Theology of the Body: The Loser Letters

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

The Loser Letters

Everyone is probably familiar with C.S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters, where he writes as if he was a demon attempting to turn Christians away from there faith. Well, there is a hilarious and interesting sendup of the Letters, where a fictional atheist writes to the New Atheists (Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins, etc.) giving them suggestions about how to make their case stronger and what to avoid, and of course in the process she totally attacks their arguments. The letters are written by Mary Eberstadt, and she is producing one a week, with three completed so far. Here are links to letter one (dealing with why atheist teachings about sex are wrong), two (dealing with why atheism is rife with illogic), and three (dealing with how faith leads to good works).

My favorite passage from all the letters:

"Take what some Brights have been making of the fact that there are lots of different religions in the world saying plenty of different things. Many of You have been right out front, going on and on about how all this religious diversity somehow “proves” that not one of those religions can be correct. But of course this is what’s called a fallacious inference. The presence of other religions doesn’t affect the truth value of any one of them — any more than having twelve answers to a math problem tells you which one is right, say, or having ten pairs of Manolo Blahniks tells you which ones to wear with a cheetah leather skirt."

Anyway, the letters are very entertaining and I'd highly recommend reading them all.