The Wormwood Deceptions City Collage

The Wormwood Deceptions Footnotes

The Wormwood Deceptions is a continuation of C.S Lewis’s Screwtape letters and can be purchased from the shop on this website. The novel covers many topics that are a challenge to the modern-day church. In this story, Wormwood has become a powerful demon in hell who is no longer in charge of tempting individual humans but rather controls the false narratives that currently pervade modern 21st century society.

The book focuses on an unfolding drama that involves a young Civil Servant called James Frankham. As this story unfolds on earth, there are parallel chapters where Wormwood is explaining to more junior demons how he has created powerful deceptions to entrap as many people as he can for the Night Spirit’s (the title the demons use for Satan) kingdom.

Some of the deceptions covered by Wormwood include left/right wing politics, human sexuality, scientism, atheism and Evangelical pharisaism. The book also indirectly covers other topics such as suffering. You can read chapter 11, where Wormwood explains scientism, by clicking here.

The story has a nice demonic twist at the very end in the epilogue (no peeking). The Appendix is mainly there for scientists as it gets to the heart of a foundational mathematical argument which is key to New Atheism.

Because this book takes the form of a novel rather than a formal academic critique of 21st century thinking, as much as possible, I have tried to use contemporary Youtube videos to demonstrate my argument rather than journal references which few people would check. To save my readers having to type in messy website links from my footnotes, where possible, I have included all the links to external sources so you can quickly find the reference material I refer to in my book. If, after reading the book, you enjoyed it, please consider writing a review on the Amazon website.

Happy surfing!

Footnotes by Chapter

Chapter 1
  1. Sex Robot hands-on at CES 2018
Chapter 2
  1. An enzyme composed purely of ribonucleic acid (RNA). Ribozymes are usually found in modern cellular biology working alongside protein-based enzymes especially inside the RNA/protein translation machinery of the subcellular ribosome.
  2. The Australian economy was still way too dependent on fossil fuels to admit that global heating was being driven by the burning of carbon-based fuel.
  3. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Chapter 4
  1. The title used by all demons when addressing their master, Satan.
  2. Richard Dawkins (The God Delusion Bantam Press, 2006): Zeitgeist definition: spirit or mood of a period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.
  3. Agápē is the Greek word used in the New Testament for the highest of the four types of in the Bible. It is selfless, sacrificial, unconditional love, and agape and its variations are frequently found throughout the New Testament.
  4. Genesis 1:26-27 (All Bible Verses are NIV version)
  5. Reproductive cells which contain a single copy of each chromosome or half the genetic material required to make a new human person.
  6. Although not true, it is the view of the demons in hell.
  7. John 11:33-36
Chapter 5
  1. Revelation 3:16
  2. John 14:28
  3. George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945 Penguin Classics)
  4. Revelation 1:15
  5. The Screwtape Letters Chapter 22, page 115 (C.S Lewis, Harper and Collins Religious, London, 1977).
Chapter 6
  1. Hebrews 12:5-11
  2. A Universe from Nothing by Lawrence Krauss, 2012 Free Press.
Chapter 7
  1. The Passion of The Christ directed by Mel Gibson
  2. Ironically there are a growing number of eccentric individuals who believe in a flat earth which is circled by the sun.
  3. Acts 7:54-56
  4. Matthew 23:24
  5. Mark 3:1-6
  6. Romans 14; 1 Corinthians 8
Chapter 8
  1. Seize the day.
Chapter 9
  1. The demons were in fact wrong about this. Even if James’s intention was suicide, his final plea to God before ending his life would be enough to secure his soul for the kingdom of Heaven. For, at that moment, he had begun his true repentant journey towards the Lord Jesus. In allowing James to live, the Holy Spirit had ironically spared the demons this terrible shock.
  2. Jude 1:9
  3. Job 2:6
  4. Luke 22:31-32
Chapter 10
  1. Manchester University was way too important to simply have a Vice Chancellor.
  2. Religious Education which is a compulsory subject in the UK school system.
Chapter 11
  1. A slightly cooler area in the cosmic background radiation is no more direct evidence that multiverses exist than the theist argument that God exists because of the order that is found in our universe.
  2. Matthew 5:48
  3. This is the understanding of the demons in hell.
  4. Genesis 15:16
  5. Darwin was older than Pasteur.
  6. A strong argument can be made that atheism is leading to a form of scientism that is damaging modern physics. For example, in a recent series of shows entitled “Emergence Theory”, the creators of the series argue, based on applying mathematical infinities directly to the observable universe, that the ultimate destination of cosmic evolution is not heat death as was traditionally predicted by the second law of thermodynamics but rather some weird universal consciousness. See Emergence Theory: A Layperson’s guide
  7. Not the real numbers, as the Second Law of Thermodynamics is based on a finite number of states in the universe, albeit the number of states is much larger than anything we can conceive. Thus, all fractional probabilities must be made up of terminating whole numbers in both the numerator and denominator, as this is what a finite number of states in the universe means. However, when one considers our fictional dice thought experiment, where the number of faces grows to infinity, then the probability of any given face appearing in an infinite number of throws becomes an irrational number based on the natural number e which is also irrational (see Appendix page 211)
  8. The building blocks of matter.
  9. Theory of Forms
  10. Ecclesiastes 3:11
  11. There is an infinite number of real numbers between each integer which also constitutes an infinite set.
  12. The old adage that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. This is not quite true when it comes to quantum mechanics.
  13. At the limit where the number of faces of the dice approach infinity.
  14. The Blind Watch Maker, Richard Dawkins (Penguin Books, London 1986), page 161-162
  15. Presented by Professor Brian Cox, Episode 2. The comparison of multiverses and national lottery tickets to explain our universe’s fine tuning is discussed 35 minutes into the video: The Human Universe Episode 2
  16. Roger Penrose, The Emperor’s New Mind 1999 Edition, page 445. First Published 1989 Oxford University Press, Oxford.
  17. Assuming that all the tickets means all the possible number combinations that can be drawn, not just all the tickets that were physically sold, as some weeks there are no winning combinations.
  18. P=0.632. See Appendix, page 214
  19. It was this logical problem that led the famous physicist Richard Feynman to conclude that the order of the universe could not be the result of an entropic fluctuation, as the statistical mechanics of the Second Law of Thermodynamics might suggest given a vast amount of time. See Richard Feynman’s first lecture on entropy, Cornell University 1964: Richard Feynman Lecture on Entropy The topic of entropy fluctuation is mentioned at 17 minutes into this video.
  20. Emergence: A Layperson’s Guide
  21. Wormwood knew the statistics did not back up this statement. The harsh reality for the Night Spirit was that the majority of human souls were still being saved by Jesus’ atonement. This truth was a secret that was carefully kept from all but the most senior demons in Hell and from most Christians as well.
Chapter 12
  1. The One I Love by R.E.M.
  2. 2 Samuel 12:13-14
  3. Christ Crowned with Thorns by Richard Westall R. A. (1822-3). The painting was most likely commissioned by King George IV and donated to All Soul’s Church. It was installed in time for the opening of John Nash‘s extraordinary building, appropriately on All Souls Day, 2nd November, 1824.
Appendix
  1. There is another subtle difference here. In common parlance, non-finite can be used to mean a non-specified number, in the sense that the number is very large but not quantifiable. However, this is very different from the strict mathematical definition of infinity which only exists within the concept of a mathematical limit where an algebraic expression is evaluated as one of its variables is allowed to become infinitely large.

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