Nicholi Lectures on Moral Law

Armand M. Nicholi Jr., an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts General Hospital, treated an audience in Memorial Church last night to the first of three William Belden Noble Lectures.

Nicholi's lecture "The Scientific Method and the Moral Law" was the first in a series of three lectures examining the conflicting world-views of Sigmund Freud and C. S. Lewis. The lectures will continue tonight and tomorrow night in Memorial Church at 8 p.m.

Nicholi began his lecture by focusing on the faith of his audience.

"I couldn't help but think when I saw all of you that your coming here is a real expression of faith," he said. "If you come tomorrow night it will be an expression of hope; if you come the third night it will be an expression of charity."

The William Belden Noble Lectures were established in 1898 by Nannie Yulee Noble in memory of her husband, a divinity student. Speakers deliver a course of lectures on a topic of general Christian interest.

This year's format includes a lecture by Nicholi, a response from another speaker, and audience questions.

He posed two questions: "Why did C.S. Lewis, an Oxford don, come to embrace a world view diametrically opposed to his atheism? "and "Why did Freud not also experience this transition?"

According to Nicholi, Freud, the founder of psychoanalysis, had a materialistic world-view. He called himself a materialist, a godless medical man and an atheist. Lewis, an Oxford don and author, had a spiritual world-view.

"Our world-view is simply our philosophy of life, our attempt to make sense of our existence," Nicholi said. "We all possess a world-view... Our world view simply tells us more about ourselves than any other aspect of our personal history."

Despite their ideological differences, Freud and Lewis used the same arguments to present their views, including ethics, happiness and suffering.

"Freud raises an argument and Lewis attempts to answer it," Nicholi said. "Lewis serves as a spokesperson for the specific world view that Freud attacks."

Freud said spiritualism was composed of illusions and wishful thinking. Lewis countered Freud's view of spiritualism by saying the spiritual world-view involves pain and despair, and is not wishful.

Responding to Nicholi's lecture, Francis S. Collins, director of the National Human Genome Research Institute, gave a personal account of his reconciliation of science and spirituality. His discovery of spirituality paralleled Lewis.'

"Here was the most important set of questions in human existence and yet, as someone interested in science who should consider the evidence, I didn't," said Collins, who adopted a spiritual world-view at age 28.

After the speeches, a line formed at the single microphone in the center aisle as audience members asked whether the speakers' arguments for the existence of God can be used as arguments for the existence of UFOs, and where Jesus got his y-chromosome if his mother was a virgin.

The program was limited to two hours, and about ten people remained in line when the lecture ended.

Tonight's lecture, "Sex, Love and Joy: Contrasting Perspectives," explores whether the purpose of life is the pursuit of pleasure. It includes a response by Joseph B. Martin, dean of the Faculty of Medicine.

C. Everett Koop, former Surgeon General of the United States, will respond to Wednesday's lecture on the Problem of Pain and Suffering, which will explore whether suffering and death are our destiny.