[n4r9]

Thanks for the response.

I didn't mean to imply that Lewis would speak out of "petty spite". Rather that his ability to reason appears to be clouded by his convictions about God and Christianity. For example, the "Trilemma" argument is full of holes and somewhat circular.

I'm still struggling to see how this notion of "devil" relates to the plot (specifically the ending) of Star Maker though. I googled around and did find a Reddit thread which raises the same question and describes the book's ending very well:

> The narrator comes into contact with a Creator of immense power who relates to our universe (and to several other universes that it has created) in the same way that an artist relates to a piece of art, without regard for the suffering of its inhabitants. The Creator is also depicted as pleasantly surprised that its newer universes have begun to exhibit emergent behaviours that were not intended at their conception. At the same time though the Creator is described this way...

> "Here was no pity, no proffer of salvation, no kindly aid. Or here were all pity and all love, but mastered by a frosty ecstasy. ... Love was not absolute; contemplation was. And though there was love, there was also hate comprised within the spirit's temper, for there was cruel delight in the contemplation of every horror, and glee in the downfall of the virtuous. All passions, it seemed, were comprised within the spirit's temper; but mastered, icily gripped within the cold, clear, crystal ecstasy of contemplation."

https://www.reddit.com/r/CSLewis/comments/mv2o9b/what_might_...

Perhaps Lewis interprets the idea that love is not absolute, or that the universe's creator is not a loving being, as being tantamount to "devil worship" ?

[graemep]

I am pretty sure that is what he means.

God = loving creator

Devil = evil supernatural being.

I have not read the book but from that description it sounds very like what the literal devil worshippers in That Hideous Strength worship (not a creator, but otherwise).

In one of his books (cannot recall which one) he does states that God is to be worshipped because God is good, not because he is all omniscient. He quotes of a story of a viking who says "I go to die with Odin" as sharing the underlying morality.

[n4r9]

The creator in Star Maker isn't evil, though. It's explicitly dispassionate. And none of the characters claim to worship it!

[ChainOfFools]

A dispassionate creator would precisely fit what Lewis thought of as a devil. And celebration of the concept, without any consideration of the horror implied in the subjective experience of the things that have been created, and with no favor for their happiness account as sensate beings, amounts to the creation of a plaything for one's private interests, that just so happens to incorporate the whole spectrum of pleasure along with the whole spectrum of cruelty. Lewis's position, the one that I think let him settle on Christianity as opposed to any other philosophical framework (I strongly suspect he was inches from being a nihilist, mainly had to do with the circle he grew up within) dealing with the hard problem of suffering.

[n4r9]

So perhaps Lewis is accusing Stapledon of devil-worship for imagining a world with an uncaring creator?

I would disagree that it obviously celebrates the concept or ignores the horror therein.

I think the problem I'm having is that for me, as a well-established secular person, the concept of "devil" is inherently bound up in Christian context, i.e. on the assumption that God exists and is good etc... . The concept does not easily apply outside of that context, to speculative fiction set in hypothetical worlds. However, I suppose that Lewis interprets everything in the Christian context, whether it is intended or not.