Uncommon Descent Serving The Intelligent Design Community

C.S. Lewis said it better about the supposed evolution of morality and free will

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Following up on an earlier post today, “Brain-based findings don’t determine irresistible criminality” about a psychiatrist who wants to have both free will and “evolution” of morality (akin to squaring the circle), C.S. Lewis explained best what the problem is, many decades ago:

At the moment, then, of Man’s victory over Nature, we find the whole human race subjected to some individual men, and those individuals subjected to that in themselves which is purely `natural’—to their irrational impulses. Nature, untrammelled by values, rules the Conditioners and, through them, all humanity. Man’s conquest of Nature turns out, in the moment of its consummation, to be Nature’s conquest of Man. Every victory we seemed to win has led us, step by step, to this conclusion. All Nature’s apparent reverses have been but tactical withdrawals. We thought we were beating her back when she was luring us on. What looked to us like hands held up in surrender was really the opening of arms to enfold us for ever. If the fully planned and conditioned world (with its Tao a mere product of the planning) comes into existence, Nature will be troubled no more by the restive species that rose in revolt against her so many millions of years ago, will be vexed no longer by its chatter of truth and mercy and beauty and happiness. Ferum victorem cepit: and if the eugenics are efficient enough there will be no second revolt, but all snug beneath the Conditioners, and the Conditioners beneath her, till the moon falls or the sun grows cold.

We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may `conquer’ them. We are always conquering Nature, because `Nature’ is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature. Every conquest over Nature increases her domain. The stars do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure them: the soul does not become Nature till we can psychoanalyse her. The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature. As long as this process stops short of the final stage we may well hold that the gain outweighs the loss. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same.

It is the magician’s bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up, the power thus conferred will not belong to us. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It is in Man’s power to treat himself as a mere `natural object’ and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will. The objection to his doing so does not lie in the fact that this point of view (like one’s first day in a dissecting room) is painful and shocking till we grow used to it. The pain and the shock are at most a warning and a symptom. The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature, in the person of his de-humanized Conditioners.

We have been trying, like Lear, to have it both ways: to lay down our human prerogative and yet at the same time to retain it. It is impossible. Either we are rational spirit obliged for ever to obey the absolute values of the Tao, or else we are mere nature to be kneaded and cut into new shapes for the pleasures of masters who must, by hypothesis, have no motive but their own `natural’ impulses. Only the Tao provides a common human law of action which can over-arch rulers and ruled alike. A dogmatic belief in objective value is necessary to the very idea of a rule which is not tyranny or an obedience which is not slavery.

From C. S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man, pp. 27-28

Comments
OT: In the following video, from the 22:27 to the 29:50 minute mark, is a pretty neat little presentation of the Shrodinger Equation in answer to the question, 'Why does mathematics describe the universe?' The Professors: An after-hours conversation on Georgia Tech's hardest questions - veritas video http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=vBQ9uFOFLWM&t=1349bornagain77
August 12, 2013
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“The only adequate structure for morality is that based upon the ultimate meaning of life.” That is the claim made by a prominent psychiatrist, Rollo May. He raises the question of where this structure and ultimate meaning of life can be found, and answers: “The ultimate structure is the nature of God. The principles of God are the principles which underlie life from the beginning of creation to the end.” “Man has a relationship to God,” May continues. “This is so fundamental in man that it is attributed to his creation, where he was ‘made in the image of God.’” He also observed that man’s ego and self-will cause him to stray from the godly image, and this causes inner conflicts and tensions and guilt feelings.Barb
August 10, 2013
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