Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Meaning of the Universe
Over the last year-and-a-half it has been very difficult for scientists, medics, historians, lawyers, and journalists to criticise lockdowns as a response to a supposedly new virus. We have seen previously well-respected members of those groups demonised, de-platformed, and discredited for attempting to contribute their point of view to the discussion.
Many more people who wanted to be critical of the approach, and the supposedly monolithic 'science' behind it, were frightened into silence. It is no accident that many of the people who have spoken out are older, either retired, or close to retirement, or have tenure. Younger people with a career ahead of them are prevented from speaking out, perhaps by NDAs and other aspects of their terms of employment, but also by their need to keep their jobs and their professional standing so they can continue to support their families and pay their mortgages.
Lockdowns and the coronavirus science has become a toxic subject. Many commentators have ignored it completely, and some, usually brave and direct writers, have approached it only obliquely. This is a shame because some of these writers, journalists, and historians have such fame, power, and credibility in the public square, that they might have been able to change the direction of debate, blow masks out of the water, make sure lockdown only lasted three weeks and the same lies and disinformation did not circulate again and again, gaining credibility as they went.
Those people with great influence for the most part did not speak out. It is perhaps understandable why, but as things have progressed it has become more and more upsetting and worrying that they did not. For now a vast array of authoritarian measures are in play and it is increasingly clear that the danger of the virus to our health is far outweighed by the danger of the increasingly authoritarian measures to democracy and individual freedom.
The world looks very different now from how it did eighteen months ago. Many might argue that is because a deadly new virus has ripped through it, tearing society apart in its wake, but that is not true. With all the obscurity and confusion over deaths 'with' or 'from' coronavirus, with various instructions to medical staff, funeral employees, coroners etc to mark medical notes and death certificates with Covid rather than any of the number of co-morbidities most people who died of coronavirus were suffering from, it is possible to be deceived into thinking that there have been huge numbers of deaths from the virus. In fact the CDC has settled on an infection fatality rate (IFR) for coronavirus of only 0.14. That means of 10,000 people who catch coronavirus only 14 will die.
Most of those deaths will be of the elderly with three or more co-morbidities of a serious nature such as cancer, diabetes, kidney failure. In reality many of these people only had weeks or months to live and if coronavirus had not killed them some other respiratory virus, or even infected paper cut, would have done so. This is not callous, this is the truth of life, and death. At a certain point a human body will begin to succumb to its own mortality. If you are very sick or very old, your immune system is reduced to almost nothing. It is possible to die from a respiratory infection that in somebody forty years younger causes a sniffle.
I am not going to list data to back up my argument. Many excellent scientists and statisticians, such as Ivor Cummins, Nick Hudson, and Carl Henegan have been providing the statistics and making the arguments for months. What I am most concerned with now is that during this time of supposed pandemic, governments and public health officials have condemned any challenge to their story that our entire way of life should change in order to 'fight' this virus. Social media outlets have taken to censoring well qualified individuals who do not agree with the 'narrative' and ordinary people who quote statistics, sometimes from government websites! Our rights and freedoms have been limited with the introduction of deeply invasive, totalitarian tracking and a vaccine passport system for access to many aspects of normal life and even medical care.
This totalitarian move has been sudden, swift, and explained by the cover story of 'fighting' Covid. I am now preoccupied with how we can call a halt to this frightening direction of travel. As part of this I am investigating what it is about western liberal society at this moment in time that has allowed this apparent overthrow of all our norms of freedoms and rights, with so little pushback or comment from ordinary people. Of course it is possible that there is nothing special about this time or form of society that has made us vulnerable to this assault on our freedoms. However I have wondered whether a lack of principles perhaps as the result of the increasing secularisation of society might go some way to explain it. So I have been looking at some Christian writings recommended by religious leaders who find themselves at this time also wondering why it has become so easy for a coercive, morally bankrupt approach to a relatively mild virus to gain such a strangle hold on supposedly freedom-loving societies...
Yesterday I began reading Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis, and quietly, and subtly, it blew my mind. I have read the Narnia books but that is all I knew of C. S. Lewis apart from the film of William Nicholson’s play Shadowlands. In that movie there are brief scenes of Lewis’ well-attended lectures on Christianity. He came to his religious belief after a period of atheism and his writings on Christianity were, and remain, important and powerful expressions and explanations of religious belief.
What astounded me about Mere Christianity is Lewis’ intellectual power when arguing for the logic of a belief in God. There is nothing wishy-washy or sentimental in his arguments. He proceeds in a rigorously logical way, and he is powerfully persuasive. He begins by positing the existence of a Natural Law, a natural sense of right and wrong, that is more than biological or evolutionary instinct, and above and beyond social convention. The existence of this law is the first clue that there is a God:
‘Isn’t what you call the moral law simply our herd instinct…?’ Now I do not deny that we may have a herd instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law…we sometimes do feel just that sort of desire to help another person…But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that you ought to help whether you want to or not. (MC p.9)
Lewis also argues that this Natural Law is not a matter of convention:
‘Isn’t what you call the Moral Law just a social convention…?’ I think there is a misunderstanding here…The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better than another, you are…measuring them both by a standard…some Real Morality,… (MC pp.12-13)
Further, scientific laws are not laws regarding what objects should do, but what they actually do. Gravity is a law that derives from what actually happens. Moral Law, as a kind of perfectly moral behaviour, exists even though observably much of the time it does not happen in reality. It is this, Lewis says, that makes Moral Law something different, special, and worthy of consideration.
It might at this point be possible to argue that an individual knows that living in a society where everybody lies, cheats, and steals would not be pleasant. That to behave morally is selfishness, in that it is intended to encourage others to behave morally, and contribute to the level of decency in society in general. However Lewis addresses this argument by pointing out that often when others behave decently it is inconvenient to us. He does not give a specific example of this but I thought of one. Imagine if your partner walks out on their job because they find out their employer is behaving immorally and they do not want to be a part of it. Your partner has behaved in a moral fashion, but now your family is surviving on one income until your partner finds another job.
Men ought to be unselfish…Not that men are unselfish, but that they ought to be…Consequently, this Rule of Right and Wrong…must somehow or other be a real thing…yet it is not a fact in the ordinary sense…It begins to look as if we will have to admit there is more than one kind of reality…something above and beyond the ordinary facts of men’s behaviour…a real law, which none of us made, but which we find pressing on us.(MC p. 20)
This observation is simultaneously astounding and also so commonsensical as to be almost banal. Many of us, most of us, have this sense that there is a standard beyond ordinary human behaviour against which we measure ourselves and towards which we aspire, but we rarely examine this feeling. However, we begin to move towards a sense that being human, and having a sense of right and wrong, is not something that will be explained by a purely rational and scientific approach to human existence.
There are two conflicting views of the world: the materialist view in which the universe is just matter which has always existed and has come to be organised in a certain way, and gave rise to life by some accident of energy and chemicals. Then there is the religious view, which believes there is some intelligence behind the creation of the universe and that it created it for reasons we do not know, and in part to make creatures, humans, like itself: intelligent.
Lewis argues both points of view have existed at the same time throughout history. The materialist explanation is not the more modern or progressive. Science, it has to be admitted, can never answer the ‘why’ of anything. It can answer the ‘what’ and to some extent the ‘how’, but it has not, and probably never will, explain why the Big Bang happened, or why life came into being.
As people, humans, we know that we are subject to a moral law, which although we find it impossible to follow perfectly, we nevertheless feel we should try to follow. If there was an intelligence outside the universe that may to a greater or lesser extent be involved in its creation we would not expect to see it as an element within the universe itself “no more than the architect of a house could be a wall…in that house.” This sense of a Moral Law against which humans measure themselves is a sign that there is a power, “a Something which is directing the universe”. That Something is not necessarily benign. It is the architect of the Moral Law, and the Moral Law is “as hard as nails”. We are upon the wrong road if we are looking for comfort. Humanity is on the wrong road altogether, and the way to progress is not to carry on in the same wrong-headed direction but to go back and take a different and better path. That is progress.
In the light of events over recent months we might agree that the idea of ‘progress’ that we have now, moving forever forward in the direction we have set ourselves, of increasing technology, connectedness, surveillance of everyday life, and acceptance of ourselves as just an element in the collective, could quite easily be the wrong progress in the wrong direction. If so it would benefit humanity and paradoxically lead to greater, and faster, progress, if we were to do something that might appear to be going backwards or forsaking progress, in order to get back on the right path. This is the thought that was beginning to form as I read on.
The Rival Conceptions of God
Lewis makes the point that to be Christian does not mean a condemnation or repudiation of all other religions, as, strictly speaking, it does if you are an atheist. An atheist must reject all religions and conceptions of God, not just one. A Christian may accept that there are elements of truth in all religions. After all throughout history the majority of human beings have believed in a god or gods and so it is not so outrageous or beyond the pale to believe in the Christian God.
People who do believe in God fall into two broad camps. Those who believe God is beyond good and evil, that if you become wise enough you will see that everything is good or evil depending on your perspective, the Pantheists. Others such as Jews, Muslims, and Christians believe that God is on the side of good and wants what is righteous.
Pantheists also believe God is the universe, while those who believe that God is good can not see God in evil deeds, cruelty, and suffering. Christians are still left with the problem of an unkind and unjust world.
Some will approach this by ignoring the evil and complications of the world. This is a childish approach to the problem, Lewis asserts. Two more plausible answers are that “this is a good world that has gone wrong” or Dualism that “there are two equal and independent powers at the back of everything, one of them good and the other bad”. Lewis considers “next to Christianity Dualism is the manliest and most sensible creed on the market. But it has a catch in it”.
Lewis goes on to explain that Dualism presupposes that there are two independent powers existing in the universe at the same time, one good, one bad. However to judge which is good or bad brings into existence “a third thing in addition to the two Powers: some law or standard or rule of good which one of the powers conforms to and the other fails to conform to.” But then where did this standard come from. “In fact, what we meant by calling them good and bad turns out to be that one of them is in a right relation to the real ultimate God and the other in a wrong relation to Him.”
In addition the being that is evil must like evil for its own sake and nobody does that. People are evil in pursuit of other things: money, power, happiness. Those things are not in themselves bad but they can be gained through bad behaviour. The evil entity will not be completely evil as it will commit bad acts in the pursuit of things that can be good. There is no pure evil but there can be pure good.
This argument strikes me as quite a surprising one, given that this was written in the aftermath of the Second World War. Lewis concludes that the bad is subordinate to the good in the universe, so it can not be its equal and exact opposite. There is no evil entity to rival the good entity, God: “evil is a parasite, not an original thing.”
However Christianity does draw close to dualism. There is much talk of evil in the New Testament but the difference from dualism is that this evil is considered to have been created by God and to have originally been good: Lucifer, the fallen angel.
Evil is a rebellion. The universe is engaged in civil war and we live in “[e]nemy occupied territory…Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say landed in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”
This heroic, martial language may have been particularly powerful just after World War Two. It is certainly powerful in the age we are living in now, in which at times it seems that all that is considered good, children playing, human contact, smiling faces, have in some diabolical inversion, all been designated as bad. Lewis, at least, believes the devil does exist in the world. With all I have seen recently I agree with him, perhaps two years ago I might not have done.
The Shocking Alternative
Christians, then, believe that an evil power has made himself for the present the Prince of this World. And, of course, that raises problems. Is this state of affairs in accordance with God’s will, or not? If it is, He is a strange God, you will say: and if it is not, how can anything happen contrary to the will of a being with absolute power? (MC p. 47)
This is an eternal puzzle. In a universe in which God is all powerful why is there evil? Why does He let bad things happen? It is an irritating, and almost childish, question, yet it is irritating because it is so difficult to answer. Lewis deals with the contradiction calmly by pointing out how a mother might want a child to do a particular thing, but leaves it up to them to do it voluntarily, and then it does not get done. She gave the child free will. In the same way God gives us free will. It is not possible, Lewis argues for a creature to be free and yet not be left with the opportunity to go wrong.
Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata – of creatures that worked like machines – would hardly be worth creating. (MC p. 48)
This is worth pondering. In the atmosphere in which we live at this moment in time, in which people are constantly being demanded to give up their personal freedoms, every tiny liberty, so small that perhaps we did not even realise it was a liberty until it was taken away, such as wandering around a shop and browsing in as haphazard a manner as we would like. In this world in which many of our freedoms have been taken away and this has been justified as being for the greater ‘good’, for the collective, for society as a whole, it is well worth considering how everybody’s good, how the good of society benefits in fact not from individuals being forced to conform to a government's idea of 'good' but from them being able to fulfil their own unique and personal self-realisation.
Contrary to the implication of those wanting to control every jot and tittle of our lives for the past eighteen-months, left to our own devices humans will not behave in a selfish manner. We have for our whole lives and through thousands of years of human existence previously, made decisions based on morality, weighing up what is morally good and morally wrong.
I would argue at this point in time the populations of many countries of the world are in a far worse psychological, physical, economic, and educational situation than they were eighteen months ago. This is not due to the pandemic, not due to the virus itself, which kills predominantly the very elderly and those with numerous serious health conditions, and not even a great proportion of those. No, these harms are due to the policies chosen by public health committees and politicians, and followed dutifully, or mindlessly, by the populations of those countries.
It is to some controversial to argue this, although to me it seems self-evident, that although for example refusing to wear a mask has been dubbed ‘selfish’ by the media, politicians, and public health scientists, it would, in fact, have been an act of selflessness to brace against the disapproving looks and confrontations, and refuse to wear it. If a majority of people had refused to wear masks, then it would have been harder for politicians and the media to instil unreasonable fear in the population, thereby getting the strangle-hold they now have on civil liberties and our rights as free, human beings in the image of God.
To commit an apparently selfish act would have been supremely unselfish, as it could well have nipped-in-the-bud the illiberal, authoritarian horrors of the last year. This would have saved nations from political oppression and economic disaster, and hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of people around the world from poverty, starvation, worsening health conditions, and debilitating mental-health problems.
In making such complex and important decisions human beings deepen their understanding, of the universe, of themselves, of the people around them, and of what it is to be human. They strengthen their ability to make good decisions, thereby strengthening society by populating it with increasing numbers of increasingly capable, moral human beings. Removing free will and demanding that people only do what they are told by some authority can result, as we have seen again and again in history, in horror.
The fall of the Dark Power, as Lewis calls it, is attributed to his desire to be like God. Satan set himself up, in his selfishness, in opposition to God, and on being cast out decided to spread amongst people “the idea that they could ‘be like gods’– could set up on their own as if they had created themselves – be their own masters – invent some sort of happiness for themselves outside God, apart from God. And out of that hopeless attempt has come nearly all that we call human history – money, poverty, ambition, war, prostitution, classes, empires, slavery”. This interpretation seems particularly apposite in the current era in which politicians, scientists, and the wider population, think through their own actions they can control the infinite variety and complexity of this planet, in the form of a microscopic pathogen, and instead have wrought nothing but chaos, disaster, and misery, and failed to control that pathogen entirely.
Lewis suggests that we are made to ‘run’ on God, as a car runs on petrol. “He himself is the fuel our spirits were designed to burn”, not dreams of transhumanism, not the spreadsheets and bean-counting of technocracy, not pursuit of money, or power, sex, or ambition. God, our Christianity is what keeps us going and helps us fly right. Without God “[s]ome fatal flaw always brings the selfish and cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin.”
God provided us with a conscience and with Jesus. Jesus, Lewis states, is the perfect penitent. He can repent totally, perfectly, because he is perfectly good. He can repent on our behalf for this reason. We must also repent. The road back to God is through repentance. It is not a matter of God not ‘letting us off’ repenting, it is the fact that without repentance you can not get on the road to God, and so you will never get there. We need to suffer, to repent, and God can not do that because he is God, and therefore has no sin to repent, but his human son can repent on our behalf and do it perfectly because He is also God.
“People often ask when the next step in evolution – the step to something beyond man – will happen. But on the Christian view, it has happened already. In Christ a new kind of man appeared: and the new kind of life which began in Him is to be put into us.” (MC p. 60)
In the light of current events this question "when the next step in evolution...will happen" is quite chilling. Even back in the forties people were speculating on what human beings could evolve to next. Although in a way it is not so very surprising as eugenics was a thriving body of thought, hideously epitomised and yet strangely not entirely discredited by the Nazis. Many of us will have come across the idea that the technocrats, the Tech billionaires, and the WEF enthusiasts are aiming for transhumanism, when people will achieve a higher existence through being melded with technology. Apart from the fact that a moment’s consideration of the vagaries and glitches of even the most expensive technology, should make any sane person think very hard about having that technology implanted in any part of their body, least of all their brain, this kind of ‘progress’ for mankind is the destination at the end of the wrong path.
This technocratic, transhumanist, view of human progress seems to me to be a denial of humanity. Firstly it is a denial and an avoidance of death itself. This terror of death has come about because of the disappearance of any religious belief from the lives and hearts of most human beings in western liberal democracies. Without eternal life all that is left is to try to live forever. This is almost a satanic inversion. The purpose of life should be to follow as closely to God’s teachings as possible, to improve as a loving Christian, and to look forward to eternal life in the paradise God has promised to those who genuinely try to lead a good, Christian life.
Transhumanism to me seems like nothing more than an eternity in some appalling Borg-like existence. It will only be the elite who will be allowed to preserve a semblance of individual humanity, the ‘proles’ will be reduced to living the lives of automatons performing the menial work required to keep society functioning and keep the elites supplied with lithium for all their technologies, and the chips in their heads. This is not the progress deserved by beings that are made in the image of God and loved by Him.
Progress both of the individual, and human society, can be achieved through Christianity, attempting to live according to Jesus’ teachings, by being baptised, and taking Holy Communion. This is a deep and strong way to progress. In the same way leafing through a magazine does not hold your attention, but reading a complex, well-written novel absorbs you entirely, so it is with the different aspirations of life. The desire to be slimmer, or fitter, or richer, even the desire to live forever, are not deep and absorbing, they are unsatisfying, mere distractions. The attempt to live in the way Jesus taught us, the striving to understand what Christianity and the life of a Christian demands of us, that is ever richer, deeper, and more and more fascinating and enriching, with the final reward, if we are lucky, of a deep, trusting belief in eternal life and no fear of death. In that way through Christian love we have found life eternal, in a way the transhumanists never will, and in the process we have enriched society and the lives of those around us through Christian practise.
…when Christians…speak of being ‘in Christ’ or of Christ being ‘in them’, this is not simply a way of saying that they are thinking about Christ or copying Him. They mean that Christ is actually operating through them; that the whole mass of Christians are the physical organism through which Christ acts…It is not merely the spreading of an idea; it is more like evolution – a biological or superbiological fact. (MC p. 64)
This is again a striking way of putting things. Almost as if Lewis knew that an appalling idea like transhumanism lay in the future, just as Nazism lay in the past.
In this civil war against evil in human society, God waits for us to do our very best, He is giving us an opportunity to fight on His side, and what a great victory it would be if we were able to overturn evil without His help. Perhaps that was achieved in the Second World War, or when Stalin fell. Or perhaps those were imperfect victories, merely battles in the war, and the true fight is yet to come.
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