Technology Without Ethics »

I agree Technology is per se neutral: but a race devoted to the increase of its own power by technology with complete indifference to ethics does seem to me a cancer in the universe. Certainly if he goes on his present course much further man can not be trusted with knowledge.

“Letter to Arthur C. Clarke, [...]

Simple Evil and Complex Good »

A cruel man oppresses his neighbour, and so does simple evil. But in doing such evil, he is used by God, without his own knowledge or consent, to produce the complex good–so that the first man serves God as a son, and the second as a tool. For you will certainly carry out God’s purpose, [...]

On Knowing God’s Goodness »

Any consideration of the goodness of God at once threatens us with the following dilemma.
On the one hand, if God is wiser than we His judgement must differ from ours on many things, and not least on good and evil. What seems to us good may therefore not be good in His eyes, and what [...]

“The higher, the more in danger…” »

For the Supernatural, entering a human soul, opens to it new possibilities both of good and evil. From that point the road branches: one way to sanctity, love, humility, the other to spiritual pride, self-righteousness, persecuting zeal. And no way back to the mere humdrum virtues and vices of the unawakened soul. If the Divine [...]

Righteous Defiance / Heroic Pessimism »

The defiance of the good atheist hurled at an apparently ruthless and idiotic cosmos is really an unconscious homage to something in or behind that cosmos which he recognizes as infinitely valuable and authoritative: for if mercy and justice were really only private whims of his own with no objective and impersonal roots, and if [...]

The Universality of Morality »

Indeed to say that a mind has a sense of values totally different from the only values we can conceive is to say that that mind has we know not what: which is precious near saying nothing particular about it.

C. S. Lewis, β€œDe Futilitate,” in Christian Reflections (Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1995), [...]