Blog #13 Dr. Weston’s Philosophy of Life

In Lewis’ Out of A Silent Planet a certain physicist, Dr. Weston kidnaps Ransom and takes him aboard his spaceship headed towards Malacandra. Once Ransom awakes from his slumber and realizes that he is in a spaceship he begins to question the estranged physicist. With little resistance Weston begins to explain his philosophy of life. Ransom responded, “you hold all the cards, and I must make the best of it. I consider your philosophy of life to be raving lunacy. I suppose all that stuff about infinity and eternity means that you think you are justifiable in doing anything–absolutely anything–here and now, on the off chance that some creatures or other descended from man as we know him may crawl about a few centuries longer in some part of the universe.” Weston responded, “Yes–anything whatsoever”. Weston resembles one of the great evils of mankind. That being the telos of evolution or in other words survival of the fittest. That is the basic idea the it is a means to an end and not the other way around. From an evolutionary perspective this may sound plausible, but I seriously doubt many evolutionist truly believe this. If that were really true we should have no problem ridding ourselves of all elderly and disabled people in the world. They’re just using up our precious resources after all that could be better used on others who are physically more able.


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