Spirituality Studies 9-2 Fall 2023 57 Abraham Skorka the great physicist wanted to learn the opinions of the father of psychoanalysis. Freud (1964, 197–215) in his reply examined the characteristics of the innate drives within the human species. He concluded by saying: [But] it may not be Utopian to hope that these two factors, the cultural attitude and the justified dread of the consequences of a future war, may result within a measurable time in putting an end to the waging of war. By what paths or by what side-tracks this will come about we cannot guess. But one thing we can say: whatever fosters the growth of civilization works at the same time against war. The second of Freud’s insights was verified by the political events that occurred after nuclear weapons were first deployed in war with the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Afterward there were emergencies, such as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which threatened the destruction of large portions of the planet. These perils encouraged people to resolve their differences by non-violent means. The guarantor of universal peace, according to Freud, is culture, the foundation upon which civilizations develop. But what does Freud understand by culture? Karen Armstrong (1993, 391), in her book A History of God, summarizes Freud’s thinking about God in this way: Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) certainly regarded belief in God as an illusion that mature men and women should lay aside. The idea of God was not a lie but a device of the unconscious which needed to be decoded by psychology. A personal god was nothing more than an exalted father-figure: desire for such a deity sprang from infantile yearnings for a powerful, protective father, for justice and fairness and for life to go on forever. God is simply a projection of these desires, feared and worshipped by human beings out of an abiding sense of helplessness. Religion belonged to the infancy of the human race; it had been a necessary stage in the transition from childhood to maturity. It had promoted ethical values which were essential to society. Now that humanity had come of age, however, it should be left behind. Science, the new logos, could take God’s place. It could provide a new basis for morality and help us to face our fears. Freud was emphatic about his faith in science, which seemed almost religious in its intensity: ‘No, our science is not an illusion! An illusion it would be to suppose that what science cannot give we can get elsewhere.’ Certainly not all psychoanalysts agree with Freud’s understanding of God, but his belief in science and its power is shared by many. Undoubtedly science revealed and continues to reveal many features of existence. However, its goal is not to answer the question why but rather how? Everything that is proposed in the scientific field must be verified through measurements, experiments, etc. It is in the arena of faith where the question of why is faced: the “why” of existence, the “why” of the suffering of the just, and the “why” of the existence of evil. There is no laboratory in which such questions of faith can be empirically measured or weighed. In the end, these questions reside in the most intimate dimension of each individual. It seems to me that the expulsion of God from our lives, or more generally the denial of higher powers, frequently transforms life into a meaningless chaotic state in which dictators try to take substitute for the Creator. They bewitch people with charismatic appeals to their worst instincts. The God of the Bible is described in the words of the prophet Jeremiah (10:10) as the “Lord God of Truth, is the living God.” Perhaps this should be translated as “The Lord God is the God of life.” It must be understood that human beings can only dialogue with God in the immaterial dimensions of their lives. The book of Genesis (2:7) relates that God gave life to the first human being by puffing the “breath of life” into an inanimate human form made from the dust of the earth. From this it can be understood, as the rabbis saw it (Bereshit Rabba 12:8), that something of the heavenly is found in every human being. The challenge of our lives, as we each learn who we are, is to discover the brilliance of that spark of God with which we have been created.
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