The Nexus of Psychology and Religion

God has a providential M.O. that can be deduced, red herrings and strawmen notwithstanding – you know, like in the case of the incarnational George Müller.

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Aye Muller… does anyone doubt the faithfulness of his account?

Tim Challies has a travel video series on the Zondervan site where he spent an episode visiting England and went to Muller’s orphanage and sat at his desk :nerd_face:

Here’s a 5 minute version that has a couple second clip of the scene.

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That’s what the serpent said when it used the plural pronoun to say that you will be like God.

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Nice.
 

Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.
James 1:27

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You can’t join up the dots for that I know. Perhaps I can deconstruct it: Realising that every entity stands on the edge of the two eternities is a consequence of rational awareness.

As Prentice Ritter says at the end of Broken Trail, 'We’re all travellers in this world. From the sweet grass to the packing house. Birth ‘til death. We travel between the eternities’.

But it lacks your weak hostility and string fear. … Sorry strong, hopefully not linonophobia.

The rational possibility of solipsism or reason becoming conscious of itself.

eternity with God or alone

I don’t think that is true. Myself and MarkD are both particularly interested in this, though in very different ways. Raised by two psychology majors (without Christianity), psychology is deeply ingrained in my way of thinking, including about Christianity and this is very much a part of MarkD’s thinking about religion as well.

My perspective as a physicist is that psychology is a science without the kind of theoretical revolution you can find in other sciences. I don’t think this is impossible but just hasn’t happened yet. So although psychology has a number of solid findings, it tends to be dominated by speculative paradigms which vary in popularity.

Heart of the matter indeed! This is a one of the central theoretical questions to be addressed. Is psychology no more than a study of the biology and chemistry of the brain? Or is there there more to the human mind than this. I think there is and much of the history of psychology has thought or assumed so also.

If so then what is the human mind? A fundamental philosophical problem is involved – the mind-body problem and the dualism of many which has put the mind in the supernatural category – which would make it more a subject of theology than modern science. But there is a median position between supernatural dualism and identifying the mind with the brain. One can like myself, assert the existence of a mind apart from the brain but as something which is not supernatural and very much subject to the methods of scientific study. I see the human mind as a living product of self-organization in the medium of human language. This is something which very much fits in with and validates the majority of thinking in the history of psychology.

This is not to discount in any way the more modern developments in neuroscience or deny their importance in the science of psychology. But only to repudiate an attitude of reductionism or discarding the rest of historical psychology. In other words, even if we believe in a human mind apart from the brain, this hardly means that the study of the brain isn’t of great importance in the science of psychology. In particular it makes new distinctions an important matter of study in psychology and instead of the rather vague traditional distinctions between ID and ego, or between conscious and unconscious we can explore which things attributed to the human mind are more a product of brain biology and chemistry and which are more a matter of linguistic and conceptual constructs.

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Love is that vile eh?

With love this holy… “the miracle of miracles, utterly beyond human comprehension” (Moo quoting Cranfield on Romans 5:12-21).

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Interesting thoughts. I would like to add more but first would like to hear any thoughts you might have on the connection of psychology and theology.

Also I previously cited the works of Julian Jaynes and Evan Harris Walker. Are you familiar with their works?

Ok… let’s see

  1. I have a largely psychological understanding of sin as self destructive habits.
  2. Accordingly I treat the significance of the garden Adam and Eve story as psychological rather than anything to do with magical fruit.
  3. I have a psychological understanding of how Jesus’ death on the cross affects salvation, particularly opposed to excessively literal treatments of the metaphors in the Bible.

Nope. I am a physicist not a psychologist. Thus my academic familiarity with things in psychology is very much at an introductory level.

Intriguing videoo of J. Peterson “The Bible of the Problem of Perception”.

I am familiar with Jordan Petersen, and before that with Scott Peck. Both of these are popular authors connecting psychology and religion.

Taking a quick look at Julian Jaynes and Evan Harris Walker

Julian Jaynes: I believe consciousness has more to do with the process of life than with anything exclusive to animals. To be sure, I think both life and consciousness are highly quantitative so I certainly don’t think the consciousness of a bacteria is equal to the consciousness of a plant, which is not equal to the consciousness of a dog, which is not equal to the consciousness of a human being… and even the consciousness of different people are not the same.

Evan Harris Walker: Like him I do think there is a connection between quantum wave collapse and consciousness. At least, I think consciousness requires the transition from a future as a superposition of possibilities to a singularity of actuality in the present and past.

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What an interesting super-position :grinning:

If you have ever experienced (vividly) what it is to have your mind take on a mind of its own, when it tries to engage you in a kind of dialogue, like dreaming while awake, you might wonder if this other mind has a consciousness separate from your singular self.

In his theories, Julian Jaynes distinguishes between awareness and conscious of a self which is built up from a lexical field of metaphors of the the material world. This consciousness of self as separate from others including God and faces the threat of non-being (death). In the story of Eden, mankind possesses the ability to choose for them"selves" what they want to consider good and evil rather than accept God’s system. As He promised, they now are on their own and constantly face the possibility of the death of self. They hide their shame at their failure to live up to God’s requirements. They hide to protect them"selves" from the punishment (death) they know they deserve from the guilt of their disobedience to God’s commands. They employ psychological defenses like blaming others, including God himself, for their disobedience. All psychological defense mechanisms are for the purpose of defending the self against injury or death. Dr. Timothy R. Jennings book The God Shaped Brain goes into this system of psychological defenses quite clearly even though I think he gets some of the theology wrong.

Since you brought up quantum wave collapse, I will mention another excellent book on the subject. Ammit Goswani, PhD wrote the book God is Not Dead in which he makes the case for downward causation. In this scenario, God collapses the quantum possibility of the chosen choosing the quantum possibility into reality. This would explain the chosen having faith and why it is referred to as a gift of God in the Bible. Excellent book. I am not a physicist and have more experience in psychology so can’t say much more. However, I do think that quantum physicals plays a big role in God’s influence of the material universe.

Why? Why do you think that? (I know your a answer by the way.)

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