What would he say about todays biomedical research using human embryonic stem cells?
Lewis was a critic of oppression. In his dystopian novel “That Hideous Strength” (published in 1943, the same year as his book on natural law, “The Abolition of Man”), Lewis describes a totalitarian world in which a group of scientists tries to perfect mankind through bioengineering. If one accepts the materialist/atheist worldview, the Gulag, concentration camp and bombing of cities can all be rationalized. Individuals don’t have souls, free will, or rights; they’re just robots determined by the laws of physics, expendable because “the end justifies the means” – the opposite of Christian teachings. Bioethics was a big issue for Lewis, and his books warn of the consequences of denying God and accepting materialism. Lewis wrote vividly about heaven and hell. What, for Lewis, did hell look like? Lewis’s novel “The Great Divorce” is about a man who wakes up in a town which we learn is hell – a world of self-imposed separation from God that produces infinite coldness and isolation. In this
