Debate
According to the dictionary a pacifist is a person who believes that war and violence are unjustifiable. C.S. Lewis claimed not to be one in The Weight of Glory. He said that "The main contention urged as fact by Pacifists
Lewis claimed that humans decide what is good and what is evil by their conscience. But, he argued that a person's conscience can be modified by argument. Lewis claims that an authoritative figure can substitute for argument. He then opened up the complexity of conscience. In reality God has built humans to have a uniform conscience. Humans have chosen to deem certain things as okay but truthfully there are a number of things that every sane person's conscience will agree on no matter what the circumstance. Two examples of this are rape and murdering a child.
Lewis challenged readers by bringing up that fact that most humans will accept an authority's (whom they view as wiser and better than himself) opinion as fact. That is scary to realize for how many things have civilians done merely because they were told it was the right thing to do.
The touchy point of sub consciousness was brought up.
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Simple minded men can mistakenly interchange an opinion or passion for an intuition. This can lead to dangerous territory. Lewis addressed hard topics such as the death penalty. He said that "The doctrine that war is always a greater evil seems to imply a materialist ethic, a belief that death and pain are the greatest evils. But I do not think they are. I think the suppression of a higher religion by a lower, or even a higher secular culture by a lower, a much greater evil" (77). Lewis also shared his belief that the Christian case for Pacifism rests on certain Dominical utterances, such as "Resist not evil; but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other