An influential myth foisted on the public by evolutionists is that only religious believers doubt Darwin. If this were true, it would cast suspicion on the skeptics who, so goes this line of insinuation, are motivated and led astray by their passion to believe in their religion. I addressed this fallacy the other day in noting the Darwin doubts of Scott Adams, who joins other non-believers in his skepticism about evolution. Here’s another example: C.S. Lewis.
But Lewis is best known as a proponent of Christianity! Obviously, yes, but in a very helpful ID the Future podcast, John West talks about Lewis’s period as an atheist, prior to his spiritual turn. It was at this time, not as a religious believer, that he read French Nobel laureate Henri Bergson’s book Creative Evolution. Bergson accepted evolution in the sense of shared ancestry across life, but critiqued it in the more important sense of asserting the creativity of a blind, purposefulness process, natural selection.
Lewis was persuaded by Bergson’s criticism, as he wrote to his father: Darwinism was a structure built “on sand.” And this was before he became a Christian. Excellent point by Dr. West, who is the editor of The Magician’s Twin: C. S. Lewis on Science, Scientism, and Society. Download the podcast or listen to it here. For more, see the brief documentary video C.S. Lewis and Evolution below.