C. S. Lewis Quotes
What would really satisfy us would be a God who said of anything we happened to like doing, ‘What does it matter so long as they are contented?’ We want, in fact, not so much a Father in Heaven as a grandfather in heaven — a senile benevolence who, as they say, ‘liked to see young people enjoying themselves,’ and whose plan for the universe was simply that it might be truly said at the end of each day, ‘a good time was had by all.’
C. S. Lewis, “The Problem of Pain”
The American space program developed an intellectual schism between those who favored less emphasis on manned space flight and more on automated and robotic probes and those like Franz who thought there should be more manned missions. The manned missions generated the most excitement from the public and tended to get the most public support. The unmanned missions were far less expensive as the multiple layers of safety was not needed to protect lives, they could go one for many years, and they provided much more scientific information. Kranz and many others thought that the movement towards unmanned missions reflected a lack of leadership. Opponents felt that what Kranz wanted was leadership style that did not take sufficient account to the likely scientific contribution for the money spent and placed more value on drama and adventure.
Abu Nuas was not only gay but wrote much poetry about the beauty and love of homosexuality. He was a tutor to Caliph Muhammad al-Amin when the Caliph was a boy. The Caliph also had affairs with boys one of which was openly public. This Caliphate was a period of great scientific and cultural development in the Islamic world and at that time the Islamic world was the scientific and cultural leader of the world—far in advance of Christian Europe—still in the Dark Ages. Today, in most Islamic countries, and particularly Iran, homosexuals or those who write about it, if they get caught, are usually jailed or even executed—for the very activity that Abu Nuwas, a great Persian Poet and Abu Nuwas, the highest religious and civil authority in Islam openly engaged in. After about 1100. Islamic fundamentalists got control of the religion, closed the society to open inquiry and tolerance of ideas, and Islam has gone from the most advanced cultural and scientific culture in the world to one of the worst cultures in terms of modernism. Those Islamic fundamentalists who yearn for a return to the Caliphate know little about the history of that period or they would condemn it heartily. The situation is not dissimilar as for devout Roman Catholics who discovered that some Popes who were Saints were also libertines, married, had mistresses and children. In one case the son of the Pope himself became Pope. At first the reaction is to deny the happenings and ascribe to them falsehoods spread by enemies of the faith.
Spinoza’s ideas were considered so radical and dangerous that he was the only man in history who was excommunicated by the Catholics, the Jews and the Muslims.
Clive Staples Lewis was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University (Magdalen College, 1925–1954) and Cambridge University (Magdalene College, 1954–1963). He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.
