Lewis' theodicy, The Problem of Pain, he defends God's goodness in the context of the world's evil. To someone who already accepts the views of Christianity, Lewis' explanation may be believable; however, to those who question its ideas, it is debatable. Lewis begins by summarizing the atheist argument from evil, telling all the suffering that exists in the world. He states the "strength and facility" (p.3) of this argument, but says that its own strength is its problem: "If the universe is so bad how on earth did human beings ever come to attribute it to the activity of a wise and good Creator? Men are fools, perhaps, but hardly so foolish as that. The direct inference from black to white, from evil flower to virtuous root, from senseless work to a workman infinitely wise, staggers belief The spectacle of the universe as revealed by experience can never have been the ground of religion: it must always have been something in spite of which religion, acquired from a different source, was held" (p.3-4). I agree with Lewis that the universe, by experience can never have been the origin for belief in a kind creator, but that does not mean the only other alternative is to have some sort of revelation. There is a clear alternative where beliefs like this comes from wishful thinking, where people intuitively make beliefs that give them a sense of power over their surroundings and relieve their fears and worries. It is a generalization to say that this is the only source of religion, but I think it is important and should not be excluded.
Lewis studies why human beings would compare the moral sense with the "sense of awe", which he refers to as the Law and the Numinous. "Nor can the identification of the two be explained as a wish-fulfillment, for it fulfills no one's wishes. We desire nothing less than to see that Law whose naked authority is already unsupportable armed with the incalculable claims of the Numinous" (p.
