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Title: The Question of God: Library Edition
ISBN: 0786192518
Author:
Roger Asselineau
Publicate Date: 2002-04
Publish: 2002-04
List Price: $24.95
Average Customer Rating: 4.0
Format: MP3 CD
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Amazon Lowest New Price: $15.72
Amazon Merchant Price: $24.95
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| Customer Review: |
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1: Nicholi is an Apologist for Lewis
This book is hugely disappointing. I had to stop at page 105 when it became clear that it was hopeless to expect the author to give Freud's position a legitimate airing. This is not a debate - this is a very biased presentation in favor of Lewis's view, with little or no presentation of the arguments against it from Freud's view. The arguments lack any foundation in logic and little if any in philosophy. It is also disappointing that someone trained as a psychiatrist would deliberately deceive the readers into thinking this was an honest presentation of the two perspectives, or, alternatively and more plausibly, that he would be so blind to his own bias. I favor the latter explanation. Nicholi is trained to recognize illogical, unreasonable, and neurosis-inducing efforts by others to eliminate congnitive dissonance; too bad he cannot recognize such efforts in himself.
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2: Nicholi hides personal bias: he co-founded a Christian lobbyist group
In both the book and DVD version, Nicholi presents himself as neutral on the question of the existence or nonexistence of God. In fact, Nicholi is a founding board member of powerful conservative Christian lobbyist group the Family Research Council, which actively attempts to outlaw homosexual and abortion rights while advocating abstinence-only sex education and the theory of Intelligent Design. While I assume Nicholi has the best intentions, his strong bias comes through in every aspect of the work, and in the end this feels like an unfairly hidden conflict of interest.
By pitting unhappy and mean-spirited Freud against joyous Lewis, Nicholi seems to imply that all Christians are happy and all atheists are grumpy. Obviously, it would be just as easy to focus on a happy atheist and grumpy Christian, so this argument is groundless. However, because the argument is forwarded consistently yet implicitly, it is difficult to easily identify and refute. Just listen to the typically disjointed and melancholic music used in the Freud scenes compared to the happy or profound music selected for Lewis.
Nicholi frames the God question as: "We make one of two basic assumptions: we view the universe as an accident, or we assume an intelligence beyond the universe who gives the universe order, and for some of us, meaning to life." This framing of the question is unambiguously borrowed from the Intelligent Design movement Nicholi is part of, and rests on an implicit assumption not 1 atheist in 1,000 would agree with: that the only alternative to God is Accident. In fact, as soon as Nicholi finishes framing the question, skeptic Louis Massiah gently corrects him: "To me there is an order to the way things are, and the central question is whether you want to say that the 'orderer' is God."
The above is not an isolated example; throughout the work, Nicholi's method, particularly in his framing of questions and frequent use of specious but masked assumptions, is heavily weighted in favor of his hidden bias. Nicholi's course addresses one of the most fascinating of all questions, and was engaging to read and watch. However, I feel he has some moral obligation to be forthcoming about having co-founded a group actively pushing Intelligent Design in Washington, and to resist his frequent reliance on rhetorical sleight-of-hand.
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3: no dry read here
a really interesting book - a lot of insight into why people have the beliefs that they have.
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4: Critical analysis
I like this book.This book is a comparison between thoughts of C.S lewis and Sigmund freud.If we view how psychology of two was different and have completely opposite views on subject of love, sex, life. It is interesting how people can fall into categories of haveing optimistic ,positive view of life and on the other hand developing dark,pessimistic view of life emerging from belief and unbelief.
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5: An interesting comparison
I feel compelled to try to briefly describe how much I enjoyed Armand Nicholi's comparison of the lives and philosophies of Freud & Lewis. Perhaps my personal point of view made C.S. Lewis' philosophy seem a lot more appealing than Freud's. Nicholi claims an objective review at the outset of the book, but it seems to me that Freud is presented in a much more negative light than Lewis.
I found Lewis' more postive portrayal to be a positive, however, I can see where other (less theistic) readers could find this a negative.
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