A quick response before I go to bed, to just this one point: I also don't understand how this idea reconciles with your disgust over the loss of the Talking Animals' 'souls' in TLB, since you do not seem to believe in a spiritual world from which a soul comes. Or perhaps, you have a different definition of soul?
I accept the existence of immortal souls within Lewis's fictional world, and am therefore outraged because of the ethical implications of the removal of such souls. I am also outraged because even without speculating about souls, changing Talking Beasts into dumb animals removes their minds and memories and thus their selves, whether such a self is embodied in a soul or simply encoded in electrochemical potentials and neural links in a brain. And if that isn't murder, it's awfully close.
I define a soul as 1) an eternal, nonmaterial essence that is a person's true and best self, which is a generic religious concept that I do not believe has any objective validity; 2) a useful metaphor for describing a person's core traits and memories, the things that make her herself rather than any of the other billions of people who ever have lived or ever will live; 3) a somewhat less useful metaphor for an ethical or aesthetic sense; or 4) a generic fantasy concept based on the religious concept I don't believe in, but which I will accept as part of the other objectively unreal (i.e., magical) elements of a story, within the context of that story and for the duration of my bringing that story to life in my mind.
Re: on theology, ethics, and authorial intent, part 5
I accept the existence of immortal souls within Lewis's fictional world, and am therefore outraged because of the ethical implications of the removal of such souls. I am also outraged because even without speculating about souls, changing Talking Beasts into dumb animals removes their minds and memories and thus their selves, whether such a self is embodied in a soul or simply encoded in electrochemical potentials and neural links in a brain. And if that isn't murder, it's awfully close.
I define a soul as 1) an eternal, nonmaterial essence that is a person's true and best self, which is a generic religious concept that I do not believe has any objective validity; 2) a useful metaphor for describing a person's core traits and memories, the things that make her herself rather than any of the other billions of people who ever have lived or ever will live; 3) a somewhat less useful metaphor for an ethical or aesthetic sense; or 4) a generic fantasy concept based on the religious concept I don't believe in, but which I will accept as part of the other objectively unreal (i.e., magical) elements of a story, within the context of that story and for the duration of my bringing that story to life in my mind.