides on the basis of the dangerous moral presumption that it is preserving humanity , to change human nature .
Lewis ’ s treatment of the moral devolution of science is carefully nuanced .
The impulse to preserve and propagate the human race is not itself evil , but morally insufficient , an enduring fragment @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
In Out of the Silent Planet the Oyarsa or governing angel of Malacandra tells Weston that the one component of the Tao the devil — or Bent One — has allowed him to revere “ is the love of kindred .
He has taught you to break all of them except this one.
” 3 Extending the presence and influence of the human race without regard for other complementary and restraining moral precepts is the catastrophic error of the scientist Weston , and of the Western scientism he represents .
A number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ immediately previous generation contributed to Lewis ’ s concerns about this “ cancer in the universe , ” the forceful extension of human influence without regard for nature or individual rights .
In the 20th century ’ s opening decades the rising yet critically maligned genre of science fiction provided a narrative laboratory for testing ideas such as space travel and continuing human evolution .
H. G. Wells ( 1866-1946 ) , a prolific and popular writer , contributed more than any other figure to the vision of the future taking shape in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human evolution , technological progress and dangerous alien life-forms were prominent themes ; conquest of the universe was human destiny .
“ But for Man , no rest and no ending , ” wrote Wells in his 1933 novel , The Shape of Things to Come .
Evolution and determination will carry us as a conquering force out into the cosmos : Wells had a deep connection to turn-of-the-century evolutionary science , having studied as a youth at T. H. Huxley ’ s school in London where Darwin himself — a close associate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The great playwright G. B. Shaw ( 1856-1950 ) proposed state-sanctioned eugenics programs and advocated radical life extension .
In the five plays comprising the Back to Methuselah series ( 1921 ) Shaw imagined a superior human race to follow the present one , a product of eugenics and technological advancements .
Lewis mentions Back to Methuselah as reflecting an objectionable view of biological progress in which the individual was expendable in pursuit of a new race .
Contemporary Christian writer and friend of Shaw , G. K. Chesterton ( 1874-1936 ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as we know him , is incapable of the philosophy of progress , Mr. Shaw asks , not for a new kind of philosophy , but for a new kind of man.
” 5 Of more urgent concern to Lewis , however , was the philosopher turned science fiction writer , Olaf Stapledon ( 1886-1950 ) .
A legendary figure in the history of the genre , Stapledon made the future-human a central theme of his fiction.6 Last and First Men ( 1930 ) and Star Maker ( 1937 ) projected human evolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ maintained an earnest interest in eugenics and deep admiration for Galton .
“ Columbus found a new world ; but Francis Galton found a new humanity , ” he wrote.7 Galton ’ s eugenics narrative appealed to Stapledon : “ In time it may be as possible to breed good men as it is possible to breed fast horses.
” 8 Other statements by Stapledon undoubtedly attracted Lewis ’ s attention .
“ Darwin showed that man is the result of evolution .
Others have shown that he may direct his evolution.
” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to evolution , Stapledon posed the provocative question : “ Why is it sacrilegious to use direct means for the improvement of the human race ?
” Human beings “ have been given wherewithal to climb a little nearer to divinity.
” 9 Stapledon influenced writers of the next generation , including Clarke whose classic Childhood ’ s End ( 1953 ) imagines an evolving , collective human consciousness merging into a divine Overmind .
Despite his deep misgivings about Stapledon ’ s philosophy , Lewis — always willing to acknowledge true talent @ @ @ @ @ @ @ he could read “ with delight.
” 10 Wells , Shaw , and Stapledon wrote popular narratives reflecting the emerging scientific mythologies of evolving humanity and limitless technological progress.11 But actual scientists also concerned Lewis , as is clearly evident in the sinister character of Weston in both Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra .
Lewis was familiar , for instance , with the visionary works of famed Irish scientist J. D. Bernal , a proponent of governmental scientific planning , space exploration and human enhancement technologies .
In books such as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Devil ( 1929 ) and The Social Function of Science ( 1939 ) , Bernal brought his ideas to the public .
Typifying for Lewis the emerging Western scientistic value system , Weston may be based on Bernal .
One scholar has argued that Lewis satirized Bernal and his proposal for centralized tracking of scientific research in That Hideous Strength as well.12 Bernal possessed a flair for provocative prose and a willingness to shock his readers with outlandish narratives of the future .
In The World , the Flesh and the Devil he @ @ @ @ @ @ @ human part of the person , an idea Lewis skewers with gruesome realism in That Hideous Strength .
Bernal approached self-parody in his more extreme proposals : Such a preserved brain would want to communicate with other persons , however , for “ [ p ] ermanently to break off all communications with the world is as good as to be dead.
” Science held the solution to even this problem : An early enhancement advocate , Bernal envisioned other alterations to the body and mind .
In one passage he provided readers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ qualities : Bernal was not alone in advocating radical biotechnological alterations to the human being .
Though no longer a widely recognized name , J .
B. S. Haldane ( 1892-1964 ) — identified as a threat in a Lewis letter to Clarke — was another popular scientific writer of whom Lewis harbored profound suspicion .
Like Bernal , Haldane preached space colonization and enhanced evolution.14 In Possible Worlds ( 1928 ) he envisioned humanity evolving into “ a super-organism with no limits to its possible progress.
” There was “ no theoretical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but the subjugation to complete conscious control of every atom and every quantum of radiation in the universe.
” 15 Civilization ’ s technological advancement was a religious conviction for Haldane .
This dispute between Haldane and Lewis took a personal turn when Haldane responded in print to what he took to be Lewis ’ s attack on science and scientists .
Lewis wrote a reply to these criticisms which amounted largely to arguing that Haldane misconstrued the argument of The Abolition of Man and of his science fiction .
Lewis affirms that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ not the target.
” The real problem is “ philosophical , not scientific at all ” for , as Ransom says in Out of the Silent Planet , “ the sciences are ‘ good and innocent in themselves ’ … though evil ‘ scientism ’ is creeping into them.
” 16 Thus Lewis can write that “ under modern conditions any effective invitation to Hell will certainly appear in the guise of scientific planning.
” 17 Insisting that under such circumstances “ devil worship is a real possibility ” Lewis adds , “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others.
” 18 When an ideology acquires religious stature , a social order taking shape around it will be inclined toward evil .
Theocracy of any type was thus for Lewis “ the worst ” form of government .
“ A metaphysic , held by the rulers with the force of a religion is a bad sign ” because such an outlook “ forbids wholesome doubt.
” And , as a political perspective can never be perfect , religious rigidity is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ secretive party with access to power and religious certainty about its cause is highly dangerous.19 Add to political power fervent belief in an inevitable force — technology or evolution — and the rule of law itself is at risk .
Under such conditions “ revolutionary methods ” will be justified , for “ necessity knows no law.
” 20 But Lewis , author of The Screwtape Letters ( 1942 ) , discerned deeper and more sinister springs of human evil .
As already noted , he stated in a letter to Clarke that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ devil worship.
” Demonic influence is associated with science or scientists in all three of Lewis ’ s works of science fiction .
If , as he claims , the phrase “ devil worship ” does not usually mean that someone “ knowingly worship [ s ] the devil , ” then to what is Lewis referring with his repeated references to devilry ?
And , what does this allegation have to do with science ?
When a group comes to venerate “ as God ” an idealized state of affairs whose @ @ @ @ @ @ @ disregard for the individual , the violation of nature , destruction of the Tao — then the accusation of devil worship is warranted .
Lewis refers to this eventuality as worshipping one ’ s own vices .
“ It is clearly in that sense , and that sense only , that my Frost [ in That Hideous Strength ] worships devils.
” For Lewis , the scientist Frost symbolizes “ the point at which certain lines of tendency already observable will meet if produced.
” 21 Lewis identified two such tendencies before his @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The first such line , writes Lewis , “ is the growing exaltation of the collective and the growing indifference to persons… [ T ] he general character of modern life with its huge impersonal organizations may be more potent than any philosophy.
” Clearly , Lewis viewed anonymous bureaucracies with suspicion , a conviction expressed in the stinging satire of The Screwtape Letters where devils inhabit an elaborately organized and labyrinthine “ lowerarchy.
” Moreover , reverence for the collective was corrosive of individual rights ; when “ the individual does not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it will not matter what you do to an individual.
” 22 Lewis ’ s foundational concern is the tendency of collectives toward “ the abolition of persons.
” When the cure for selfishness is , as Haldane had suggested , removing from language words such as “ my ” or “ I , ” then the elimination of individuals has been brought a little closer .
The second tendency is “ the belief of [ an organization ’ s ] members that they are not merely trying to carry out a programme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ” particularly one to which members attribute inevitability .
“ The belief that the process which the Party embodies is inevitable , and the belief that the forwarding of this process is the supreme duty and abrogates all ordinary moral laws.
” 23 Evolution , or the gradualist rendition of Darwinism Lewis referred to as evolutionism and developmentalism , was just such an inevitable force .
So pervasive was developmentalist philosophy that “ evolution ” had become an account of any gradual change over time , and incremental change over time always meant @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s own narrative , an account of everything that we experience , and the story of our inevitable future.25 • Arthur C. Clarke , C. S. Lewis , From Narnia to a Space Odyssey : The War of Ideas between Arthur C. Clarke and C. S. Lewis ( New York : iBooks , 2003 ) , 40 .
• C. S. Lewis , Out of the Silent Planet ( San Francisco , Harper Collins : 2005 ) , 137 .
• H. G. Wells , The Shape of Things to Come ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
• G. K. Chesterton , Heretics ( London : John Lane , 1905 ) , 66 .
Chesterton understood the progressive eugenic view of his day as having taken on a religious quality .
“ But the sensation connected with Mr. Shaw in recent years has been his sudden development of the religion of the Superman.
” 62 .
• Sam Moskowitz , Explorers of the Infinite : Shapers of Science Fiction ( Westport CT : Hyperion Press , 1963 ) , 261 .
• On the idea of mythologies of science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Science and Science Fiction Forge New Religious Beliefs ( Downers Grove IL : InterVarsity Press , 2008 ) .
• Dale Sullivan , “ C .
S. Lewis ’ Satirical Portrait of J. D. Bernal ’ s The Social Function of Science , ” paper presented at the 95th meeting of the National Communication Association , Chicago IL ( November 2009 ) .
• J. D. Bernal , The World , The Flesh and the Devil : An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul ( Bloomington IN @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Also available at http : //cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/Bernal/ , accessed May 10 , 2012 .
• C. S. Lewis , “ Reply to Professor Haldane , ” in Of Other Worlds : Essays and Stories , ed .
Walter Hooper ( New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich , 1966 ) , 78 .
• C. S. Lewis , “ The Funeral of a Great Myth , ” in Christian Reflections ( Grand Rapids MI : Eerdmans , 1994 ) , 82-93 .
• See also : Mary Midgley , Evolution as a Religion : @ @ @ @ @ @ @ : Routledge , 1985 ) .
Midgley refers to evolution as “ the creation myth of our time ” and uses the phrase “ the escalator myth ” when describing continued human evolutionary development .

Editor’s note: Published on August 16, 1945, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020, putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewis’s non-fiction work, The Abolition of Man. To mark the former book’s three-quarter century anniversary, Evolution News presents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.
James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland, MI. His books include The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition.
This post is adapted from Chapter 10 of The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, edited by John G. West. See also
It would be easy to read the third lecture of The Abolition of Man as an attack on science, a view that appears to receive support from other works by Lewis. But, was Lewis an enemy of science? The apparent answer to this question is no, for he followed scientific developments and spoke respectfully even of scientists with whom he disagreed, such as J. B. S. Haldane. Lewis was curious about and sought to grasp contemporary scientific theories, and was willing to embrace what he took to be legitimate scientific insights. He corresponded for a time with Sir Arthur C. Clarke, himself a scientist. Lewis also fashioned the tough-minded physical chemist Bill Hingest in That Hideous Strength to represent a “real scientist.” Bill “The Blizzard” has no patience with science as modern magic or social programming, a position for which his colleagues at the N.I.C.E. (National Institute for Coordinated Experiments) label him a reactionary, and for which he is murdered.1
In short, Lewis respected scientific work that pursued knowledge of the natural world. Science, for Lewis, was a means of seeing and thus of appreciating nature, and the inviolability of nature was the principal value guiding its investigations. By contrast, the new science, or scientism, developed out of an impulse to see through nature by deconstructing its processes until everything in it — including the human being — was explained as a matter of mere physical causality. Scientism’s ultimate goal is placing all of nature under human control.
The Rise of Scientism
Because he feared the rising influence of scientism, Lewis maintained a deep suspicion of some scientists, some scientific projects, and all centralized scientific planning. These suspicions are evident in several of his essays and letters, and in his three science fiction novels. The villainous genius in the first two of these books is a diabolical scientist with the suggestive name, Weston, while a cabal that includes scientists works its devilry in That Hideous Strength. Weston exports murder and other sins to Mars in Out of the Silent Planet (1938), and becomes the devil incarnate in Perelandra (1943), seeking to provoke a human fall from grace on Venus. These are not subtle literary gestures on Lewis’s part, and each targets scientists and scientific programs.
In a letter to Clarke written in 1943 — the year he delivered the lectures that became The Abolition of Man — Lewis makes clear his antipathy toward the hubris-driven scientific agenda he saw emerging in the West:
I don’t of course think that at any moment many scientists are budding Westons: but I do think (hang it all, I live among scientists!) that a point of view not unlike Weston’s is on the way. Look at Stapledon (Star Gazer [sic] ends in sheer devil worship), Haldane’s Possible Worlds and Waddington’s Science & Ethics. I agree Technology is not per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of it[s] own forces & technology with complete indifference to either does seem to me a cancer in the universe. Certainly if he goes on his present course much further man can not be trusted with knowledge.2
“A Cancer in the Universe”
Lewis’s reference to “a cancer in the universe” seems aimed at the human race rather than the scientific caste that he says he lives among. But, Lewis perceived a link between the two, a bridge spanning the gulf separating academic science and the general public. Again, it was not scientific research that concerned Lewis but modernist philosophical convictions scientists had adopted to guide their work, notions such as naturalism, evolutionism (evolution as incremental improvement), and technological determinism. Of even greater concern to Lewis was the ethical error of thinking that objective moral principles can be discovered in an absolute external to the Tao. To pursue such a possibility was to place oneself outside the universal Tao, to sever one’s connection to human moral history, and thus to cease to be a fully human.
Lewis was not principally concerned to answer other academic figures in his polemical writing. Unlike most intellectual leaders of his day, he was acutely aware of the power of popular narrative and mass media to mould public conceptions of science and even to shape political policy. His unlikely entry into the science fiction arena was an effort to address, in a genre slighted by literary scholars, ideas he considered dangerous enough to attack by direct argument in The Abolition of Man. Ongoing human evolution and the inevitable conquest of space — two popular ideas that concerned Lewis deeply — had been advocated for decades in engaging novels by H. G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. Lewis perceived a spiritual threat in such entertainments, a tendency toward heresy following the avenue of the imagination. Not only did science fiction promote dubious technological goals such as propelling a fallen human race into space, but it also suggested omnipotence and omniscience outside of God, redemptive prospects other than the Crucifixion, and a future determined by human motive rather than divine will.
Moral Absolutes from Science?
According to Lewis, the greatest threat to public attitudes was the mistaken view, often implicit in science fiction, that moral absolutes could be discovered within the scientific enterprise itself. The science fiction with which Lewis was familiar portrayed in vivid narrative a Western scientific project that was ethically self-justifying. To answer such errors would require fashioning similarly compelling narratives in which scientism was exposed as a dangerous moral fraud, and in which transcendent values external to science were ultimately triumphant. Lewis’s three works of science fiction represent a sustained and perhaps unprecedented effort by a major intellectual figure to participate in a public controversy by answering opponents in their chosen medium of popular fiction.
The Abolition of Man articulates the intellectual basis for Lewis’s fictional assault on dogmatic science: Over all human enterprise across the millennia stands the moral unity of the Tao, a timeless and universal expression of value reflecting the moral nature of God himself. The Tao is not exclusively expressed in a single spiritual tradition, but reflected in all enduring religious and philosophical traditions. Each generation bequeaths the Tao to the next; we might ignore it or seek to reason it out of existence, but we are not free to alter it. To seek to operate outside of its influence is to retreat to fallible reason following dangerous ideologies. Lewis warns readers of a day in the near future when institutionalized science, ignoring the Tao, decides on the basis of the dangerous moral presumption that it is preserving humanity, to change human nature.
Moral Devolution
Lewis’s treatment of the moral devolution of science is carefully nuanced. The impulse to preserve and propagate the human race is not itself evil, but morally insufficient, an enduring fragment from a fractured memory of the Tao. In Out of the Silent Planet the Oyarsa or governing angel of Malacandra tells Weston that the one component of the Tao the devil — or Bent One — has allowed him to revere “is the love of kindred. He has taught you to break all of them except this one.”3 Extending the presence and influence of the human race without regard for other complementary and restraining moral precepts is the catastrophic error of the scientist Weston, and of the Western scientism he represents.
A number of writers of his own and the immediately previous generation contributed to Lewis’s concerns about this “cancer in the universe,” the forceful extension of human influence without regard for nature or individual rights. In the 20th century’s opening decades the rising yet critically maligned genre of science fiction provided a narrative laboratory for testing ideas such as space travel and continuing human evolution. H. G. Wells (1866-1946), a prolific and popular writer, contributed more than any other figure to the vision of the future taking shape in the public mind. Space exploration, human evolution, technological progress and dangerous alien life-forms were prominent themes; conquest of the universe was human destiny. “But for Man, no rest and no ending,” wrote Wells in his 1933 novel, The Shape of Things to Come. Evolution and determination will carry us as a conquering force out into the cosmos:
He [mankind] must go on, conquest beyond conquest. First this little planet with its winds and ways, and then all the laws of mind and matter that restrain him. Then the planets about him and at last out across immensity to the stars. And when he has conquered all the deeps of space and all the mysteries of time, still he will be beginning.4
Wells had a deep connection to turn-of-the-century evolutionary science, having studied as a youth at T. H. Huxley’s school in London where Darwin himself — a close associate of Huxley — was an occasional visitor.
Eugenics and Life-Extension
The great playwright G. B. Shaw (1856-1950) proposed state-sanctioned eugenics programs and advocated radical life extension. In the five plays comprising the Back to Methuselah series (1921) Shaw imagined a superior human race to follow the present one, a product of eugenics and technological advancements. Lewis mentions Back to Methuselah as reflecting an objectionable view of biological progress in which the individual was expendable in pursuit of a new race. Contemporary Christian writer and friend of Shaw, G. K. Chesterton (1874-1936), wrote: “If man, as we know him, is incapable of the philosophy of progress, Mr. Shaw asks, not for a new kind of philosophy, but for a new kind of man.”5
Stapledon and the Future-Human
Of more urgent concern to Lewis, however, was the philosopher turned science fiction writer, Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950). A legendary figure in the history of the genre, Stapledon made the future-human a central theme of his fiction.6 Last and First Men (1930) and Star Maker (1937) projected human evolution into the distant future. Stapledon also maintained an earnest interest in eugenics and deep admiration for Galton. “Columbus found a new world; but Francis Galton found a new humanity,” he wrote.7 Galton’s eugenics narrative appealed to Stapledon: “In time it may be as possible to breed good men as it is possible to breed fast horses.”8
Other statements by Stapledon undoubtedly attracted Lewis’s attention. “Darwin showed that man is the result of evolution. Others have shown that he may direct his evolution.” Suggesting the religious nature of his commitment to evolution, Stapledon posed the provocative question: “Why is it sacrilegious to use direct means for the improvement of the human race?” Human beings “have been given wherewithal to climb a little nearer to divinity.”9 Stapledon influenced writers of the next generation, including Clarke whose classic Childhood’s End (1953) imagines an evolving, collective human consciousness merging into a divine Overmind. Despite his deep misgivings about Stapledon’s philosophy, Lewis — always willing to acknowledge true talent — referred to him as an author he could read “with delight.”10
Wells, Shaw, and Stapledon wrote popular narratives reflecting the emerging scientific mythologies of evolving humanity and limitless technological progress.11 But actual scientists also concerned Lewis, as is clearly evident in the sinister character of Weston in both Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra. Lewis was familiar, for instance, with the visionary works of famed Irish scientist J. D. Bernal, a proponent of governmental scientific planning, space exploration and human enhancement technologies. In books such as The World, the Flesh and the Devil (1929) and The Social Function of Science (1939), Bernal brought his ideas to the public. Typifying for Lewis the emerging Western scientistic value system, Weston may be based on Bernal. One scholar has argued that Lewis satirized Bernal and his proposal for centralized tracking of scientific research in That Hideous Strength as well.12
Bernal possessed a flair for provocative prose and a willingness to shock his readers with outlandish narratives of the future. In The World, the Flesh and the Devil he affirms that the brain is the essentially human part of the person, an idea Lewis skewers with gruesome realism in That Hideous Strength. Bernal approached self-parody in his more extreme proposals:
After all it is brain that counts, and to have a brain suffused by fresh and correctly prescribed blood is to be alive — to think. The experiment is not impossible; it has already been performed on a dog and that is three-quarters of the way towards achieving it with a human subject.
Such a preserved brain would want to communicate with other persons, however, for “[p]ermanently to break off all communications with the world is as good as to be dead.” Science held the solution to even this problem:
[T]he channels of communication are ready to hand. Already we know the essential electrical nature of nerve impulses; it is a matter of delicate surgery to attach nerves permanently to apparatus which will either send messages to the nerves or receive them. And the brain thus connected up continues an existence, purely mental and with very different delights from those of the body, but even now perhaps preferable to complete extinction.
Enhancing the Human Body and Mind
An early enhancement advocate, Bernal envisioned other alterations to the body and mind. In one passage he provided readers something of a shopping list of posthuman qualities:
We badly need a small sense organ for detecting wireless frequencies, eyes for infra-red, ultra-violet and X-rays, ears for supersonics, detectors of high and low temperatures, of electrical potential and current, and chemical organs of many kinds. We may perhaps be able to train a great number of hot and cold and pain receiving nerves to take over these functions; on the motor side we shall soon be, if we are not already, obliged to control mechanisms for which two hands and feet are an entirely inadequate number; and, apart from that, the direction of mechanism by pure volition would enormously simplify its operation.13
Bernal was not alone in advocating radical biotechnological alterations to the human being. Though no longer a widely recognized name, J. B. S. Haldane (1892-1964) — identified as a threat in a Lewis letter to Clarke — was another popular scientific writer of whom Lewis harbored profound suspicion. Like Bernal, Haldane preached space colonization and enhanced evolution.14 In Possible Worlds (1928) he envisioned humanity evolving into “a super-organism with no limits to its possible progress.” There was “no theoretical limit to man’s material progress but the subjugation to complete conscious control of every atom and every quantum of radiation in the universe.”15 Civilization’s technological advancement was a religious conviction for Haldane.
Haldane Responds to Lewis
This dispute between Haldane and Lewis took a personal turn when Haldane responded in print to what he took to be Lewis’s attack on science and scientists. Lewis wrote a reply to these criticisms which amounted largely to arguing that Haldane misconstrued the argument of The Abolition of Man and of his science fiction. Lewis affirms that “‘scientists’ as such are not the target.” The real problem is “philosophical, not scientific at all” for, as Ransom says in Out of the Silent Planet, “the sciences are ‘good and innocent in themselves’… though evil ‘scientism’ is creeping into them.”16 Thus Lewis can write that “under modern conditions any effective invitation to Hell will certainly appear in the guise of scientific planning.”17 Insisting that under such circumstances “devil worship is a real possibility” Lewis adds, “I believe that no man or group of men is good enough to be trusted with uncontrolled power over others.”18
Ideology Becomes Religion
When an ideology acquires religious stature, a social order taking shape around it will be inclined toward evil. Theocracy of any type was thus for Lewis “the worst” form of government. “A metaphysic, held by the rulers with the force of a religion is a bad sign” because such an outlook “forbids wholesome doubt.” And, as a political perspective can never be perfect, religious rigidity is particularly dangerous in governmental planning. A secretive party with access to power and religious certainty about its cause is highly dangerous.19 Add to political power fervent belief in an inevitable force — technology or evolution — and the rule of law itself is at risk. Under such conditions “revolutionary methods” will be justified, for “necessity knows no law.”20
But Lewis, author of The Screwtape Letters (1942), discerned deeper and more sinister springs of human evil. As already noted, he stated in a letter to Clarke that Stapledon’s Star Maker ends in “devil worship.” Demonic influence is associated with science or scientists in all three of Lewis’s works of science fiction. If, as he claims, the phrase “devil worship” does not usually mean that someone “knowingly worship[s] the devil,” then to what is Lewis referring with his repeated references to devilry? And, what does this allegation have to do with science? When a group comes to venerate “as God” an idealized state of affairs whose perfect instantiation would result in evil — disregard for the individual, the violation of nature, destruction of the Tao — then the accusation of devil worship is warranted. Lewis refers to this eventuality as worshipping one’s own vices. “It is clearly in that sense, and that sense only, that my Frost [in That Hideous Strength] worships devils.” For Lewis, the scientist Frost symbolizes “the point at which certain lines of tendency already observable will meet if produced.”21
A Warranted Accusation
Lewis identified two such tendencies before his unfinished reply to Haldane breaks off. The first such line, writes Lewis, “is the growing exaltation of the collective and the growing indifference to persons… [T]he general character of modern life with its huge impersonal organizations may be more potent than any philosophy.” Clearly, Lewis viewed anonymous bureaucracies with suspicion, a conviction expressed in the stinging satire of The Screwtape Letters where devils inhabit an elaborately organized and labyrinthine “lowerarchy.” Moreover, reverence for the collective was corrosive of individual rights; when “the individual does not matter…we really get going” and “it will not matter what you do to an individual.”22 Lewis’s foundational concern is the tendency of collectives toward “the abolition of persons.” When the cure for selfishness is, as Haldane had suggested, removing from language words such as “my” or “I,” then the elimination of individuals has been brought a little closer.
The second tendency is “the belief of [an organization’s] members that they are not merely trying to carry out a programme but are obeying an impersonal force,” particularly one to which members attribute inevitability. “The belief that the process which the Party embodies is inevitable, and the belief that the forwarding of this process is the supreme duty and abrogates all ordinary moral laws.”23 Evolution, or the gradualist rendition of Darwinism Lewis referred to as evolutionism and developmentalism, was just such an inevitable force. So pervasive was developmentalist philosophy that “evolution” had become an account of any gradual change over time, and incremental change over time always meant improvement.24 Scientism adopted evolutionism as the cosmos’s own narrative, an account of everything that we experience, and the story of our inevitable future.25
Tomorrow, “C. S. Lewis and Contemporary Transhumanism.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-24--The Stairway to Life Is Really a Cliff

The Stairway to Life Is Really a Cliff

On a episode of ID the Future , guest host Eric Anderson speaks with medical engineer Rob Stadler , co-author @ @ @ @ @ Tan of the new book Stairway to Life : An Origin of Life Reality Check @ @ @ @ @ ’ s a “ reality check ” because many of the “ stairway steps ” @ @ @ @ @ for chemistry to become biology must , very inconveniently , happen all at once .
@ @ @ @ @ to it here .
DNA can ’ t survive without repair enzymes , for example @ @ @ @ @ able to exist because they ’ re coded in DNA .
The reality check is @ @ @ @ @ because the media eagerly tout every oversold “ advance ” in origin-of-life research , ignore @ @ @ @ @ unguided origin of life posed by various fresh discoveries , and parrot the question-begging claim @ @ @ @ @ only naturalistic explanations .

Photo credit: Jamie Fenn, via Unsplash.
On a episode of ID the Future, guest host Eric Anderson speaks with medical engineer Rob Stadler, co-author with molecular biologist Change Laura Tan of the new book Stairway to Life: An Origin of Life Reality Check. Stadler explains that it’s a “reality check” because many of the “stairway steps” that have to be mounted for chemistry to become biology must, very inconveniently, happen all at once. Download the podcast or listen to it here.
DNA can’t survive without repair enzymes, for example, but those enzymes are able to exist because they’re coded in DNA. The reality check is needed, says Stadler, because the media eagerly tout every oversold “advance” in origin-of-life research, ignore the mounting difficulties for an unguided origin of life posed by various fresh discoveries, and parrot the question-begging claim that origins scientists must consider only naturalistic explanations.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-24--C. S. Lewis and Contemporary Transhumanism

Editor ’ s note : Published on August 16 , 1945 , C. S. Lewis ’ s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020 , putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewis ’ s non-fiction work , The Abolition of Man .
To mark the former book ’ s three-quarter century anniversary , Evolution News presents a series of essays , reflections , and videos about its themes and legacy .
James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland , MI .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ New Spirituality : The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition .
This post is adapted from Chapter 10 of The Magician ’ s Twin : C. S. Lewis on Science , Scientism , and Society , edited by John G. West .
See also , • “ The Abolition of Man and the Advent of the Posthuman “ • “ Why C. S. Lewis Wrote The Abolition of Man “ C. S. Lewis ’ s prophetic appraisal of certain scientific trends in The Abolition of Man finds confirmation in today ’ s discourse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of technologically enhanced posthumanity arises out of a synthesis of scientific culture ’ s most robust mythologies — progress , evolution , the superman , and the power of collective intellect .
Technology will conquer death , space , and human nature , and deliver us into the future as highly evolved demigods .
The Internet is humanity ’ s first major step toward a unified web of consciousness — Teilhard de Chardin ’ s noosphere — that will first blanket the earth and then pervade the universe.1 The objections of “ bio-conservatives @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and public art , and the way opened to unlimited progress , miraculous technologies and visionary ethics .
Then comes posthumanity and Bertrand Russell ’ s “ world of shining beauty and transcendent glory.
” 2 Transhumanism affirms that the time has arrived to make good on such prophecies by crafting a technologically enhanced , globally connected and immortal race — Stapledon ’ s “ splendid race.
” Contemporary Transhumanism draws inspiration from Utopianism , Renaissance Humanism , Enlightenment Rationalism , nineteenth-century Russian Cosmism , New Age Gnosticism , science fiction , speculative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Judeo-Christian tradition .
Nick Bostrom , Oxford University philosopher and one of the founders of contemporary Transhumanism , captures the movement ’ s fundamental orientation : Evolving humanity , long a theme in popular scientific writing and science fiction , has now emerged as a major topic in bioethics , philosophy and religion.4 Ongoing evolution will “ eventually produce a unified cooperative organization of living processes that spans and manages the universe as a whole.
” 5 Evolution is now a process in which human beings may actively participate by technological means .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ crown of evolution ’ s creative work as a step toward something grander — the posthuman .
But , even posthumanity is not the ultimate goal .
Inexorable evolution is producing , by means of its human and posthuman surrogates , ever more advanced technologies as part of its plan to achieve omniscience and omnipotence .
Ambitious evolution is merely using us and our descendents as its cat ’ s paw to snatch technological divinity from the cosmos ’ s chaotic flames .
The specific characteristics of posthumanity are debated ; what is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are near , that they will represent a profound improvement over our present condition , and that we ought to work diligently for their arrival .
One Transhumanist advocate affirms : The posthuman future is not limited by biology but will involve human beings merging with machines , at first by simply mechanically augmenting the body but eventually by depositing human consciousness in mechanical devices .
Thus will we achieve immortality , universal knowledge , and unified global consciousness .
The process of creating posthumanity is fundamentally evolutionary , but with an important @ @ @ @ @ @ @ model .
As Lewis speculated in The Abolition of Man , biotechnologies will permit us to be active participants in our own evolution.7 Transhumanist leader James Hughes writes that we “ must accommodate the ‘ posthumans ’ that will be created by genetic and cybernetic technologies.
” 8 “ This vision , in broad strokes , ” affirms Oxford ’ s Bostrom , “ is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives , to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties , to refine our emotional experiences and increase @ @ @ @ @ @ @ generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives.
” According to Bostrom , the aggressive pursuit of biotechnology is a radical reaction against current convention , “ an alternative to customary injunctions against playing God , messing with nature , tampering with our human essence , or displaying punishable hubris.
” 9 Efforts to coax the public to embrace the ideology of posthumanity , however , will surely provoke a contest .
Thus , Hughes predicts that “ the human race ’ s use of genetic engineering to evolve @ @ @ @ @ @ @ central political issue of the next century.
” 10 The Kingdom Comes by Internet More may be ahead than domestic political debate , however .
According to some experts , the near future will usher in a global culture enabled by a massively more powerful Internet .
Computer engineer Hugo de Garis takes as simple matters of fact that “ the exponential rate of technical progress will create within 40 years an Internet that is a trillion times faster than today ’ s , a global media , a global education system , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ homogenized culture ” which will constitute the basis of “ a global democratic state.
” This new order of things , which de Garis calls Globa , will rid the world of “ war , the arms trade , ignorance , and poverty.
” 11 The coming transformation of the human race and the world it inhabits is nothing short of an apocalypse — the Kingdom arrives via the Internet .
What was “ previously sought through magic and mysticism , ” writes Hughes , will now be pursued technologically.12 Bostrom imagines a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and contemplative pleasures whose blissfulness vastly exceeds what any human being has yet experienced.
” The new people will experience “ a much greater level of personal development and maturity than current human beings do , because they have the opportunity to live for hundreds or thousands of years with full bodily and psychic vigor.
” He continues : At What Cost the New Era ?
Bostrom and Hughes strike a winsome note in their predictions of the posthuman future .
However , at what cost does the New Era arrive ?
Will @ @ @ @ @ @ @ feared , in the pursuit of a greater collective good ?
Science writer Ronald Bailey contends that democratic majorities often oppose “ avant-gardes minorities.
” If “ the transhuman future we are all hoping for ” is to be achieved , it may require efforts more aggressive than those suggested by Bostrom ’ s irenic reverie .
Regrettably , democracy often has placed limits on cutting-edge scientific research .
Bailey argues that in some “ benighted jurisdictions ” promising research agendas can be stopped in their tracks by “ majoritarian tyranny.
” Despite @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for improving humanity , Bailey looks hopefully toward the day when an emerging posthuman race will transform the world — that is , if democracy doesn ’ t get in the way.14 Perhaps Lewis ’ s fears about religious devotion to inevitable processes were well founded .
Considerably more reassuring to wary audiences is the central figure in the contemporary human enhancement movement , inventor Ray Kurzweil , best known for his theory of exponential technological progress culminating in the Singularity .
At a moment in time not more than a few decades @ @ @ @ @ @ @ everything permanently .
Kurzweil ’ s vision of a transformative human future has recently captured public attention in books such as The Singularity Is Near and movies such as Transcendent Man.15 He confidently affirms that exponential progress in the biological sciences will soon allow us to “ reprogram the information processes underlying biology.
” 16 While the idea here is vague and expressed for a lay audience , the planned reprogramming of foundational human biology is the specific goal of Lewis ’ s Conditioners .
For Kurzweil and other techno-futurists , the future @ @ @ @ @ @ @ condition .
Nature will yield to technology ; the battle will have been won .
Kurzweil has become the public face of human enhancement , an affable front man with an accountant ’ s demeanor .
The heavy theoretical lifting , however , is done by others .
Philosopher John Harris , among the four or five leading apologists for human enhancement , argues that assisting evolution is a moral obligation .
He writes , “ The ‘ progress of evolution ’ is unlikely to be achieved accidentally or by letting nature take @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the necessity of enhanced evolution , Harris argues that “ if illness and poverty are indeed to become rare misfortunes , this is unlikely to occur by chance… It may be that a nudge or two is needed : nudges that will start the process… of replacing natural selection with deliberate selection , Darwinian evolution with ‘ enhancement evolution.
’ ” 17 While Harris ’ s metaphor suggests a gentle technological push along coordinates of improvement already plotted out by nature , it would be wide of the mark to imagine that science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ future humanity .
It is more likely that educated guesses grounded in hopeful narratives about progress substitute for actual knowledge in this and similar scenarios .
An inevitable force with motives of its own , evolution is central to the techno-futurists ’ vision of the posthuman future .
Evolution produced us and through us , technology .
It , not God and not the Tao , is also the source of the moral principles that have brought us to the point of transformation as a species , and that will ensure our continued @ @ @ @ @ @ @ affirms that “ because of our intelligence that ’ s evolved over billions of years , we are now on the point of making a major transition away from biology to a new step .
You could argue that… maybe humanity , is just a stepping stone.
” 18 Physicist Freeman Dyson agrees — we will be transformed as “ many opportunities for experiments in the radical reconstruction of human beings ” present themselves.19 But there is more to our posthuman future than simply improving our lot here on earth : The new @ @ @ @ @ @ @ race represents a mere step along the way , will propagate itself throughout the cosmos .
This was the cosmic vision of scientific planners and science fiction authors that prompted Lewis ’ s skepticism about space exploration .
Sounding a theme reminiscent of Wells , Dyson writes that “ when life and industrial activities are spread out over the solar system , there is no compelling reason for growth to stop.
” 20 Technologically assisted evolutionism is becoming , as Lewis warned , a comprehensive narrative of an inevitable force ’ s ultimate @ @ @ @ @ @ @ attention on four technologies — nanotechnology , biotechnology , information technology and cognitive science , or NBIC .
But technology is not the whole story of the turn toward Transhumanism .
“ The NBIC technologies , ” writes Hughes , will “ change how we work , how we travel , how we communicate , how we worship and how we cook.
” 21 Whereas work , travel , and communication are perhaps expected in this list , and cooking seems trivial by comparison , “ how we worship ” is arresting .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of enhancement advocates , an anti-technological and anti-futurist force to be actively opposed .
Hughes ’ s comment , however , hints at a new approach — the re-imagining of religion along Transhumanist lines .
For some in the movement posthumanity and advanced technologies are objects of worship , hope in the Singularity a religious faith .
The new wine of Singularity religion will require the new wine skins of innovative religious expression ; techno-futurism will discover transcendence in techno-religion .
• See : Teilhard de Chardin , The Phenomenon of Man ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Classics , 2008 ) .
Wells also advocated the idea of collective intellect that would achieve conscious self-awareness : “ [ W ] e want a widespread world intelligence conscious of itself .
To work out a way to that world brain organization is therefore our primary need in this age of imperative construction .
The World Brain ( Garden City NY : Doubleday , Doran & Co , 1938 ) , xvi .
The idea may have originated with Vladimir Vernadsky ( 1863-1945 ) and was adopted by the movement known as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Transhumanism .
On Cosmism , see : Michael Hagemeister , “ Russian Cosmism in the 1920s and Today , ” in The Occult in Russian and Soviet Culture , Bernice G. Rosenthal , ed .
( Ithaca , NY : Cornell University Press , 1997 ) , 185-202 .
• See , for example : Allen E. Buchanan , Beyond Humanity ?
The Ethics of Biomedical Enhancement ( Oxford : Oxford University Press , 2011 ) ; Human Enhancement , ed .
Julian Savulescu and Nick Bostrom ( Oxford : Oxford University Press @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , “ The Potential of Evolution , ” What is Enlightenment ?
( February/March 2007 ) , accessed May 23 , 2012 , .
http : //www.enlightennext.org/magazine/j35/stewart.asp .
• Lincoln Cannon , “ Trust in Posthumanity and the New God Argument , ” Transhumanism and Spirituality Conference ( Salt Lake City , October 1 , 2010 ) , accessed May 23 , 2012 , http : //lincoln.metacannon.net/2010/10/transcript-of-presentation-at.html .
Many intellectually inclined younger Mormons embrace Transhumanism and find it to comport with their theology .
The largest Transhumanist chapter is the Mormon Transhumanist Association @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Moravec , Mind Children : The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence ( Cambridge MA : Harvard University Press , 1988 ) .
• James Hughes , Citizen Cyborg : Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future ( Cambridge , MA : Westview Press , 2004 ) , xv .
• Bostrom , “ Transhumanist Values.
” See also Nick Bostrom , “ Human Genetic Enhancements : A Transhumanist Perspective , ” The Journal of Value Inquiry 37 ( 2003 ) : 493–506 , accessed May 26 , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Ronald Bailey , “ The Democratic Threat to Transhumanism , ” “ Humanity+ Summit : Rise of the Citizen Scientist ” ( June 10-12 , 2010 , Harvard University ) .
For a fuller version of his case , see “ Transhumanism and the Limits of Democracy , ” Reason.com , April 28 , 2009 , accessed May 23 , 2012 , http : //reason.com/archives/2009/04/28/transhumanism-and-the-limits-o/singlepage.. Bailey is a writer for Reason magazine and author of Liberation Biology : The Moral and Scientific Case for the Biotech Revolution ( New York Prometheus , 2005 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The Singularity is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology ( New York : Penguin , 2006 ) .
Also , Transcendent Man , Directed by Barry Ptolemy ( 2011 ) .
• John Harris , Enhancing Evolution : The Ethical Case for Making Better People ( Princeton NJ : Princeton University Press , 2009 ) , 11 .
Emphasis in original .

Editor’s note: Published on August 16, 1945, C. S. Lewis’s That Hideous Strength is a dystopian novel that eerily reflects the realities of 2020, putting into a memorable fictional form ideas expressed in Lewis’s non-fiction work, The Abolition of Man. To mark the former book’s three-quarter century anniversary, Evolution News presents a series of essays, reflections, and videos about its themes and legacy.
James A. Herrick is the Guy Vander Jagt Professor of Communication at Hope College in Holland, MI. His books include The Making of the New Spirituality: The Eclipse of the Western Religious Tradition.
This post is adapted from Chapter 10 of The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society, edited by John G. West. See also,
C. S. Lewis’s prophetic appraisal of certain scientific trends in The Abolition of Man finds confirmation in today’s discourse of our biotechnological future. The vision of technologically enhanced posthumanity arises out of a synthesis of scientific culture’s most robust mythologies — progress, evolution, the superman, and the power of collective intellect. Technology will conquer death, space, and human nature, and deliver us into the future as highly evolved demigods. The Internet is humanity’s first major step toward a unified web of consciousness — Teilhard de Chardin’s noosphere — that will first blanket the earth and then pervade the universe.1 The objections of “bio-conservatives” will be silenced through popular argument and public art, and the way opened to unlimited progress, miraculous technologies and visionary ethics. Then comes posthumanity and Bertrand Russell’s “world of shining beauty and transcendent glory.”2 Transhumanism affirms that the time has arrived to make good on such prophecies by crafting a technologically enhanced, globally connected and immortal race — Stapledon’s “splendid race.”
A “Work-in-Progress”
Contemporary Transhumanism draws inspiration from Utopianism, Renaissance Humanism, Enlightenment Rationalism, nineteenth-century Russian Cosmism, New Age Gnosticism, science fiction, speculative techno-futurism, and apocalyptic themes in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Nick Bostrom, Oxford University philosopher and one of the founders of contemporary Transhumanism, captures the movement’s fundamental orientation:
Transhumanists view human nature as a work-in-progress, a half-baked beginning that we can learn to remold in desirable ways. Current humanity need not be the endpoint of evolution. Transhumanists hope that by responsible use of science, technology, and other rational means, we shall eventually manage to become posthuman, beings with vastly greater capacities than present human beings have.3
Evolution by Technology
Evolving humanity, long a theme in popular scientific writing and science fiction, has now emerged as a major topic in bioethics, philosophy and religion.4 Ongoing evolution will “eventually produce a unified cooperative organization of living processes that spans and manages the universe as a whole.”5 Evolution is now a process in which human beings may actively participate by technological means. The present human being is not the crown of evolution’s creative work as a step toward something grander — the posthuman. But, even posthumanity is not the ultimate goal. Inexorable evolution is producing, by means of its human and posthuman surrogates, ever more advanced technologies as part of its plan to achieve omniscience and omnipotence. Ambitious evolution is merely using us and our descendents as its cat’s paw to snatch technological divinity from the cosmos’s chaotic flames.
The specific characteristics of posthumanity are debated; what is crucial is the conviction that the posthumans are near, that they will represent a profound improvement over our present condition, and that we ought to work diligently for their arrival. One Transhumanist advocate affirms:
Trust in our posthuman potential is the essence of Transhumanism. We trust that we can become posthumans, extrapolating technological trends into futures consistent with contemporary science, and acting pragmatically to hasten opportunities and mitigate risks. We trust that we should become posthumans, embracing a radical humanism that dignifies the ancient and enduring work to overcome and extend our humanity.6
The posthuman future is not limited by biology but will involve human beings merging with machines, at first by simply mechanically augmenting the body but eventually by depositing human consciousness in mechanical devices. Thus will we achieve immortality, universal knowledge, and unified global consciousness.
Creating Posthumanity
The process of creating posthumanity is fundamentally evolutionary, but with an important difference when contrasted to the old Darwinian model. As Lewis speculated in The Abolition of Man, biotechnologies will permit us to be active participants in our own evolution.7 Transhumanist leader James Hughes writes that we “must accommodate the ‘posthumans’ that will be created by genetic and cybernetic technologies.”8 “This vision, in broad strokes,” affirms Oxford’s Bostrom, “is to create the opportunity to live much longer and healthier lives, to enhance our memory and other intellectual faculties, to refine our emotional experiences and increase our subjective sense of well-being, and generally to achieve a greater degree of control over our own lives.” According to Bostrom, the aggressive pursuit of biotechnology is a radical reaction against current convention, “an alternative to customary injunctions against playing God, messing with nature, tampering with our human essence, or displaying punishable hubris.”9 Efforts to coax the public to embrace the ideology of posthumanity, however, will surely provoke a contest. Thus, Hughes predicts that “the human race’s use of genetic engineering to evolve beyond our current limitations would be a central political issue of the next century.”10
The Kingdom Comes by Internet
More may be ahead than domestic political debate, however. According to some experts, the near future will usher in a global culture enabled by a massively more powerful Internet. Computer engineer Hugo de Garis takes as simple matters of fact that “the exponential rate of technical progress will create within 40 years an Internet that is a trillion times faster than today’s, a global media, a global education system, a global language, and a globally homogenized culture” which will constitute the basis of “a global democratic state.” This new order of things, which de Garis calls Globa, will rid the world of “war, the arms trade, ignorance, and poverty.”11 The coming transformation of the human race and the world it inhabits is nothing short of an apocalypse — the Kingdom arrives via the Internet.
What was “previously sought through magic and mysticism,” writes Hughes, will now be pursued technologically.12 Bostrom imagines a utopia in which posthumans enjoy “aesthetic and contemplative pleasures whose blissfulness vastly exceeds what any human being has yet experienced.” The new people will experience “a much greater level of personal development and maturity than current human beings do, because they have the opportunity to live for hundreds or thousands of years with full bodily and psychic vigor.” He continues:
We can conceive of beings that are much smarter than us, that can read books in seconds, that are much more brilliant philosophers than we are, that can create artworks, which, even if we could understand them only on the most superficial level, would strike us as wonderful masterpieces. We can imagine love that is stronger, purer, and more secure than any human being has yet harbored.13
At What Cost the New Era?
Bostrom and Hughes strike a winsome note in their predictions of the posthuman future. However, at what cost does the New Era arrive? Will we forego individual rights, as Lewis feared, in the pursuit of a greater collective good? Science writer Ronald Bailey contends that democratic majorities often oppose “avant-gardes minorities.” If “the transhuman future we are all hoping for” is to be achieved, it may require efforts more aggressive than those suggested by Bostrom’s irenic reverie. Regrettably, democracy often has placed limits on cutting-edge scientific research. Bailey argues that in some “benighted jurisdictions” promising research agendas can be stopped in their tracks by “majoritarian tyranny.” Despite the apparent lessons of history regarding programs for improving humanity, Bailey looks hopefully toward the day when an emerging posthuman race will transform the world — that is, if democracy doesn’t get in the way.14 Perhaps Lewis’s fears about religious devotion to inevitable processes were well founded.
Considerably more reassuring to wary audiences is the central figure in the contemporary human enhancement movement, inventor Ray Kurzweil, best known for his theory of exponential technological progress culminating in the Singularity. At a moment in time not more than a few decades away, a technological explosion will change everything permanently. Kurzweil’s vision of a transformative human future has recently captured public attention in books such as The Singularity Is Near and movies such as Transcendent Man.15 He confidently affirms that exponential progress in the biological sciences will soon allow us to “reprogram the information processes underlying biology.”16 While the idea here is vague and expressed for a lay audience, the planned reprogramming of foundational human biology is the specific goal of Lewis’s Conditioners. For Kurzweil and other techno-futurists, the future will reveal unimaginable improvements to the human condition. Nature will yield to technology; the battle will have been won.
An Accountant’s Demeanor
Kurzweil has become the public face of human enhancement, an affable front man with an accountant’s demeanor. The heavy theoretical lifting, however, is done by others. Philosopher John Harris, among the four or five leading apologists for human enhancement, argues that assisting evolution is a moral obligation. He writes, “The ‘progress of evolution’ is unlikely to be achieved accidentally or by letting nature take its course.” Joining Savulescu in urging the necessity of enhanced evolution, Harris argues that “if illness and poverty are indeed to become rare misfortunes, this is unlikely to occur by chance… It may be that a nudge or two is needed: nudges that will start the process… of replacing natural selection with deliberate selection, Darwinian evolution with ‘enhancement evolution.’”17 While Harris’s metaphor suggests a gentle technological push along coordinates of improvement already plotted out by nature, it would be wide of the mark to imagine that science has identified such an evolutionary trajectory for future humanity. It is more likely that educated guesses grounded in hopeful narratives about progress substitute for actual knowledge in this and similar scenarios.
Evolution and the Postman Future
An inevitable force with motives of its own, evolution is central to the techno-futurists’ vision of the posthuman future. Evolution produced us and through us, technology. It, not God and not the Tao, is also the source of the moral principles that have brought us to the point of transformation as a species, and that will ensure our continued evolution. Computer scientist Hugo de Garis affirms that “because of our intelligence that’s evolved over billions of years, we are now on the point of making a major transition away from biology to a new step. You could argue that… maybe humanity, is just a stepping stone.”18 Physicist Freeman Dyson agrees — we will be transformed as “many opportunities for experiments in the radical reconstruction of human beings” present themselves.19 But there is more to our posthuman future than simply improving our lot here on earth: The new humanity, toward which the present human race represents a mere step along the way, will propagate itself throughout the cosmos. This was the cosmic vision of scientific planners and science fiction authors that prompted Lewis’s skepticism about space exploration. Sounding a theme reminiscent of Wells, Dyson writes that “when life and industrial activities are spread out over the solar system, there is no compelling reason for growth to stop.”20 Technologically assisted evolutionism is becoming, as Lewis warned, a comprehensive narrative of an inevitable force’s ultimate universal triumph.
Four Technologies for Human Enhancement
Human enhancement advocates focus attention on four technologies — nanotechnology, biotechnology, information technology and cognitive science, or NBIC. But technology is not the whole story of the turn toward Transhumanism. “The NBIC technologies,” writes Hughes, will “change how we work, how we travel, how we communicate, how we worship and how we cook.”21 Whereas work, travel, and communication are perhaps expected in this list, and cooking seems trivial by comparison, “how we worship” is arresting. Traditional religion has been the bête noir of enhancement advocates, an anti-technological and anti-futurist force to be actively opposed. Hughes’s comment, however, hints at a new approach — the re-imagining of religion along Transhumanist lines. For some in the movement posthumanity and advanced technologies are objects of worship, hope in the Singularity a religious faith. The new wine of Singularity religion will require the new wine skins of innovative religious expression; techno-futurism will discover transcendence in techno-religion.
Tomorrow, “C.S. Lewis and Critical Reactions to Transhumanism.”
Notes


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-28--Adam and Eve and “Mainstream Science”

Adam and Eve and “Mainstream Science”

Philosopher of biology Paul Nelson contributed a superb response to computational biologist Joshua Swamidass ’ s book , The Genealogical Adam and Eve .
Writing in a symposium for the journal Sapientia , Dr. Nelson notes that the book ’ s use of the concept “ mainstream science ” artificially constrained Swamidass ’ s possible choices in seeking to preserve a historical first couple .
The question is whether we will allow our own views to be similarly constrained .
Swamidass offers a Venn diagram , like a perfectly sliced hard-boiled egg , placing his preferred thesis in the embrace @ @ @ @ @ @ @ views are excluded .
Paul counters with a diagram of his own depicting the “ rules of baseball.
” From “ Which Game ?
Whose Rules ?
” : [ Swamidass ’ s ] Venn diagram conceals as much as , or more than , it reveals .
The category “ mainstream science , ” for instance , the largest circle in the diagram , sounds plausibly neutral , capturing the sort of objective knowledge to which any reasonably well-educated adult , whether Christian or not , should assent ( e.g.
, elements @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is an oblate spheroid , humans have 46 chromosomes in their diploid cells , and so on ) .
These are the facts of the universe as we best understand them .
“ Mainstream science , ” however , when we analyze the meaning of this term in GAE [ The Genealogical Adam and Eve ] , turns out not to be neutral at all — not for science , or philosophy , or theology .
To see why , let ’ s look briefly at a Venn diagram which has nothing to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ This exercise will provide what philosopher Daniel Dennett calls “ an intuition pump , ” to warm up the reader ’ s thinking for the more difficult questions ahead .
Figure 2 ( below ) shows five offensive plays permitted within , or consistent with , the rules of baseball : ( 1 ) a bunt , ( 2 ) hit and run , ( 3 ) a sacrifice fly , ( 4 ) drawing a walk , and ( 5 ) stealing a base .
Then we have a curious outlier circle @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pass is not permitted by the rules of baseball , and doesn ’ t even make sense — passing forward to where , exactly ?
Given the rules , the shape of a baseball field lacks any such linear , up-and-back orientation .
Wrong game , friend .
No forward passing allowed , or even imaginable .
Given the rules .
.
.
in a parallel sense , the whole enterprise of GAE is looking for the closest similitude to historical orthodoxy , i.e.
, Adam and Eve as the original , de @ @ @ @ @ @ @ only given the strict boundaries , or rules , set by mainstream science , where concepts such as creation de novo are as incongruous as a forward pass in baseball .
This accounts , incidentally , for some of the peculiarities of the GAE hypothesis , such as the complete invisibility of Adam and Eve to biological detection .
If we allow for the empirical possibility that the defining characters of the genus Homo signal a created or aboriginal discontinuity , we would step instantly outside the privileged circle of “ mainstream science @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ) .
That ’ s a no-go .
No forward passing , remember ?
It is impossible to play football and baseball at the same time , of course , within the same square footage of grass .
One set of rules must govern the outcome of the game ; indeed , only one set of rules can govern the game .
Look again at Figure 1 , and find the location of “ GH , ” the abbreviation designating the Genealogical Adam and Eve hypothesis .
Notice where GH resides — within @ @ @ @ @ @ @ GH/GAE located there ?
Because Swamidass has accepted , as defining the game of science ( as it is currently played , anyhow ) , these rules or conditions : methodological naturalism ( as a philosophy of explanation ; hereafter , MN ) and common ancestry ( as the pattern of evolutionary relationship which best explains the biological data ; hereafter , CA ) .
Both MN and CA are problematic , however , and thus any hypothesis which takes them as its givens , or starting points , will be problematic as @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sounder than its foundation .

Philosopher of biology Paul Nelson contributed a superb response to computational biologist Joshua Swamidass’s book, The Genealogical Adam and Eve. Writing in a symposium for the journal Sapientia, Dr. Nelson notes that the book’s use of the concept “mainstream science” artificially constrained Swamidass’s possible choices in seeking to preserve a historical first couple. The question is whether we will allow our own views to be similarly constrained.
Swamidass offers a Venn diagram, like a perfectly sliced hard-boiled egg, placing his preferred thesis in the embrace of Mainstream Science, from which competing views are excluded. Paul counters with a diagram of his own depicting the “rules of baseball.” From “Which Game? Whose Rules?”:
[Swamidass’s] Venn diagram conceals as much as, or more than, it reveals. The category “mainstream science,” for instance, the largest circle in the diagram, sounds plausibly neutral, capturing the sort of objective knowledge to which any reasonably well-educated adult, whether Christian or not, should assent (e.g., elements are composed of atoms, the Earth is an oblate spheroid, humans have 46 chromosomes in their diploid cells, and so on). These are the facts of the universe as we best understand them.
“Mainstream science,” however, when we analyze the meaning of this term in GAE [The Genealogical Adam and Eve], turns out not to be neutral at all — not for science, or philosophy, or theology. To see why, let’s look briefly at a Venn diagram which has nothing to do with any of those areas. This exercise will provide what philosopher Daniel Dennett calls “an intuition pump,” to warm up the reader’s thinking for the more difficult questions ahead.
Figure 2 (below) shows five offensive plays permitted within, or consistent with, the rules of baseball: (1) a bunt, (2) hit and run, (3) a sacrifice fly, (4) drawing a walk, and (5) stealing a base. Then we have a curious outlier circle: the forward pass.
A forward pass is not permitted by the rules of baseball, and doesn’t even make sense — passing forward to where, exactly? Given the rules, the shape of a baseball field lacks any such linear, up-and-back orientation. Wrong game, friend. No forward passing allowed, or even imaginable.
Given the rules . . . in a parallel sense, the whole enterprise of GAE is looking for the closest similitude to historical orthodoxy, i.e., Adam and Eve as the original, de novo created parents of humankind, but only given the strict boundaries, or rules, set by mainstream science, where concepts such as creation de novo are as incongruous as a forward pass in baseball. This accounts, incidentally, for some of the peculiarities of the GAE hypothesis, such as the complete invisibility of Adam and Eve to biological detection. If we allow for the empirical possibility that the defining characters of the genus Homo signal a created or aboriginal discontinuity, we would step instantly outside the privileged circle of “mainstream science” (see section 4, below). That’s a no-go. No forward passing, remember?
It is impossible to play football and baseball at the same time, of course, within the same square footage of grass. One set of rules must govern the outcome of the game; indeed, only one set of rules can govern the game. Look again at Figure 1, and find the location of “GH,” the abbreviation designating the Genealogical Adam and Eve hypothesis. Notice where GH resides — within “mainstream science.”
But why is GH/GAE located there? Because Swamidass has accepted, as defining the game of science (as it is currently played, anyhow), these rules or conditions: methodological naturalism (as a philosophy of explanation; hereafter, MN) and common ancestry (as the pattern of evolutionary relationship which best explains the biological data; hereafter, CA). Both MN and CA are problematic, however, and thus any hypothesis which takes them as its givens, or starting points, will be problematic as well. The building can be no sounder than its foundation.


evolutionnewsandviews--2020-08-27--Doctor’s Diary: Evolution in the Country of the Blind

Editor ’ s note : Dr. Simmons is a physician and the author most recently of Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves ?
He is a Fellow with Discovery Institute ’ s Center for Science & Culture .
Fans of H. G. Wells are probably familiar with his 1904 short story , “ The Country of the Blind.
” It has been republished , played on radio , and portrayed on television , many times .
Inspired by Wells , I offer a parable , of sorts , that resembles the present debate over evolution .
The original story is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ slips and tumbles into a previously unknown valley while climbing Ecuador ’ s highest peak .
There , he finds a very active farming community that was trapped for centuries following a massive earthquake .
Despite their extreme isolation , the villagers have managed reasonably well .
That includes enduring a blow from a pervasive viral disease that blinded all subsequent newborns .
Over time , however , the community adjusted .
The idea of having sight eased into forgotten folklore .
Given the acquisition of new ways to survive , sight was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ thought useless .
Newer homes were built without windows , indoor lighting was skipped , and all pathways to and from the fields were lined by kerbs ( edging ) .
Initially , Nuñez is received well .
He is given living quarters and a job .
Yet a thought keeps recurring in his mind — In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king .
Unfortunately , he doesn ’ t keep his thoughts to himself .
After a while , he is chastised by the elders for these “ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
When he falls in love with Medina-Saroté , his employer ’ s daughter , and wants to marry her , the village elders insist that he have his eyes removed .
She could not be given over to a delusional husband .
Much to his dismay , a date is set for the enucleation of both of his eyes .
No sense spoiling the rest of the story .
Sorry .
However , I believe that proponents of intelligent design have met with comparable , blind objections .
Richard Dawkins , an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Evolution is a fact .
Beyond reasonable doubt , beyond serious doubt , beyond sane , informed , intelligent doubt , beyond a doubt evolution is a fact , ” and “ Evolution is the only game in town , the greatest show on earth.
” P. Z. Myers , an atheistic professor in Minnesota , has said , “ Rational people have better things to do than grant unwarranted credibility to every half-assed delusion.
” It ’ s interesting that he actually used the word “ delusion.
” The Internet is loaded @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the intelligent designers win , chemistry will be simplified .
The Periodic Table will have only four elements : Earth , Air , Fire , and Water .
And , the practice of psychology will be simplified .
The DSM VI will list only four diagnoses : melancholic , phlegmatic , choleric , and sanguine.
” This is cultural and academic mental blindness not unlike the Land of the Blind .
And very wrong .
Just look at the miracle of childbirth .
Millions of macro- and micro-changes , successive complexities upon complexities @ @ @ @ @ @ @ right time , in the right order , and at the right place .
When the time is right , the unborn sends unique chemical signals to the mother that it is ready to move through the birth canal .
I ’ m also struck by the improbabilities of genetically matched sexual partners evolving coincidentally along ( up ) the Tree of Life .
That is three billion DNA pairs per parent , which find and line up perfectly within the new , fertilized ovum .
( See my last article at Evolution @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be responsible for writing and reading the blueprints , engineering , plumbing and electrical works .
Neo-Darwinists would have one believe that human evolution was relatively easy .
But the fish to bird to monkey to man transition ignores billions of missing or difficult steps .
Perhaps trillions .
Just note that ape babies pass out of the birth canal with their faces up while our babies arrive with their faces down .
There are no species with in-between , quarter-turned , or half-turned babies along the Tree of Life .
Human newborns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ arteriosus ) that bypasses the lungs while in utero ( no need to absorb oxygen there ) .
Upon command at birth it immediately closes so that blood will go to the lungs .
There could not have been an in-between valve .
Also of interest , we have a fatty layer in our skin seen in dolphins and not in monkeys .
Furthermore , a newborn human baby must , once the umbilical cord is cut or blocked in some manner , take that first breath within four minutes .
Breathing must @ @ @ @ @ @ @ guarantee an adequate flow of oxygen .
Parts of this process are timed better than the intricacy of a Mars landing .
Perhaps better .
If the baby breathes too soon , it asphyxiates ; if too late , it may be permanently damaged by or die from hypoxemia .
This critical timing could not have come about by trial and error , accident , mutation , or natural selection .
There are many other striking aspects of the human body that can not be explained by evolution and small successive steps .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the spinal cord at the base of the human skull .
Here , the left column crosses over to the right brain and the right column crosses over to the left .
Why not straight-up connections ?
That would seem most logical and easiest .
If one were to argue that the crossing over of thousands of nerves happened by accident , then one must explain the paths of two optic nerves .
Half of each nerve goes to the opposite eye .
This is not a complete crossover and not compatible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spinal cord .
In addition to intelligent design there is a lot of evidence of intelligent foresight .
Humans come with bone repair instructions just in case there ’ s a fracture , very precise clotting instructions in case there ’ s a bleed , and the ability to make antibodies to a host of pathogens we ’ ve not seen before .
There ’ s a wound closure kit and a lacrimation control .
We can ( foresight ) cough , belch , vomit , sneeze , and expel diarrhea .
There @ @ @ @ @ @ @ temperatures ( create a fever ) to help fight infections and oxygen monitoring stations to alter the rate of breathing .
Our heart has a back-up pacemaker in case the original one falters .
In fact there are a third and fourth back-up of sorts , as well .
And don ’ t forget the “ Flight or Fight ” mechanisms ( just in case ) .
Virtually all of these systems arrive in the unborn at the same time .
Humans have two fewer pairs of chromosomes than apes do ( 23 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ apes ) ; experts say the extra chromosomes simply fused with our second chromosome .
There ’ s nothing simple about that .
Millions of matching DNA pairs moved simultaneously in the female and in the male , at the same time , for no good reason .
And crazy enough , it created a human .
Ever since the chimp and human genome were sequenced , experts have said we share 95-99 percent of their DNA .
Yet Dr. Marcos Eberlin , a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences , has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , created by our DNA , are different from a chimp ’ s .
Perhaps that explains the huge differences in phenotypes .
Also , lost in the discussion is the impact of recently discovered orphan genes , which are uniquely human and overlapping genes .
Our genes can code for different proteins if read left to right ( rather than right to left only ) .
The phenomenon is called heteropalindromes .
A parallel might be how the word stressed , when the sequence of letters is reversed , becomes desserts , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and deliver becomes reviled .
The message given can be quite different .
Palindromic genes can deliver two very different messages and they may actually increase the number of differences we have with apes .
Of note , we also share 70 percent of our genes with slugs and 50 percent with bananas .
One might speculate , if this analysis were simplified and genetic percentages represented phenotypic change , we ought to have a trail of slime wherever we walk and/or turn yellow when we ’ re ripe .
Humans have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ is one of those .
We compose books , plays , songs , stories , and dances .
And we invent — cars , planes , appliances , and screw drivers .
Apes can not speak as we do .
They lack the right anatomy and they particularly lack the neurological platforms .
Very few animals are aware of themselves and even fewer , if any , are aware that other animals have that kind of awareness , too .
We have a conscience .
When choosing between right and wrong , we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ another inner voice .
How come ?
Very few animals display compassion and sympathy .
I could go on .
We are clearly unique .
One can not remodel a shack , even the best shack in the world , into a skyscraper by trial and error .
Design is essential .

An illustration from "The Country of the Blind," by Claude Allin Shepperson / Public domain.
Editor’s note: Dr. Simmons is a physician and the author most recently of Are We Here to Re-Create Ourselves? He is a Fellow with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture.
Fans of H. G. Wells are probably familiar with his 1904 short story, “The Country of the Blind.” It has been republished, played on radio, and portrayed on television, many times. Inspired by Wells, I offer a parable, of sorts, that resembles the present debate over evolution.
The original story is about an explorer named Nuñez, who slips and tumbles into a previously unknown valley while climbing Ecuador’s highest peak. There, he finds a very active farming community that was trapped for centuries following a massive earthquake. Despite their extreme isolation, the villagers have managed reasonably well. That includes enduring a blow from a pervasive viral disease that blinded all subsequent newborns. Over time, however, the community adjusted. The idea of having sight eased into forgotten folklore. Given the acquisition of new ways to survive, sight was deemed unnecessary, and eventually it was thought useless. Newer homes were built without windows, indoor lighting was skipped, and all pathways to and from the fields were lined by kerbs (edging).
Initially, Nuñez is received well. He is given living quarters and a job. Yet a thought keeps recurring in his mind — In the land of the blind the one-eyed man is king. Unfortunately, he doesn’t keep his thoughts to himself. After a while, he is chastised by the elders for these “delusions” about being able to see. When he falls in love with Medina-Saroté, his employer’s daughter, and wants to marry her, the village elders insist that he have his eyes removed. She could not be given over to a delusional husband. Much to his dismay, a date is set for the enucleation of both of his eyes.
Don’t Worry, No Spoilers
No sense spoiling the rest of the story. Sorry. However, I believe that proponents of intelligent design have met with comparable, blind objections.
Richard Dawkins, an outspoken atheist, has said: “Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond a doubt evolution is a fact,” and “Evolution is the only game in town, the greatest show on earth.” P. Z. Myers, an atheistic professor in Minnesota, has said, “Rational people have better things to do than grant unwarranted credibility to every half-assed delusion.” It’s interesting that he actually used the word “delusion.”
The Internet is loaded with comments such as: “If the intelligent designers win, chemistry will be simplified. The Periodic Table will have only four elements: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. And, the practice of psychology will be simplified. The DSM VI will list only four diagnoses: melancholic, phlegmatic, choleric, and sanguine.”
The Miracle of Childbirth
This is cultural and academic mental blindness not unlike the Land of the Blind. And very wrong. Just look at the miracle of childbirth. Millions of macro- and micro-changes, successive complexities upon complexities take place throughout gestation, at the right time, in the right order, and at the right place. When the time is right, the unborn sends unique chemical signals to the mother that it is ready to move through the birth canal. I’m also struck by the improbabilities of genetically matched sexual partners evolving coincidentally along (up) the Tree of Life. That is three billion DNA pairs per parent, which find and line up perfectly within the new, fertilized ovum. (See my last article at Evolution News.)
A designing agent must be responsible for writing and reading the blueprints, engineering, plumbing and electrical works. Neo-Darwinists would have one believe that human evolution was relatively easy. But the fish to bird to monkey to man transition ignores billions of missing or difficult steps. Perhaps trillions. Just note that ape babies pass out of the birth canal with their faces up while our babies arrive with their faces down. There are no species with in-between, quarter-turned, or half-turned babies along the Tree of Life. Human newborns have a large artery (the ductus arteriosus) that bypasses the lungs while in utero (no need to absorb oxygen there). Upon command at birth it immediately closes so that blood will go to the lungs. There could not have been an in-between valve. Also of interest, we have a fatty layer in our skin seen in dolphins and not in monkeys.
A First Breath
Furthermore, a newborn human baby must, once the umbilical cord is cut or blocked in some manner, take that first breath within four minutes. Breathing must continue on at a rate that will guarantee an adequate flow of oxygen. Parts of this process are timed as well as the intricacy of a Mars landing. Perhaps better. If the baby breathes too soon, it asphyxiates; if too late, it may be permanently damaged by or die from hypoxemia. This critical timing could not have come about by trial and error, accident, mutation, or natural selection.
There are many other striking aspects of the human body that cannot be explained by evolution and small successive steps. One incredible example is the single braid of the spinal cord at the base of the human skull. Here, the left column crosses over to the right brain and the right column crosses over to the left. Why not straight-up connections? That would seem most logical and easiest. If one were to argue that the crossing over of thousands of nerves happened by accident, then one must explain the paths of two optic nerves. Half of each nerve goes to the opposite eye. This is not a complete crossover and not compatible with some ancient predecessor who twisted its spinal cord.
Intelligent Foresight
In addition to intelligent design there is a lot of evidence of intelligent foresight. Humans come with bone repair instructions just in case there’s a fracture, very precise clotting instructions in case there’s a bleed, and the ability to make antibodies to a host of pathogens we’ve not seen before. There’s a wound closure kit and a lacrimation control. We can (foresight) cough, belch, vomit, sneeze, and expel diarrhea. There’s a latent ability to raise temperatures (create a fever) to help fight infections and oxygen monitoring stations to alter the rate of breathing. Our heart has a back-up pacemaker in case the original one falters. In fact there are a third and fourth back-up of sorts, as well. And don’t forget the “Flight or Fight” mechanisms (just in case). Virtually all of these systems arrive in the unborn at the same time.
Humans have two fewer pairs of chromosomes than apes do (23 pairs for humans and 24 pairs for apes); experts say the extra chromosomes simply fused with our second chromosome. There’s nothing simple about that. Millions of matching DNA pairs moved simultaneously in the female and in the male, at the same time, for no good reason. And crazy enough, it created a human.
Of Apes and Men
Ever since the chimp and human genome were sequenced, experts have said we share 95-99 percent of their DNA. Yet Dr. Marcos Eberlin, a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, has shown that 80 percent of our proteins, created by our DNA, are different from a chimp’s. Perhaps that explains the huge differences in phenotypes. Also, lost in the discussion is the impact of recently discovered orphan genes, which are uniquely human and overlapping genes. Our genes can code for different proteins if read left to right (rather than right to left only). The phenomenon is called heteropalindromes. A parallel might be how the word stressed, when the sequence of letters is reversed, becomes desserts, devil becomes lived, reward becomes drawer, and deliver becomes reviled. The message given can be quite different. Palindromic genes can deliver two very different messages and they may actually increase the number of differences we have with apes.
Of note, we also share 70 percent of our genes with slugs and 50 percent with bananas. One might speculate, if this analysis were simplified and genetic percentages represented phenotypic change, we ought to have a trail of slime wherever we walk and/or turn yellow when we’re ripe.
Priceless and Inexplicable
Humans have priceless and inexplicable capabilities. To create is one of those. We compose books, plays, songs, stories, and dances. And we invent — cars, planes, appliances, and screw drivers. Apes cannot speak as we do. They lack the right anatomy and they particularly lack the neurological platforms. Very few animals are aware of themselves and even fewer, if any, are aware that other animals have that kind of awareness, too. We have a conscience. When choosing between right and wrong, we have an inner voice that speaks with another inner voice. How come? Very few animals display compassion and sympathy. I could go on.
We are clearly unique. One cannot remodel a shack, even the best shack in the world, into a skyscraper by trial and error. Design is essential.