Typo: (emphasis mine)

But what about the heads-I-win, tails-you-lose argument employed by Christians? They likewise say that if the thing prayed for does not happen, this is another proof that petitionary prayers work, and it it does not happen, it must be because God, in his infinite overriding will, chose not to grant it as a way of teaching the petitioner patience, or humility, or some other virtue, and thus a failed prayer becomes just as good a proof as a successful one that prayers are effective.

Comment by: Alex Weaver | November 16, 2006, 12:30 am

Excellent article. It's difficult to understand how someone who is so respected in the Christian apologetic community could have such glaring contradictions and hypocrisy in his most beloved works. I would have expected them to be less obvious.

There is another typo in the sentence quoted by Alex Weaver: "it it" >> "if it"

Comment by: Secular Planet | November 16, 2006, 11:16 am

Why in the world would God even bother to create the Earth if "human birth is important chiefly as the qualification for human death"? Why not just create a race of beings that all die in the womb and have their salvation assured?

There is one possible answer that fits in nicely with the religious zealot's version of the world: People who have been through life on earth have a privileged place in heaven. Probably in proportion to how much you were persecuted during your life. Lewis kind of hints at that:

Apparently He wants some — but only a very few — of the human animals with which He is peopling Heaven to have had the experience of resisting us through an earthly life of sixty or seventy years.

The implication seems to be that those "very few" will be special in some way. It's sort of the extension of the "you'll be blessed more when you're persecuted" way of thinking - you get a merit badge in heaven if you've had to go through the indignity of a physical life. It even fits the idea that Jesus went through that indignity for the same reason.

Driving trucks through the holes in that argument is left as an exercise to the reader.

Comment by: Shishberg | November 16, 2006, 10:30 pm

I'm glad you drew attention to the fact that Lewis really believed demons are constantly influencing our lives, and that this belief is a tad bit batty. It's something that had never really sunk in with me before. I once had a conversation with a believer where I mentioned this book and his response was "How could you have read that book without realizing the things Satan is doing in your life?" It never really clicked that that attitude is encouraged very much by The Screwtape Letters.

One criticism: you probably should have given Lewis a pass on his criticisms of anti-rationalism. Sure the big-name unbelievers have always been rationalists, but anti-rationalism has been something of a problem among both believers and the less thoughtful unbelievers, and I'm glad to see Lewis combating it. I greatly prefer his attitude to the one promoted by people like Philip Johnson, Rick Warren, and William Lane Craig.

Comment by: Chris Hallquist | November 17, 2006, 5:07 pm

'Though the book may be intended allegorically, on the whole it leaves little doubt that Lewis genuinely believed that evil spirits existed and were constantly assaulting human minds.'

If this is true, how can Christians account for logic and reason?

Comment by: Steven Carr | November 18, 2006, 3:26 am