Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, Entertaining, and Informative
Review: This is a very good book, indeed. Fits all the requirements for enjoyment in a good book: interesting, entertaining, and informative. It is a great basic overview of Freud's and Lewis' beliefs, arguments, and most interestingly the way they lived their lives. After the author, Nicholi, gives a clear and simple overview of each man's beliefs on a subject he then shows how their life expands on their teachings or contradicts those teachings. I hope no one ever does this to my life after I am gone from this earth! The downside is that it doesn't really add much new or unknown information to the average reader that has read a biography or two on these two subjects. I came away thinking Lewis kicks Freud's tale in both debates and practices so I would be interested in hearing how a real Freud fan felt about the overall book.
Rating:
Summary: Book Review printed in the _Harvard Political Review_
Review: This is an advance copy of a review to be published in the Summer issue of the Harvard Political Review, available in May online at hpronline.org. "Whether we realize it or not, all of us possess a worldview. A few years after birth, we all gradually formulate our philosophy of life. Most of us make one of two basic assumptions: we view the universe as a result of random events and life on this planet a matter of chance; or we assume an Intelligence beyond the universe who gives the universe order, and life meaning...Our worldview tells more about us perhaps than any other aspect of our personal history...Nothing has more profound and more far-reaching implications for our lives...Whether we realize it or not, we all embrace some form of either the materialist worldview advocated by [Sigmund] Freud or the spiritual worldview advocated by [C.S.] Lewis." Today, national policy reforms are crushed into sound bites averaging 7.8 seconds, while neatly-packaged pop religion and consumer-friendly philosophy proliferate book shelves with simplistic, sugar-coated answers to the important questions of life. In this stilted environment, Dr. Armand Nicholi's new book is a breath of fresh air. In The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life Nicholi plums the depths of real human life in all of its emotional and academic complexity. Using Lewis and Freud's published works, letters, personal histories, and modern psychology, Nicholi brings together the faithful Oxford don and the skeptical father of psychoanalysis in an intimate and entertaining dialogue. Nicholi's book is a refreshing contribution to the theism debate. Without ignoring the philosophical arguments, he breaths warmth and relevance into this often cold intellectual debate by investigating the personal testimony of each man's life; how their lives shaped their ideas, and the impact their ideas seemed to have on their lives. Nicholi, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, has been teaching his phenomenally popular course, "Sigmund Freud and C.S. Lewis: Two Contrasting Worldviews," at Harvard's College and Medical School for 26 years. "I had the book in mind for the last 25 years," Nicholi told the HPR. Over two decades, Nicholi and course alumni, many of whom are Harvard faculty members, compiled a database brimming over with 10,000 entries of research on Freud, Lewis, and the psychology of religion. Nicholi's prowess as a teacher and a psychiatrist ultimately applied this copious data in this meticulously researched final project. "I wanted it to be clear and simple, but very scholarly. I didn't want a huge tome that only academics would read," he said of the book that just breaks the 200-page mark. The entertaining and accessible text is based on Nicholi's 1998 centennial William Belden Noble Memorial Lectures at Harvard's Memorial Church. Unbeknownst to Nicholi, a friend sent transcripts of the lectures to the Simon and Schuster publishing house, which solicited Nicholi to write the book. Acknowledging that "their arguments can never prove or disprove the existence of God," Nicholi brings his psychiatric expertise, scientific methodology, and narrative skill to bear in colorfully allowing each man's life to testify alongside his reasoning. "Human beings do not always live what they profess, nor profess what they live," however, Nicholi insists that "their lives...offer sharp commentary on the truth, believability, and utility of their views." Nicholi asks his readers to examine how these men lived out the worldviews they espoused, and whether their lives draw modern readers to emulation or incredulity. Nicholi focuses his examination on what Freud and Lewis have to say about man's most fundamental desires and fears-happiness, sex, love, pain, and death-and their fulfillment as understood by their respective worldviews. "Many people who are bothered by this book are troubled by the strength of Lewis' worldview-it changed his life and enabled him to function better," said Nicholi. "But all the evidence [in Lewis' life] is supported by well documented medical and psychological research." Confirming the preponderance of modern medical evidence about religious conversion, Lewis, who became a Christian while a professor at Oxford, became professionally, personally, and relationally more satisfied and effective after embracing a personal-as opposed to an inherited or cultural-belief in Christianity. Although Lewis's specific brand of theism is Christian, Nicholi uses him more broadly as a proponent of the "spiritual worldview," which asserts there is meaning behind life and the universe derived from a cosmic Intelligence. Although Nicholi's examination is entertaining and helpful, one wonders whether a more pluralistic consideration of God and morality might render this distinctively American religious debate irrelevant. However Nicholi asserted that "if you included all worldviews, the book would not be as clear, and the dialectic would not be as strong." But as this text investigates monotheism and atheism, the two most popular belief systems in the West, would it be relevant to those in the East? For Nicholi, "all of the arguments pertaining to the existence of an intelligence beyond the universe are very relevant," irrespective of the cultural context. One's answer to the "question of God" is fundamental to one's view of the world and one's relation to it, Nicholi asserts. Although they disagree profoundly, Freud and Lewis agree that "basing one's life on an illusion, on a false premise, will make living more difficult. Only the truth can help us confront the harsh realities of life." Sharing the urgency of his two subjects, Nicholi calls readers to deliberately decide what they believe about God, rather than coast through life with an indeterminate, unexamined position. "We keep ourselves distracted. We rationalize. We tell ourselves we will consider such weighty (and anxiety-provoking) subjects when we are older-when time demands will not be as great...we nurture a 'willful blindness' and a 'deep-seated hatred of authority'...Perhaps we distract ourselves because looking at our lives confronts us with our lack of meaning, our unhappiness, and our loneliness-and with the difficulty, the fragility, and the unbelievable brevity of life...None of us can tolerate the notion that our worldview may be based on a false premise and, thus, our whole life headed in the wrong direction."
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but problematic
Review: While I found the biographical details very interesting, to match these two particular historical figures in debate style is problematic. The most difficult aspect to overcome is the naturally more appealing style of C.S. Lewis, which may or may not be related to his worldview. Lewis is happy, fulfilled, relaxed, poetically gifted and humble. Freud is plagued by depression, ambitious, anxious, aloof and conceited. To say that these characteristics are a direct result of one's worldview is just too simple. Even the dichotomous nature of the worldviews explored is too simple: we are given the choice of atheism or Christianity. The world is much richer than this: I kept thinking about non-theist Buddhists, for instance. At the very least, atheists deserve a better "poster-child" than the obviously disturbed Freud (brilliant or not). Lewis' relaxed, almost caressing viewpoints are always a welcome relief from the sneering complaints of Freud. That this is the case on every topic addressed, it seems obvious that Lewis has the advantage on Siggy. It would be great to try the same kind of book again - choosing an atheist with a little less disdain for life!
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding. A great read.
Review: You could hardly pick two better spokesmen to represent and debate the materialist and Christian world views. A lot of homework went into this book and it shows. The author brings what these men said they believed and how they lived then gets out of the way so you can make your own judgement. Some people have pointed out that Freud was unfair challenger to Lewis. Nicholi does point out that Lewis did have the unfair advantage that having lived later he was familiar with Freud's published works. Even so the book really does read something like a debate. I think Freud's life is a good choice as a representative of materialism because his life is very consistant with the materialist philosophy that started with Epicurus and ends with Darwin. See Wiker's Moral Darwinism available on Amazon.com
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