The Problem of Pain by C.S. Lewis: An Exercise in Cognitive Dissonance

The more C.S. Lewis I read, the more baffled I am that he is regarded as one of the best Christian apologists. Honestly, the best part of this book was that it was short, and the audiobook was read by one of those audiobook narrators with the smooth British voices.

About the Book

Title: The Problem of Pain

Author: C.S. Lewis

Published: 1940

Genre: Christian, theology

My Rating: 1/5 stars

The Problem of Pain is an attempt at a response to one of the most popular objections to Christianity: the question of why a loving God would allow evil and suffering to exist. The reason I read this book was, in fact, to hear what sort of rebuttal Lewis could come up with to explain away this rather glaring hole in Christian doctrine.

I couldn’t see how it was possible to reconcile the existence of a loving and omnipotent God with the world we have today– and C.S. Lewis unfortunately did not do much to change my view on this.

I was and am still a staunch atheist when I read this, and having left the Church, I was admittedly biased. I tried to go into the book in good faith, but as I read, I found myself becoming more and more irritated and frankly disgusted by Lewis’s arguments.

The main issues I had with the book can be broken down into a few main categories.

The question of omnipotence:

C.S. Lewis strikes me as a sort of smart dude who ties himself in knots trying to perform the required mental gymnastics to come to a conclusion that squares with Christianity. One of the first arguments he brings up to explain the existence of evil is the classic “but God gave us free will to do evil”

Now what is the problem with this? Well, first of all, I don’t particularly believe in free will. More to the point, no one can *choose* their own thoughts and desires and beliefs, meaning that none of us are in total control of ourselves. Second, everything you do is influenced by the way in which your neurons fire, your innate personality (which is not chosen) and your environment (also not chosen).

But even if God did give us free will, and we exist in a universe in which there is such a thing as absolute free will, that still begs the question of why would this God allow the existence of evil still? Why not make it such that we can both have free will AND not suffer?

Well to this C.S. Lewis essentially backtracks and says that such a world would be logically impossible, and even omnipotence cannot void contradictions. I don’t think this makes sense; after all, omnipotent, by definition, means you can do the impossible. Shouldn’t an omnipotent God have the ability to avoid paradoxes such as the one Lewis describes?

Lewis also talks a lot about how God operates in a way in which we can’t understand– so why is it necessary to expect such a being to obey our laws of mutual exclusion?

The dismissal of suffering:

Lewis spends a lot of time in this book either minimizing suffering or framing it as something we as humans inherently deserve because we are oh-so-sinful and awful. There is a strange underlying current of masochism, with Lewis constantly talking about how the existence of pain must be here for God to punish us.

He also engages in the kind of awful rationalization of people’s suffering as “just part of God’s plan.” At one point he uses the analogy of a fire, which, to those at some distance is warmth-giving and good, but to those inside a fire would be excruciating.

Apparently, sometimes God makes you suffer so that he can cause something else to happen. I think that’s an awful idea, personally. C.S. Lewis is probably one of those people who would go to someone whose kid just died and say something like “oh, well, this is just part of God’s plan.”

The excuses for ECT hell

Out of any concept in Christianity, the one with which I have the most qualms is the idea of an ECT hell. ECT stands for Eternal Conscious Torment, and the teaching of a Hell with this character is in my opinion the most sadistic and evil concept anyone has ever created. To quote Christopher Hitchens, “Nothing proves the man-made character of religion as obviously as the sick mind that designed hell.”

Lewis seems disturbed by the idea of Hell too, but he essentially glosses over it with some empty justifications about how, well, there has to be some punishment for bad people, right?

Here’s the issue with that, though… first, the punishment doesn’t fit the crime. You could show me the most awful person in the world, responsible for the worst crimes against humanity, and that person would still not be deserving of eternal torture in Hell. Second, really awful things are not the only things that Christianity deems as sins worthy of hell. I, according to Christians like Lewis, also deserve this fate, for the crime of writing an article like this.

That’s a pretty alarming belief.

The disgusting dismissal of animal suffering

During the chapter on animal suffering, Lewis begins trotting out probably the most awful and speciesist argument against animal rights (although he doesn’t use it in that context) that anti-vegans love to use. Now this book has nothing to do with veganism, but I have had so many arguments with people who sound exactly like this, and use many of his justifications.

Lewis says, basically, that since animals don’t have “souls” then we can’t even know if they suffer at all because they aren’t “conscious.”

So like, if you see an animal writhing in pain, well, maybe that animal doesn’t actually have the consciousness to feel pain and it’s just an INSTINCT. The sensation of pain is “happening inside of the animal” not “the animal is feeling pain.”

What an abhorrent argument.

Of course, Lewis doesn’t say he knows this is the case, only that it’s uncertain whether animals feel pain. Now that is BS and most of us (I hope) can realize that. But for some reason, humans have an enduring desire to put ourselves on a pedestal over all other animals (because we are also animals, C.S. Lewis; we are ALSO “beasts” as you like to speak about other animals with your artificial divine delineation) even to the point of considering that maybe our fellow creatures can’t even suffer like we do, because we were made speshul by God.

And, as Lewis elaborates further, the only value of animals comes from their relationship to humanity. Again, that is abhorrent. We as a species torture and kill billions of non-human animals every year. They certainly don’t derive their value from us.

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