I am killing two birds with one stone here. By listing my disagreements with CS Lewis (see also here), I will outline a secularist world view that is more common in sf, including Poul Anderson's works, to which we will return.
I think that:
human reason resulted from natural selection and proto-human activity;
the very first human beings cannot have been monotheists;
monotheism arose as a refinement of earlier beliefs (one personal cause, not many), not as a kind of knowledge;
also, the very first human beings would have made practical decisions about how to cooperate in order to survive but not moral decisions about obedience or disobedience to a divine command - an idea that surely originated later;
impeccability would not have entailed immortality;
any extraterrestrial races will not be physically perfect and immortal like Lewis' Venerians.
Poul Anderson presents scenarios consistent with this perspective. Extraterrestrial intelligences, if encountered, are usually morally imperfect and always physically mortal. In the Technic History, Axor, a Christian, acknowledges that:
"'...every oxygen-breathing species ever encountered is in no state of grace, but prone to sin, error, and death.'"
-Poul Anderson, Flandry's Legacy (New York, 2012), p. 209.
But this would be a problem for CS Lewis who inferred that the Fall occurred once on Earth but not necessarily elsewhere so how would he respond to Axor's known space full of nothing but Fallen races? Has every first generation capable of making moral choices made the wrong choice? Every single one? Or is the "Fall," the universality of greed, hate and delusion, not after all the result of a choice made by the first parents of each rational species? Is it instead part of the natural development of psychophysical organisms in every world, as taught by Buddhism?
10 comments:
Hi, Paul!
I'm not sure you can say ABSOLUTELY that Poul Anderson ENTIRELY agreed with the "secularist world view" you outlined here. The mere fact that he treated orthodox Christian beliefs about the Fall of mankind with respect seems to indicate he was open to alternate views other than the secularist. To say nothing of how I'm note wholly convinced PA was completely an agnostic in his beliefs. The impression I get from his later books is that he might have WISHED he believed in God.
And I have to agree with the logic of what Fx. Axor said. That is, every known oxygen/and many non oxygen breathing races did face a choice at some point in their origins of obeying or disobeying God, and, alas, Fell. But, considering how HUGE the cosmos is, with millions and billions of galaxies, I don't think Fr. Axor would say they have ALL Fallen.
Sean
Sean,
Fair points but it still seems odd that ALL races have fallen in Technic History known space, when there are so many of them.
I would not want to be certain or absolute about what PA believed but his works do assume that organisms become intelligent by interacting with their environments, not by any sort of divine intervention which is what Lewis argued in MIRACLES and fictionalized in PERELANDRA. It is clear that Darwinian natural selection does not occur on Perelandra.
Paul.
Hi, Paul!
It might seem odd, what you said about all the races known in the space covered by the Technic History being Fallen, but nonetheless, that is the date we are given. As a result, I have to accept that.
And I agree with you, about how living organisms became intelligent by interacting with their environments. And how this slow change and adaptation was preserved and transmitted genetically. I see nothing contrary to faith in God in that. It's atheistic forms of evolutionary theory or thought, deliberately worded or worked out like that, which Christians have to reject.
I think you should keep in mind that it's mostly PROTESTANTS, among Christians, who tend to object to evolution. Catholics have had far less difficulty and far fewer objections to evolution, per se. One reason being how Catholics a different Biblical hermeneutics than that used by the more "fundamentalist" Protestants. That is, the Catholic Church says the Bible is legitimately interpreted by other than the literalist (which itself remains legitimate, when properly used): such as the allegorical.
Sean
Some protestants object to evolution more than catholics do.
The christians that accept geologic time & physical evolution seem to disbelieve in evolution from the neck up. ;^)
Ie: they have some sort of notion of god implanting souls at some point.
Kaor, Jim! Because it is the Catholic belief that all human souls were created at the moment of conception by God. Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Then it is believed that intelligence did not evolve?
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
The Church, as per Pius XII and (more explicitly) John Paul II, has accepted evolution. And that means accepting intelligent life evolved.
As far as we know, modern humans: H. sapiens, H. neanderthalensis, H. erectus, even Australopithecus, were all intelligent.
Anderson seems to have thought ancient hominins/early humans were intelligent, if we can by his story "The Little Monster."
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
But the point is:
if the soul is necessary for intelligence (intellect and will), then intelligence did not evolve;
if intelligence did evolve in organisms with central nervous systems, then what is the role of the soul?
Paul.
"human souls were created at the moment of conception"
I have seen claims that to the extent that the Bible says anything about it, the soul enters the baby either at first breath, ie: birth, or at 'quickening'.
Kaor, Paul and Jim!
Paul: In Anthony Boucher's "Balaam," the author quoted what I consider a very good, and brief Catholic response to that question. Boucher quoted: "Man...is a creature composed of body and soul, and made in the image and likeness of God." Again: "...but none of these creatures [plants and animals] is made in the image and likeness of God. Plants and animals do not have a rational soul, such as man has, by which they might know and love God." Again: "How is the soul like God? ...The soul is like God because it is a spirit having understanding and free will and is destined..."
Exactly how God acted thru evolution to infuse/create a rational soul for humans I do not claim to know.
Jim: No, that "quickening" bit was more a legal response to question of how, from a practical pov, in past times, how to estimate when life began. It basically means when the mother was first aware of being pregnant, becoming aware of the physical movements of the baby. IMPROVED knowledge to defining life as beginning at conception.
Ad astra! Sean
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