An interesting and well put together article. I wanted to ask a couple of things of you. Firstly your comment that C S Lewis "as an Ulsterman, instinctively associated the Church with evils too ancient, and too deeply rooted in their collective past, to ever allow them to look at it without a subtle, underlying disgust". I'd be interested in knowing where you encounter this "subtle underlying disgust" in Lewis' writings. Some of his writings contain ideas which point towards a Catholic theology, but in the Anglican Church he was returning to the church of his youth, the Church of Ireland having the same mixture of high and low church as its english sister church.
To be fair to you I should say that I am 'an ulsterman' from the presbyterian community (lapsed) rather than the more rarefied and (in the past) politically privileged anglican population. I also live within a mile of Lewis's birthplace and often visit the place he said he imagined when he pictured Narnia, the Craigantlet hills, just a mile away. I think your view of 'ulstermen' in this statement is an over-simplification and from everything I have read by and of Lewis may be especially misplaced in his case.
I would also be interested in your definition of Darwinism. How do you define the term? In this article it sounds like a political philosophy rather than a scientific theory. Eugenics seems as far away from the idea of 'natural selection' as it is possible to get. Indeed it owes much more to the selective breeding of plants and farm animals which had been going on for many centuries before Darwin was born.
In fact I would be very interested in seeing how all the parties to this discussion define their terms. What does left-wing mean? What does right-wing mean? Fascist? Communist? Do we all mean the same things when we use those terms.
no subject
To be fair to you I should say that I am 'an ulsterman' from the presbyterian community (lapsed) rather than the more rarefied and (in the past) politically privileged anglican population. I also live within a mile of Lewis's birthplace and often visit the place he said he imagined when he pictured Narnia, the Craigantlet hills, just a mile away. I think your view of 'ulstermen' in this statement is an over-simplification and from everything I have read by and of Lewis may be especially misplaced in his case.
I would also be interested in your definition of Darwinism. How do you define the term? In this article it sounds like a political philosophy rather than a scientific theory. Eugenics seems as far away from the idea of 'natural selection' as it is possible to get. Indeed it owes much more to the selective breeding of plants and farm animals which had been going on for many centuries before Darwin was born.
In fact I would be very interested in seeing how all the parties to this discussion define their terms. What does left-wing mean? What does right-wing mean? Fascist? Communist? Do we all mean the same things when we use those terms.