On a theme of " The Needletoe Letters " by Robert M. Price

C.S.Lewis died on the same day as John F. Kennedy and Aldous Huxley, 22 November 1963. To mark the event BBC radio 4 has readings from " The Screwtape letters " . They can also be heard on Youtube narrated by John Cleese. There is mention of materialist world view and skepticism in the letters so people might investigate those ideas on wikipedia & also check out atheism since Lewis was interested in that in his early adulthood.

In my opinion Lewis', " Screw You letters " demonstrates that the scripts of devilish speech by Bible authors were likely little more than what Lewis was attempting- fiction & mind games. 

I think there is no supernatural realm but what would a line manager devil ( Bishop ) say to an operational grade devil ( priest ) now adays ?

ScrewYou : My dear TapeWorm. It has come to my attention that we have a serious problem on the horizon, by the name of John Loftus. As you well know our bread & butter stems from misery & woe among humans and we have a rich seam of grief from the fear that people have of us lurking nearby ready to pounce on them. We have been able to monetize that for centuries. It was one of our greatest achievements getting the existence of hell and devils written as fact in the Bible, billions have come running to us begging us to help save them and issue reassurances for a very modest fee. Quite a stroke of twisted double think, even if I do say so myself, telling them devils were very real yet at the same time that the patients would probably be protected [ if they remained in the love of Christ, whatever that means ] 

Sadly I now fear the influence of those ideas is being eroded by the writings of said John Loftus. He is going around giving a myriad of reasons to think there is no supernatural realm, neither God nor Satan. He is allaying fears about hell. This will never do. 

What ever happens put your patients off surfing the web, make them afraid they will be hacked, phished or something. Then you must whip up the tried and tested fears of hell again, focus their attention on it,  try to make them so afraid of hell that they will not begin to explore atheism, the more paranoid and closed off they are to new ideas the better. And for God's sake don't let them get a hint of debunkingchristianity. I see that " The Screwtape letters " will be on BBC Radio 4 , this could be helpful to us in stoking the fear of the devil & the abominable human biblegod but just don't let the producer allow mention of " The Needletoe letters " by Robert M. Price.

We really must redouble our efforts to draw people down into our insidious vortex of delusion. Try to muddle their thinking about the fact of evolution and so distract them & use up their spare time that they never get round to serious study of science & history. The pseudo history of the Bible should be a good dummy tit for this. Our very livelihood depends on it.

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At the end of " The Screwtape letters " I think that Lewis scores an own goal because he has Screwtape echoing the ideas of the apologist preacher who makes it sound certain that people can simply sign up to be a christian by saying the sinners prayer be guaranteed to go to heaven, where as the Bible is much less clear about what it takes to get to heaven. The way the Bible talks about God being the one who chooses, then who could know they were a chosen one ? What must you truly believe exactly ? How would you know what was going to happen at the judgement day ? What if you hadn't given all your money to the poor, what if you had remarried, what if you hadn't been more faithful than the pharisees in keeping the law ? 
   Wouldn't a real devil say on the death of Wormwood's " christian " patient , well never mind because odds on that he will be a reject for falling short of the small print and Christ will say " Get away from me,  I never knew you " or " Tough, I never chose you " .


The interesting question being that if Screwtape could be so black and white & straightforward about someone signing up to Christianity going directly to heaven then how come there is so much uncertainty and so many provisos in the Bible ? Wouldn't it have been more in keeping with the Satanic realm that Jesus had made heaven the default position but that Satan muddled the Bible texts making it appear as an almost impenetrably complex maze to win through ?

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Stephen Law has written a parody of the screwtape letters in his book " Believing bullshit " called " The Tapescrew letters ". It can be read on his website
B.F.Moloney has written an atheist parody, " Screwtape lost and found- Charity's variety of sins "