I’m giving a talk on “The Theologian’s Nightmare” this week for the local Bertrand Russell Set.
Now, a few years back, in a current events discussion group, I was highly praised by the moderator (privately) for showing concern that everyone be given a chance to express dissenting views, including those that were very far from mainstream.
I enjoyed the praise so much that that I fully intend to live up to it.
And so I want to include something unusual as one of the hand-outs for folks to read afterward.
…
It seems that Clive Stapes Lewis, a convert to Christianity and author of popularizing essays wrote at least once in a rebuttal to the type of argument Russell uses. (But I don’t think he referenced Russell by name.)
I do recall that one point he made was that greater size does not necessarily entail greater importance. A man’s legs versus his head, for example.
Lewis was especially concerned with the doctrine of salvation through Incarnation, Crucifixion and Resurrection. He saw an apparent contradiction between the traditional assumption of uniqueness of these events, and the strong possibility of intelligent (and, likely, morally responsible) life elsewhere. But he didn’t think the problem suggested was beyond solution. He asserted that it wasn’t necessary for every sentient race to have “fallen” even assuming that such was an inherent possibility every time. (I’m sure that he once said that the vast interstellar distances perhaps existed to “quarantine” fallen races such as ours from non-fallen ones that might be influenced to fall. I recall that a very old issue of TIME quoted this particular bit of his.) He also brought up the possibility of alternate ways God could provide for particular needs for a route of salvation for other fallen species. This, he felt, could leave our own situation unique.
It’s possible that he also went into the idea of our scenario being repeated elsewhere, but I don’t recall that for sure.
Lewis also appeared rather annoyed at the assumption that the “Ancients” did not have any idea of the relative tininess of our planet. He once surprised a skeptic of religion by showing him a classic text that included a statement that the stars showed themselves to be so distant that they may as well be at infinite distance.
(That may sound unlikely to be a true excerpt, or at least something very strange for classical Natural Philosophers to say but here’s the idea. The moon and planets can have their distances measured, at least roughly, by parallax against the stars. But he stars themselves (which are unlikely to be all at the same distance from us) show absolutely no parallax relative to each other.
Of course, modern astronomers HAVE measured the parallax of relatively nearby stars, using telescopes and the whole of Earth’s orbit as the baseline.)
So, can anyone locate the particular essay or essays?
- Jack