I'd

say it's probably the best explanation for why someone would choose to be an atheist that I've ever

read. Right. It's like if I was going to debate somebody about what it means to be an atheist, I'd probably use Lewis's example here. Yeah, I agree. It's clear that he had been there mentally. He gains credit for his argument by being able to state the other side so clearly. So people know that he was heard, but it's interesting because he comes to the end of all of these complaints and he realizes he hasn't fully been honest. So he says, but I realize it's not only a problem of pain, there's a problem of good. And if the universe is half so good as some people claim it is, how did we ever come to attribute it to a good God in the first place? In the weight of glory, Lewis says, if our religion is objective, we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it, which seem puzzling or repellent. It's precisely in the puzzling or repellent where we discover what we do not yet know and need to know. That kind of honesty about his own Christian faith makes Lewis's argument so strong, but Lewis also holds a feat to the fire, to the people who are opposed to Christianity that they would also argue with equal objectivity. And I think that's important as well. So that moves Lewis and from these complaints about the faith into another realm that opens up the door more widely. And that's what I like about his, he starts us with an

introduction, talks about what was convincing to him as an atheist, but then presents those things that brought him to faith. And he starts with the idea of the numinous, which many people align with his idea of Zenzukt, this sense that there is something beyond. We all have this awe for something greater. And then also he introduces the idea of morality that even the most virulent atheist has a sense of good versus evil. Even an atheist will say what Hitler did was evil. Where do atheists get their moral sense? You can't denounce a sense of creator God and then just assume morality just rises up from the masses. And then Lewis proceeds to say both the numinous and morality then were joined together in Judaism and then finally you get God entering history in the form of Jesus Christ so that God's own self experienced

pain, that we are not experiencing something that God incarnate did not experience.