Christian Holmes- Outside Reading 5

            In chapter 15 of “The Screwtape Letters” Screwtape discusses a methodology of preoccupying the main character with the future. He claims that the future is the most unknowable and most abstract period of time. In fact, he goes as far as to say that scientific perspectives such as secular humanism have been developed by the devil to fixate man on the future, the realm of the unknown. These ideas struck me as similar to those of G.K. Chesterton, who claimed that the scientific method was based on a fundamental logical fallacy. That fallacy is that the scientific method assumes that what will happen in the future is necessarily linked to what has happened in the past. For example, the scientific system of evaluating cause and effect would say that when you let go of the apple, it will fall because (based on the theory) we have observed apples falling in all other times prior. However, what element of prior events necessitates those actions occurring in the future? In other words, just because something has happened a million times before, does not force or guarantee those things happening in the future. With this in mind, Lewis’ take on the future can be seen as that which is founded on a logical fallacy.