Screwtape: The Devil as a mid-level bureaucrat.
If you haven't read The Screwtape Letters, this won't make much sense--and if you had to choose, it would be better to read a the real Screwtape Letters than my imitation.
My Dear Wormwood,
Very true, I did tell you in my very first letter to keep your patient
away from science, but I meant real science based on math in which
theories are the best current description of observed reality. And the theories are not absolute: the latest discovery can make last year's greatest theory obsolete.
Of course you
should let your patient immerse himself in Creation Science. That
ridiculous pairing of words is one of the many recent triumphs of our
Infernal Marketing Division.
Real science is wretched for us. The Enemy has made the material universe so complex that the deeper the humans penetrate reality the more surprised they are at what they find. And He made it so vast that in time and space that no one can fully comprehend it.
We know he did this for the sophomoric reason that he wants the human vermin to be free to choose to Love Him, or not. The universe is so complex from the micro scale to the galactic, that no amount of mere facts can convince anyone of the Enemy's existence. All this disgusting beauty is more of what He calls Love.
Creation Science does away with all that. It says Einstein was wrong, Darwin was wrong, Mendel was wrong, Watson and Crick were wrong, and an Australian biology teacher who built a museum with saddles on dinosaurs is RIGHT!
All the messy reality of life, the universe, and everything is tied up with a bow in Creation Science. All of modern science that does not conform to their particular literal view is wrong.
Wormwood, it is wonderful. I could show you cages full of proud fools who watched a four-hour Deep Science video series and from that day were able to look down on the millions of people who have held science PhD degrees in the last hundred years.
Pride, Wormwood. It is the best path to Our Father's House and who could be more sneeringly proud than a man who cannot solve the equation that describes a falling rock yet believes he knows physics at a deeper level than Einstein. If we spirits had lips I would kiss the man who dreamed this heresy up.
Your Affectionate Uncle,
Screwtape
Great stuff, Neil--you've obviously been reading Lewis quite a bit: you've got Screwtape's "voice" down pat!
ReplyDeleteHave a Merry Christmas!
--Ivan
Very interesting. I haven't read the Screwtape Letters, now I just may.
ReplyDeleteIf there was a "Like" button here I'd click it.
ReplyDelete-Julian
I enjoy the Infernal Marketing Division... it gives one ideas. ;-)
ReplyDeleteYou have a keen mind and I have enjoyed your writing. Creation Science is much broader that 'Ol Screwtape seems to think and is not so well answered by his parody, me thinks. Congrats on the 5000 miles. That is quite a milestone; so to speak! JasonT
ReplyDeleteIvan & Julian--Thanks very much.
ReplyDeleteSusan--It's a delightful book. Screwtape's view is cold. He is a spirit and con only commit spiritual sin. The sins of the flesh bore him.
Let me know if you read it.