What are some things former atheist C S Lewis had to say about evolution?

Answer 1

Christian author C S Lewis was before his conversion was as radically anti-Christian in the sense that he has been likened to Richard Dawkins in this period of Lewis' life.

After his conversion he was not immediately opposed to evolution but gradually came to reject it for a number of reasons. Below are a number of the things he said:

Lewis wrote in 1951 to Captain Acworth: 'What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding [evolution] as thecentral and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.'

C.S. Lewis on Creation and Evolution: The Acworth Letters, 1944-1960', www.asa3.org/aSA/PSCF/1996/PSCF3-96Ferngren.HTML

In a letter to Dorothy Sayers on 4 March 1954 Lewis penned a satirical poem entitled Evolutionary Hymn. . Its opening stanza is:

Lead us, Evolution, lead us

Up the future's endless stair:

Chop us, change us, prod us, weed us

For stagnation is despair:

Groping, guessing, yet progressing,

Lead us nobody knows where.

'If the solar system was brought about by an accidental collision, then the appearance of organic life on this planet was also an accident, and the whole evolution of Man was an accident too. If so, then all our present thoughts are mere accidents-the accidental by-product of the movement of atoms. And this holds for the thoughts of the materialists and astronomers as well as for anyone else's. But if their thoughts-i.e. of materialism and astronomy-are merely accidental by-products, why should we believe them to be true? I see no reason for believing that one accident should be able to give me a correct account of all the other accidents. It's like expecting that the accidental shape taken by the splash when you upset a milkjug should give you a correct account of how the jug was made and why it was upset.'

C.S. Lewis (1898-1963), The Business of Heaven, Fount Paperbacks, U.K., p. 97, 1984.

C. S. Lweis's view of theistic evolution as given in "In the Problem of Pain."

"For long centuries God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of Himself. He gave it hands whose thumb could be applied to each of the fingers, and jaws and teeth and throat capable of articulation, and a brain sufficiently complex to execute all the material motions whereby rational thought is incarnated. The creature may have existed for ages in this state before it became man: it may even have been clever enough to make things which a modern archaeologist would accept as proof of its humanity. But it was only an animal because all physical and psychical processes were directed to purely material and natural ends. Then, in the fullness of time, God caused to descend upon this organism, both on its psychology and physiology, a new kind of consciousness which could say 'I' and 'me,' which could look upon itself as an object, which knew God, which could make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and which was so far above time that it could perceive time flowing past. This new consciousness ruled and illuminated the whole organism, flooding every part of it with light, and was not, like ours, limited to a selection of the movements going on in one part of the organism, namely the brain. Man was then all consciousness."

C. S. Lweis in a letter to Bernard Acworth To Bernard Acworth, December 9, 1944:

I am not either attacking or defending Evolution. I believe that Christianity can still be believed, even if Evolution is true. This is where you and I differ. Thinking as I do, I can't help regarding your advice (that I henceforth include arguments against Evolution in all my Christian apologetics) as a temptation to fight the battle on what is really a false issue: and also on terrain very unsuitable for the only weapon I have.