A Freudian Slip

Life without God is difficult to sustain. I was reminded of this when re-reading a section of The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life by Armand M. Nicholi, Jr. In this book, Nicholi pits the thinking of Lewis (the theist) against Freud (the atheist) and comes up with a fascinating debate.

One of the more interesting moments in the book is when Nicholi brings to light some of Freud's letters. Curiously, these letters are laced with references to God. Here are excerpts from Freud's letters that Nicholi provides:

'I passed my examinations with God's help'; 'if God so wills'; 'the good Lord'; 'until after the Resurrection'; 'science seems to demand the existence of God'; 'God's judement'; 'God's will'; 'God's grace'; 'God above'; 'if someday we meet above'; 'in the next world'; 'my secret prayer.' In a letter to Oskar Pfitser, Freud writes that Pfister was 'a true servant of God' and 'was in the fortunate position to lead (others) to God.' (51)

Huh? Odd words coming from an atheist. Nicholi continues:

Can we not dismiss all this as merely figures of speech--common in English as well as in German? Yes, if it were anyone but Freud. But Freud insisted that even a slip of the tongue had meaning. (51)

Oops.

These glaring examples underscore the difficulty of maintaining a purely materialistic view of the world. This is because life without God sucks the humanity out of us. When we lose God, we lose ourselves. For the atheist, maintaining one's humanity means becoming a bundle of contradictions. I will close with another excerpt from Nicholi's book. Lewis says regarding his atheist days:

I was at this time living, like so many atheists...in a whirl of contradictions. I maintained that God did not exist. I was also very angry with God for not existing. I was also equally angry with Him for creating a world...why should creatures have the burden of existence forced on them without their consent? (51)