Darwinism and popular culture: The devil gets his shovel in

In the Swillpit Chronicles, friend Regis Nicoll (On Science and Origins, August 28, 2009) takes a leaf from C. S. Lewis's Screwtape Letters, in which a senior devil advises a junior (heads, he gets souls for lunch and tails the junior devil).

You see, there is ecology even in Hell!

... as old Glutbore schooled you back in the novitiate, that began to change 150 years ago with the publication of that sublime text, On the Origin of Species. From then on, there was a thoroughgoing naturalistic theory for the diversification and complexification of life—a theory that had the explanatory heft to spark confidence in full-blown naturalism. No other single device of Hell has been as effective in dislodging the Creator from his creation, and demoting him from God to god in the minds of His, now our, creatures. Modification through natural selection from common descent - EVOLUTION, our “bulwark never failing”!

Glutbore was also fond point out that in all our devilish schemes, "science is not on our side." I, myself, have reminded you of that more than once in your present field assignment. But, as with all dictums, there are exceptions; and this is one.

Science, not real science, mind you, which endeavors to discover the true nature of things, following the evidence wherever it leads without metaphysical or ideological blinders; but science, as it has been narrowed and limited to physical, unintelligent processes, is very much on our side.

Methodological naturalism, or “scientism,” as it is pejoratively referred to by execrable “God” believers—admitting, as it does, only natural causes and explanations has won us countless souls.

Go here for the rest.

Regis should write more of these.