# The Screwtape Letters **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [June 2, 2007, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511 "2007-06-02T20:27:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Autolycus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/22d042/32.png) [@Autolycus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Autolycus)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 6:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/61 "2007-06-05T06:27:31Z")
[QUOTE=FriarTed] So have you had a class with Peter Kreeft?. [/QUOTE] Never had a class but have attended many open event/lectures of his, and IMO he really is brilliant. I’m going to try to fit in one of his classes in my final year. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 8:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/62 "2007-06-05T08:09:16Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus] Oh, and dont forget about Lewis’ science fiction trilogy! They drag a bit at times, but are overall fantastic! [/QUOTE] I’m inclined to agree 😉 although the science in them is like a knock-off of Wells a few decades too late. Mind you, if the “body of different movements” thing is read as a pidgin explanation of n-dimensional physics, then he was pretty up to date on that. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 1:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/63 "2007-06-05T13:19:55Z")
[QUOTE=Autolycus] As for Lewis, I think he’s great, one of if not the greatest Christian apologist of the 20th century. **Diogenes** has a valid point, but does it not all boil down to the problem of evil? Lewis tried to address this if I’m not mistaken in _The Problem of Pain_. [/quote] Lewis’ skills as an apologist tend to be greatly exaggerated. He is popular with lay-Christians who (frankly) lack either the accuity or the desire to appreciate just how amateurish, derivative (mostly of Chesterton) and fallacious his apologies tend to be. He is convincing mainly to those who are already Christians but even the Christians who are really well educated in _apologia_ know better than to try to cite Lewis. His most well-known apologies (the Trilemma, the Moral Argument, the Argument from Desire, his attempted refutation of Naturalism) are all fraught with fallacies (Lewis was especially good at strawmen, false dilemmas and excluded middles). He once watched his book, _Miracles_, get publicly eviscerated in front of the Oxford Socratic Club by G.E.M. Anscombe (herself a devout Catholic but one who was actually trained in philosophical debate). Lewis’ friends said that he found the exerience humiliating, that he believed his arguments for God had been “demolished,” and that he would no longer attempt to write any apologetic works (and he didn’t, sticking to devotional works instead). according to George Sayer (a friend of Lewis and one of his biographers) said that Lewis said he had been “too proud of his logical ability,” and thought that being humbled as he had been “might be ultimately good for him.” He eventually rewrote the chapter which Anscombe had torn apart, addressing her responses and changing the title to make it less haughtily categorical (from “The Self-Contradiction of the Naturalist” to “The Cardinal Difficulty of the Naturalist"), but he gave up on apologetics after that. ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/64 "2007-06-05T14:00:44Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] He once watched his book, _Miracles_, get publicly eviscerated in front of the Oxford Socratic Club by G.E.M. Anscombe (herself a devout Catholic but one who was actually trained in philosophical debate). Lewis’ friends said that he found the exerience humiliating, that he believed his arguments for God had been “demolished,” and that he would no longer attempt to write any apologetic works (and he didn’t, sticking to devotional works instead). according to George Sayer (a friend of Lewis and one of his biographers) said that Lewis said he had been “too proud of his logical ability,” and thought that being humbled as he had been “might be ultimately good for him.” [/QUOTE] A little humility might benefit us all. Anscombe herself had a different take on that event: The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities, shows his honesty and seriousness. The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much. Neither Dr Harvard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis’s part… My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis’s rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends—who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments of the subject-matter—as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection. — G. E. M. Anscombe, _Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind_ Why you have spent so much emotion excoriating a man who is humble, honest, and admired by those who opposed him is a confounding mystery. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/65 "2007-06-05T14:04:46Z")
pwned! ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/66 "2007-06-05T14:30:54Z")
[QUOTE=Liberal] A little humility might benefit us all. Anscombe herself had a different take on that event: The fact that Lewis rewrote that chapter, and rewrote it so that it now has those qualities, shows his honesty and seriousness. The meeting of the Socratic Club at which I read my paper has been described by several of his friends as a horrible and shocking experience which upset him very much. Neither Dr Harvard (who had Lewis and me to dinner a few weeks later) nor Professor Jack Bennet remembered any such feelings on Lewis’s part… My own recollection is that it was an occasion of sober discussion of certain quite definite criticisms, which Lewis’s rethinking and rewriting showed he thought was accurate. I am inclined to construe the odd accounts of the matter by some of his friends—who seem not to have been interested in the actual arguments of the subject-matter—as an interesting example of the phenomenon called projection. — G. E. M. Anscombe, _Metaphysics and the Philosophy of Mind_ [/quote] So what? She was nice to him. Who cares? How does that refute the fact that Lewis himself felt humiliated and thought that his arguments had been destroyed? Here’s what [George Sayer and Derek Brewer](http://www.rapidnet.com/~jbeard/bdm/exposes/lewis/cs-lewis.htm) said: > [@](#): > > “He told me that he had been proved wrong, and that his argument for the existence of God had been demolished. …The debate had been a humiliating experience, but perhaps it was ultimately good for him. In the past, he had been too proud of his logical ability. Now he was humbled …‘I can never write another book of that sort’ he said to me of Miracles. And he never did. He also never wrote another theological book. Reflections on the Psalms is really devotional and literary; Letters to Malcolm is also a devotional book, a series of reflections on prayer, without contentious arguments.” > > Derek Brewer goes even further, saying that Lewis recalled the meeting “with real horror” was “deeply disturbed by it” and described it in terms of “the retreat of infantry thrown back under heavy attack.” Why do you think it’s relevant that Anscombe chose to be diplomatic? The fact remains that Lewis himself knew he had been pwned and was so humiliated by it that he stopped trying to write apologetics. > [@](#): > > Why you have spent so much emotion excoriating a man who is humble, honest, and admired by those who opposed him is a confounding mystery. Lewis was neither humble nor particularly honest (at least not in his apologetics, where he deliberately ignored facts or counterarguments which he knew would damage his assumptions, opting to construct strawmen instead). While he may have been _liked_ by some of his opponents, he was never very respected as an apologist because he wasn’t very good at it. His apologetics are mainly enjoyed by people who already share his assumptions and who are either unable or unwilling to read them very critically. I have not spent any “emotion” in this thread, I’m only trying to bring some objectivity to a discussion about a writer who tends to get unjustifiably lionized by Christians. Lewis was also very hostile to atheists, by the way. Why should I be kind to a writer who was not kind to me? ---
**Author:** ![Dunderman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecb155/32.png) [@Dunderman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dunderman)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/67 "2007-06-05T14:32:06Z")
Ignore this post. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/68 "2007-06-05T14:32:35Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] pwned! [/QUOTE] How so? ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 2:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/69 "2007-06-05T14:58:10Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] Lewis was neither humble nor particularly honest (at least not in his apologetics, where he deliberately ignored facts or counterarguments which he knew would damage his assumptions, opting to construct strawmen instead). While he may have been _liked_ by some of his opponents, he was never very respected as an apologist because he wasn’t very good at it. His apologetics are mainly enjoyed by people who already share his assumptions and who are either unable or unwilling to read them very critically. [/QUOTE] Lewis was a popular apologist writing for a popular audience, not a philosophical one, to whom it would have been appropriate to consider all possible counterarguments to his positions. His most famous work of apologetics, _Mere Christianity_, is the book version of a series of radio talks he gave, so he was limited in how much depth, subtlety, and careful, precise reasoning he could do. As a writer of apologetics, I see him as more analogous to the popularizer of science (or whatever subject) than to the scientist. If you don’t think he was very good at that, I’d be interested to know who you thought was better—who really was the best Christian apologist of the 20th century? As for his honesty, I don’t know; my own impression of him is that the arguments he used most frequently were those that he personally found compelling. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/70 "2007-06-05T15:14:07Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] How so? [/QUOTE] It struck me that your story about Anscombe took a huge hit from **Liberal** inconveniently quoting what Anscombe actually said about it, which sure looked like pwnage from where I was sitting. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/71 "2007-06-05T15:21:14Z")
Diogenes the Cynic writes: \> An example of both self-satisfaction and a fallacious assumption is the way that \> Screwtape reacts to the “patient” becoming a Christian. Lerwis smugly (and \> fallaciously) takes it for granted that Christian faith is somehow virtuous and \> anathema to devils. He expects the reader to share this feeling but does not \> earn it. He also ininuates that atheists are damned and at one point makes the \> idiotic statement that atheists should be prevented from thinking things \> through lest they really how absurd and how perilous their position is. He \> disparages “mere logic.” All of his attitudes towards rationalism \> and “materialism” are insulting, childish, wishful, sanctimonous and fallacious. O.K., first, you’re misusing the word “fallacious.” I assumed that you meant by “fallacious assumptions” that Lewis was using a logical fallacy in his arguments in _The Screwtape Letters_. I assumed that you meant that he was making an argument of the sort All A’s are B’s. All C’s are B’s. Therefore, all A’s are C’s. or something like that. What you mean to say is that Lewis was making a factually incorrect assumption. You seem to be assuming that all the basics of the Christian religion, including the existence of God, are obviously factually incorrect. (And you apparently have no intent on proving that they are, since you dismiss them as “insulting, childish, wishful, sanctimonous and fallacious.” Yes, Lewis doesn’t prove any of the tenets of Christianity in _The Screwtape Letters_. He didn’t claim to be doing so. He was assuming the tenets of Christianity for this book. Indeed, he even said that he was assuming things beyond the necessary tenets for the purpose of this book. He said (in the preface) that he didn’t consider the existence of devils to be a necessary belief for Christians. He just used it for the purpose of the book. The whole idea that it’s necessary to buy the complete set of factual assumptions of a book to find it worthwhile is wrong. People can make good deductions from wrong factual assumptions. Much good science and technology was done on the basis of ancient Greek physics (with the Earth at the center of the universe, gravity doing nothing except pulling things to the center of the Earth, epicyles in the movements of planets, and a flawed understanding of mechanics), including reasonably good predictions of planetary movements, a good estimate of the size of the Earth, and a good estimate of the size and distance of the moon. Even better science was done with Newtonian physics, despite its lack of knowledge of relativity and quantum physics. Even better science yet is being done today, despite the fact that we’re probably going to be seeing a complete revision of physics to something with different assumptions one day. And _The Screwtape Letters_ is a work of fiction. You don’t have to believe in the existence of the characters and setting of a work of fiction to find it useful. Finally, the OP stated that he doesn’t buy all the factual assumptions of _The Screwtape Letters_. In particular, he doesn’t believe in the existence of God. I assumed that this thread was about whether _The Screwtape Letters_ is good psychology, regardless of what you think about its assumptions. The truth of Christian beliefs is a different thread, I think. \> As for petty sins, the entire book is a rumination on how easily people are led \> into evil by being cross with their mothers or not praying correctly or becoming \> distracted by petty self-interest. It all comes as across as projection to me and \> smacks of the kind of self-abasement and “we’re not worthy” self-loathing that \> I’ve seen a lot among Evangelical Christians. I’ve never understood that \> attitude at all. In my opinion, It’s God that has to prove himself worthy to \> humans, not the other way around. _The Screwtape Letters_ is about petty sins. It has little to say about larger ones. Petty sins are what most people are concerned with. If you’re going to eliminate _The Screwtape Letters_ on this basis, you’re going to eliminate virtually every self-help book out there. Incidentally, you call Lewis both self-satisfied and self-abasing. How could he be both of them? ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/72 "2007-06-05T15:28:25Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] It struck me that your story about Anscombe took a huge hit from **Liberal** inconveniently quoting what Anscombe actually said about it, which sure looked like pwnage from where I was sitting. 🙂 [/QUOTE] Well now you stand corrected. As you can see, my story took no hit at all. You should try to read with less prejudice. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/73 "2007-06-05T15:32:12Z")
[QUOTE=Thudlow Boink] Lewis was a popular apologist writing for a popular audience, not a philosophical one, to whom it would have been appropriate to consider all possible counterarguments to his positions. [/quote] I wouldn’t expect him to consider all possible counters, but I would expect him to counter the _strongest_ ones, and that’s something he habitually chose not to do. > [@](#): > > His most famous work of apologetics, _Mere Christianity_, is the book version of a series of radio talks he gave, so he was limited in how much depth, subtlety, and careful, precise reasoning he could do. As a writer of apologetics, I see him as more analogous to the popularizer of science (or whatever subject) than to the scientist. If you don’t think he was very good at that, I’d be interested to know who you thought was better—who really was the best Christian apologist of the 20th century? How about one of the guys Lewis was most influenced by, G.K. Chesterton. > [@](#): > > As for his honesty, I don’t know; my own impression of him is that the arguments he used most frequently were those that he personally found compelling. That’s fine if he was only trying to convince himself. ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/74 "2007-06-05T15:33:57Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] Well now you stand corrected. As you can see, my story took no hit at all. You should try to read with less prejudice. [/QUOTE] I stand thoroughly rebuked, and by an unimpeachable rebuker. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/75 "2007-06-05T15:46:11Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] Diogenes the Cynic writes: \> An example of both self-satisfaction and a fallacious assumption is the way that \> Screwtape reacts to the “patient” becoming a Christian. Lerwis smugly (and \> fallaciously) takes it for granted that Christian faith is somehow virtuous and \> anathema to devils. He expects the reader to share this feeling but does not \> earn it. He also ininuates that atheists are damned and at one point makes the \> idiotic statement that atheists should be prevented from thinking things \> through lest they really how absurd and how perilous their position is. He \> disparages “mere logic.” All of his attitudes towards rationalism \> and “materialism” are insulting, childish, wishful, sanctimonous and fallacious. O.K., first, you’re misusing the word “fallacious.” [/quote] No, I’m not. > [@](#): > > I assumed that you meant by “fallacious assumptions” that Lewis was using a logical fallacy in his arguments in _The Screwtape Letters_. I assumed that you meant that he was making an argument of the sort > > All A’s are B’s. > All C’s are B’s. > Therefore, all A’s are C’s. > > or something like that. What you mean to say is that Lewis was making a factually incorrect assumption. I’m saying that his arguments were _circular_. He assumes that which he wants to assert. > [@](#): > > You seem to be assuming that all the basics of the Christian religion, including the existence of God, are obviously factually incorrect. I’m observing that Lewis did not PROVE it. he did not establish his predicates. > [@](#): > > (And you apparently have no intent on proving that they are I don’t have to prove they AREN’T true. I’m not the one making the assertion. All I’m doing is observing that Lewis did not prove his own assumptions. > [@](#): > > since you dismiss them as “insulting, childish, wishful, sanctimonous and fallacious.” No, that was only how I characterized his attitude towards atheists. > [@](#): > > Yes, Lewis doesn’t prove any of the tenets of Christianity in _The Screwtape Letters_. Right, so he was wasting my time as far as I’m concerned. > [@](#): > > The whole idea that it’s necessary to buy the complete set of factual assumptions of a book to find it worthwhile is wrong. I would at least like those assumptions not to be bigoted or insulting to me personally. > [@](#): > > And _The Screwtape Letters_ is a work of fiction. You don’t have to believe in the existence of the characters and setting of a work of fiction to find it useful. Finally, the OP stated that he doesn’t buy all the factual assumptions of _The Screwtape Letters_. In particular, he doesn’t believe in the existence of God. I assumed that this thread was about whether _The Screwtape Letters_ is good psychology, regardless of what you think about its assumptions. The truth of Christian beliefs is a different thread, I think. I have said repeatedly that I think it is psycologically insightful. My main criticism of the book is that my enjoyment in reading those insight is ruined by the constant intrusion of insulting religiosity. > [@](#): > > _The Screwtape Letters_ is about petty sins. It has little to say about larger ones. Petty sins are what most people are concerned with. If you’re going to eliminate _The Screwtape Letters_ on this basis, you’re going to eliminate virtually every self-help book out there. I despise self-help books. I on’t think people need to fixate so much on their own petty failings. They should learn to be comfortable with them instead. > [@](#): > > Incidentally, you call Lewis both self-satisfied and self-abasing. How could he be both of them? Why _can’t_ he be both? People are frequently contradictory. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/76 "2007-06-05T15:50:49Z")
[QUOTE=Malacandra] I stand thoroughly rebuked, and by an unimpeachable rebuker. [/QUOTE] [Stephen Colbert] I accept your apology [/Colbert] 🆒 ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/77 "2007-06-05T17:14:23Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] [Stephen Colbert] I accept your apology [/Colbert] 🆒 [/QUOTE] Why, thank you. …Um, don’t ever let me catch you with your prejudices showing, m’kay? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Kythereia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/e8c25b/32.png) [@Kythereia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kythereia)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/78 "2007-06-05T17:21:16Z")
I’ve just put a hold on it at the library, along with J.R.R. Tolkien’s \*Tree and Leaf[/i}, so I reserve all comment on this thread until _checks watch_ next week today… ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/79 "2007-06-05T17:28:27Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] That’s fine if he was only trying to convince himself. [/QUOTE] Don’t we all use the arguments we find most compelling? Are you using arguments you find to be inferior? ---
**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2007, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511/80 "2007-06-05T17:32:42Z")
[QUOTE=Diogenes the Cynic] Why do you think it’s relevant that Anscombe chose to be diplomatic? [/quote] I don’t know who will buy into your spin on that, but I certainly don’t. Diplomatic? Do you think she was lying? She directly contradicted what the other people said, calling it a projection. > [@](#): > > The fact remains that Lewis himself knew he had been pwned and was so humiliated by it that he stopped trying to write apologetics. That’s what a person _should_ do when he doesn’t do it well. If you decide to take a lesson from Lewis, you will stop writing screeds about him. 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-screwtape-letters/406511.md?page=5)