Can Theistic Psychology Exist in Science

by Tyrone D. Clark II

Instructions for this report

 

1.  Preface

 

            Twenty generations and hundreds of students later, I find myself immersed in a topic as controversial as gay and lesbian marriage, a topic that promises to save my eternal soul.  That’s right, you read it correctly, it promises to save my soul.  This course is dedicated to the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg, the last great prophet of our time.  Emanuel Swedenborg was blessed with the ability to be conscious in both the spiritual world and the natural world, simultaneously.  He documented his experiences for over 27 years and in 52 English volumes, adding immensely to the modern-day understanding of both God and science.  So with this as the topic of discussion in generation twenty, I find myself pleased to add my report to the fray.

 

            I am not alone in my spiritual discovery; many of the other students of generation twenty have found enlightenment in this class.  During the course of our weekly discussions and presentations, students have wrote about the world of spirits, the existence and structure of heaven and hell, the connections between Christianity and other religions, the ideal of soul mates, and how to get heaven. In fact, after talking with many of my classmates I have found that most of them have completely accepted the revelations of Swedenborg as the gospel truth.  Even though this seems kind of farfetched, Swedenborg presents this information in a very understandable and scientific way, making the acceptance of this material that much easier.  Basically, I find this course to be fulfilling in a way that many others are not.

 

            Claudine Flores de La Cruz, a student of generation eight, wrote about “How Drivers Communicate With Each Other”, http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/499s98/tan/

which is a study of driver communication.  This, amazingly, can be related to spirituality because of what it says about a driver’s mental state while on the road.  A driver’s mood is dictated by the interaction of spirits with the person’s spiritual mind.  So how we relate and communicate with others on the road is directly related to the influence of the spirit world.  The ideal of a devil on one shoulder and an angel on the other, suggesting what to do in a given situation, is the general concept behind this proposal.  Additionally, the way we drive and interact we others says a lot about our level of selfishness, and of course this selfishness is a result of evil spirits influencing our actions.

 

            Christy Forsythe, of generation 3a, wrote a very interesting report about ghost hunting http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/leonj/sum96-1/cforsyth/hp.html, so as you can imagine this relates directly to spirituality and the mind.  The concept of ghosts, has long been a part of human history.  For centuries, people have been telling ghost stories and recounting experiences with the dead, so a research paper on the world of spirits and the afterlife is definitely relevant to this topic.  Swedenborg tells us that there can be no interaction of the dead with the living in the natural world, since spirits do not possess a physical body in which to affect change on the world of the living.  However, this report searches for ghost by way of the Internet, in an attempt to discover the secrets of ghost.

 

            Frankychan, of generation 16, wrote a report about his “Emotional Spin Cycle” and “The Four Options and the Two Bridges” http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s2002/frankychan/report%201.htm.  This report takes a look at the ups and downs, and the highs and lows of a person’s emotional state, and describes how they all fit into Dr. James’ model of the Emotional Spin Cycle.  As I have stated earlier, all emotional actions have their origins in the spirit world. The sprit world is the very cause of any action in the natural world.  As you can see, any situation in the physical realm can be related to the area of study covered in this current generation’s work.

 

2.  Introduction

 

Walking in the world of the living and in the world of the dead at the same time, is a tricky feet, one that if told to anyone might land you in the crazy house.  This however, is exactly what Emanuel Swedenborg did for 27 years.  In this course we have studied the work of Swedenborg and all the research he conducted in the spirit world.  We have examined the descriptions of heaven and hell, and read the writings of authors who have studied Swedenborg. From this data we have discussed the concept of rational versus spiritual mystical, and attempted to understand Swedenborg’s substantive dualism in science.

 

For me, this has been a very enlightening seminar.  I have found myself deeply involved with the topics broached in the oral presentations and lectures.  Before I took this course I was in a state of spiritual flux, if you will, and this class has answered many of my questions about God and the afterlife.  My life has been one of spiritual wonder, and this class has been very helpful in my personal analysis of the universe.

           

3.  Overview

 

            Never before, have I been asked to reveal my religious and scientific mental development, but in this report I have done just that.  In doing so, I have discovered things about myself that I never really took the time to think about, concepts that have defined the type of person I am and show how religiously grounded my beliefs are.  This report will cover my conceptual history of God and science, my understanding of science, religion and the separation of church and state, and Dr. James’ definition of theistic psychology, with critiques and a bibliography of this subject.  Finally, it will end with a conclusion and some advice to future generations.

4.  Autobiographical (Part I)

 

I have lived a life of wonder, a life full of contemplation about the mysteries of God and the universe. I have looked out at the stars and begged them to reveal whatever secrets they might hold, but they have yet to reply.  I have looked far and wide for the answers to my many questions, only to have them answered with cloaked riddles by religious fanatics. 

 

As a child, these fanatics were my relatives, and God seemed liked such a simple concept.  Every Sunday my family and I would get up and attend service at Apostolic Pentecostal Baptist Church in Detroit, MI.  If you have never been to a Pentecostal service then you have never seen a show like this, unless you are watching “The Blues Brothers”, a movie starring Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi.  There are people running around the church, dancing in the aisles, and fainting from the Holy Ghost. The Rev. Pastor Allen, would lead the choir in a musical selection that could truly move the soul, while the band, consisting of a variety of musical instruments, backed them up in perfect tune.  Members of the congregation would join the musical melee with their tambourines ringing at just the right moments, to bring the entire scene right out of the movie screen and into real life.  After the choir was done, Pastor Allen would bring it home with a sermon that really got the people reaching for their pocket-books, in an attempt to not only look good to their fellow church-goes, but to save their eternal souls while buying the Reverend a new Cadillac.

 

For the first seventeen years of my life, this was the weekly routine and God was the guy hanging on the cross behind the choir.  The simplicity of the whole thing was supported by the children’s bible stories that my family bought for me, and the belief that if I didn’t accept Jesus as my Lord and Savior and be saved, I would be doomed to a lake of fire.  There was also the little issue of having to speak in tongues before I could truly be saved.  All of these things seemed like the norm considering I didn’t know anything else, with the exception of the “Old People’s church” that my grandparents went to.  So I accepted what I heard and prayed to God to show me the way to heaven.

 

For four years after I left home, I walked through life with the beliefs of Apostolic in the back of my mind, until one day, when I started to read the “Vampire Chronicles”, by Anne Rice.  Some may wonder what the Vampire Chronicles has to do with God, but the truth is that these books have spirituality at their forefront.  In one book, entitled, “Memnoch the Devil, the main character known as the Vampire Lestat, is taken to heaven by none other than Lucifer himself.  This journey, which begins as the result of a conversation between God and Devil, takes Lestat on an adventure through both heaven and hell.  While this is an exciting look at a writer’s depictions of the afterlife, it is not what intrigued me about the story.  In fact, it was the conversation between Jehovah and Lucifer that put my perfect world, of slick preachers and howling deacons, into a spiritual whirlwind.

 

This conversation, which was about Satan’s desire to be done with his job as the so-called bad guy, made me questions my beliefs about hell.  I had been taught that hell was a place of fire and brimstone, but now I started to believe otherwise.  I had begun to question some of my earlier teachings and as we know, once you start questioning one thing, you start to question the whole concept. I began to wonder why a God of love would allow such terrible things to happen, and why he would punish the seemingly just in our society.  I tried to figure out why He would send a person that he loved into a lake of fire; I even question the lake itself.  I stopped attending church service because the people seemed so fake and hypocritical.  I told myself that I didn’t want to be seen as such a person.  I started rejecting the stories of the preacher and looking for a new path.

 

I walked through life for many years trying to figure out how I had come to this point. Where did all of my childhood faith go? How would I get myself back on track?  God is funny in that just as you start to give up hope, He sends you the answers.  My answers came in the form of a document that my mother sent me entitled, “10 Secrets to Success and Inner Peace”.  In hindsight, I realize that whoever wrote it must have read Swedenborg, because it is filled with ideas very similar to his.  After reading the Secrets, I began to view the world in a different light; it seemed brighter in a way.  I could see the inherent beauty in the world and I knew this had divine origins.  I began looking for God in all things, and in a way, I think He made Himself known to me. As I began to find happiness in the world it also grew inside of me.  I finally realized what it was that had troubled me about my religion all those years before.

 

The fact that my church taught that anyone who wasn’t a Christian was going to hell, had never sat right with me and now I knew why.  It flat out, wasn’t true.  Reading the work of Swedenborg, further solidified my newfound beliefs about heaven and hell, and thus I have begun my new walk through life.  Now with Swedenborg as a guide, I can study religion with hope and a new found passion.

 

 

5.  Autobiographical (Part II)

 

Looking to the stars for answers while wondering why they never speak, I sought to find my solutions in science.  In my childhood, science was the pretty picture of the solar system that hung in my science classroom, with the lovely planets floating majestically around a brilliant Sun that supplied the entire scene with life.  I would look up at these pictures and dream of distant planets and the mysteries they might hold.  “Star Wars”, had convinced me that the galaxy was full of life and adventures, and science would be the engine to launch me out among the stars.

 

I began studying about our solar system and all the different planets.  I fall in love with TV shows like “Star Trek” and “Quantum Leap”.  I just knew that any day, either E.T. or the lizard people of  “V” the miniseries, would show up and make themselves known.  I was a child of the stars, lying out under the beautiful nighttime sky, dreaming about the cosmos, while trying to image how many different civilizations awaited me in the great “out there”.  So of course, it wasn’t long before I took up a liking for the hard sciences.  I studied chemistry, biology, math and physics, hoping to find a way to reach those distant galaxies far, far away.

 

My pursuit of aliens eventually led me to college where I started studying physics and astronomy.  Unfortunately, it wasn’t long before I realized that the universe would remain out of my reach.  Science, which could explain the inner workings of the combustion engine or an atomic bomb, was completely unable to bring me any closer to my beloved stars.  Science couldn’t even answer the more simpler questions about what came first, let alone solve the mysteries of faster than light-speed travel.  So in the end, I decided to leave the science to the egghead types who like number crunching and get a kick out of computer simulations of two balls colliding.

 

 

6.  Topical Research

 

As I lay on a distant shore with the calm surf gently edging its way up the beach, I would look up at the tranquil magnificence of the nighttime sky with the moon as the sacred gatekeeper, wondering if and when I might be able to unlock the secrets of the cosmos.  Wondering if and when science or God would make this possible, I would try to think of ways in which both could come together, finally, and make this quantum leap a reality, yet in my heart I knew that neither would be of much help in my lifetime.  You see, my heart and my mind would whisper to me, sadly reporting that God and science would most likely be unable to get over their age old differences; that the two, while divinely intertwined, would forever remain separate in the minds of men in this plain of existence.  In life, mankind seems incredibly inapt at crossing this great divide, but the truth is that some individuals can and have.

 

Albert Einstein, one of the greatest scientific minds in our history, is but one man who has come to see the reciprocal nature of the relationship between science and religion.  Einstein believed that the secret of solving the mysteries of both science and religion, lay in each other http://condor.stcloudstate.edu/~lesikar/einstein/. Basically, the questions of science could be answered if only the scientist and the world were willing to accept the divinity of the concept.  Einstein even went so far as to say that, many scientist should have a religious sort of faith when trying to solve the unsolvable equations of nature and life.  He also thought that only science could bring religion into the light of the enlightened, but while Einstein may have had many opinions on science and religion, he didn’t have much to say about the separation of church and state.

 

We live in a country of not only religious diversity but ethnical and financial diversity as well.  When you live in a country that could easily be considered the world’s melting pot, you cannot allow religion to sway the decisions of the government.  The reason for this is so simple that I believe it evades the minds of others; this would lead to discrimination. Interestingly, the ideal of the separation of church and state is not an American one; it is a Russian principle that can be found in the old U.S.S.R. constitution (http://www.alliance4lifemin.org/separation.html). However, in our time we see this phase talked about mostly when it comes to education.

 

Thomas Jefferson talked about a wall of separation between the church and the state, but he didn’t believe that faith had no place in the lives of young children.  On the contrary, he believed that faith should be embraced by all Americans and protected with the same level of dedication (http://www.alliance4lifemin.org/separation.html).  The concept which Jefferson described, has been twisted over the years, so much so, that most people believe that it is part of the constitution.  The fact of the matter is that this is completely false.  In truth, this ideal has been conjured in an attempt to make people believe it is law.  The first amendment says nothing about keeping religion out of schools or displaying the Ten Commandment in front of a courthouse, it only deals with the protection of all religions (http://christianamerica.com/sep_church_state.htm).

 

In my opinion, this separation is needed so that no one religious group can have power over the laws of the land, but it is in no way stated in the constitution, as some would have you believe.  All people should definitely have the right to practice whatever religion they see fit, but lets face it, America is run by Christians, and while I consider myself a Christian, I know that only Christian beliefs would be allowed in this government, and that would be unfair to the Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims (http://www.christianitytoday.com/bc/2002/005/7.6.html}.  When you live in the world’s melting pot, you must love and embrace each group's contributions to the system without placing one higher than the other, solely based on percentages.

 

7.  Theistic Psychology

 

In the world of science and religion, no other school of thought covers both areas as completely as theistic psychology.  Theistic psychology is the study of, not only human behavior, but of the universe, and how it pertains to God and the spirit world.  This area of research is based solely on the revelations of Swedenborg.  In theistic psychology, the key concept is, understanding religion in a rational scientific way.  The concept of substantive dualism is introduced and defined in a way that tries to convince the world of the validity of religion, understood and practiced as a science.  Theistic psychology studies and implements the science of correspondences in way that fully reveals the mysteries of the bible, so that it can be read literally and symbolically. The bottom line; theistic psychology is a science and not an art.

 

8.  Critique of Theistic Psychology

 

As an admirer of both science and art, I was blown away be this seemingly new area of study.  After attending only one class on the subject I became convinced that this was the only true explanation of life, death, heaven, hell, science and religion.  The straightforward and logical way in which the information was presented, made the ideal all the more appealing.  I began to wonder why I had not heard of Swedenborg before.  Was someone trying to keep a secret of from me?  Where these teaching that everyone knew but me?  As the classes progressed I began to realize that I was not the only person who had been left in the dark on this issue.

 

During the lectures, other members of the class started wondering how they had never heard of Swedenborg or why this was not a topic discussed on more fronts.  The answer became clear to me as I began discussing the writing of Swedenborg with my friends.  No one could completely believe it simply because it came from another human being.  Here in lies the biggest weakness of this science; we live in a world of deception and lies and any man claiming to know the secrets of God and the universe must be either crazy, or trying to swindle you.  The fact that theistic psychology is based solely on the writings of Swedenborg, leaves it open to criticism since there is no other source, but the bible, which today is widely disbelieved, to back it up.

 

9.  Bibliography on Theistic Psychology

 

Before we can really understand the science of theistic psychology, perhaps it would be best to know more about the man behind it all, Emanuel Swedenborg.  Ian J. Thompson, a professor in Physics at the University of Surrey, published an article on Swedenborg in the Network Newsletter of The Scientific and Medical Network (http://www.theisticscience.org/papers/smn3b.html).  In this article, Thompson gives a brief history of the life and work of Emanuel Swedenborg, sighting many of the popular revelations of the man responsible for the birth of theistic psychology.  One of the most important points of note about Swedenborg is the fact that he was a renewed scientist and engineer, and it is this background that allowed him to document his experiences in the spiritual world in such a scientific and analytic way.

 

A main point in theistic science is the one that states, “…the spiritual and natural are successive discrete degrees that need each other to exist, and we must never fall into the trap of Cartesian dualism of allowing them to have independent existences.” (http://www.theisticscience.org/natural-spiritual.html). The natural world and the spiritual, while being two distinct realities, are eternally tied together.  In fact, Swedenborg states that all causes in the natural world originate in the spiritual.  With this in mind, theistic psychology attempts to explain human behavior from a spiritual standpoint.

 

One of the biggest opponents to theistic psychology is this form of rational thinking that proposes that man is the cause and effect of his own reality.  In the article, “The Meaning of Life”, by Francois Tremblay, the author asks the question; why would an infinite being create or not create a universe when its creation would not affect the being in anyway? (http://www.suite101.com/article.cfm/17279/105000)  Tremblay, who is obviously an atheist, tries to explain why religion is flawed and how men created it to give more meaning to their existence.  The afterlife is rejected simply because it can’t be perceived in this realm, and heaven is said to be a place of mindless automatons, blindly worshiping a so-called divine being, with no free will.  So you see, it is this sort of negative bias that theistic psychology must overcome in order to become a widely accepted science.

 

Science and the bible are key points in the study of theistic psychology, since when combined with Swedenborg’s correspondences; the bible is the guidebook for this science.  Many people have tried to relate the bible to science and vice versus, but the DEFENDER’S Study bible, sites specific correlations, making the scientific aspects of the bible clearer (http://www.clarifyingchristianity.com/science.shtml).  The Defenders talk about sciences such as Paleontology, Astronomy, Meteorology, Biology, Anthropology, Hydrology, Geology, and Physics.  For each one of these fields a passage from the bible is listed with an explanation of how it proves a scientific discovery over 3000 years old.

 

On the other hand there is a problem when science and the bible clash.  “When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible”, is an article by Alvin Plantinga, which discusses many of the contradictions between the bible, faith, science, and common sense (http://www.asa3.org/ASA/dialogues/Faith-reason/CRS9-91Plantinga1.html). The science of evolution is broached and viewed from a Christian’s point of view.  While theistic psychology hopes to bring all of science and religion together, it still faces a monumental challenge when faced the everyday sense of the average person.  Most people want a science and religion that seemingly coincide with one another, but what they fail to realize is that they already do.  It is only the lack of the science of correspondences that keeps them from this realization.

 

Many times one might hear it said that science has replaced God, and people have written many articles on the subject, but Diogenes Allen, author of “HAS SCIENCE REPLACED GOD?” (http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a39b8f4df0e9a.htm), attempts to show that science has not replaced God.  On the contrary, Allen believes that modern science has actually made the existence of God more probable.  He points out that modern science fails to explain many common occurrences in nature.  Using the work of famous scientist and philosophers, such as Newton and Aristotle, Allen discusses how God actually fills the gaps left by science.  So again, we see religion and science working together to complete and explain each other.

 

In the pursuit of a better understanding of theistic psychology, many questions arise. One is, how are science and spirituality related?  In a web column known as the Weaver, one author attempts to explain the differences of the two (http://www.peterussell.com/Weaver/Weaver.html - Science). The author describes science as the search for truth in the physical world and spirituality as the search for the truth of the nature of consciousness.  The fact that science does not include consciousness or the mind, as a fundamental reality, is part of the reason that many believe that science and religion will never come together.  The beauty of theistic psychology is that it views the two as one, or rather explains how spirituality can be experience in a scientific way.

 

Negative bias is a major roadblock to the study of theistic psychology.  Negative bias is often a trait shared by many atheist and agnostics.  Their inability to prove the existence of God leads them to the conclusion that God is an impossibility.  In the article “A Christian God’s Contradictions”, God is professed to be a contradiction of ideals and therefore a universal impossibility.  The article claims that a being who is Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent, cannot possibly exist because each of these traits contradicts the other (http://www.anatheist.com/Articles/god_contradictions.html).  Of course the author does not explain how these things contradict each of, but merely states it as fact.  The article discusses the concept of the law of non-contradiction, and how this proves the non-existence of God, since He is not composed of atoms and matter.  The law of non-contradictions states that nothing can exist without matter or some form of substance, so since God is said to exist in the spirit world He must be without substance, thus fully embracing a negative bias.

 

Religion and medicine have long been interconnected, and viewed as two parts of a whole.  In the old days, priests or medicine-men, healed both the body, mind and soul

(http://www.mercola.com/2001/aug/25/religion.htm). In the 19th century, the advent of scientific medicine, separated religion from medicine.  Today, while the two still remain largely separate practices, there are those who believe that it is necessary to have spiritual healing, religious practices, and health intertwined.  Dr. Fred Rosner points out that, “Statistically significant associations between religious belief and health outcomes have been reported for a variety of diseases in systematic reviews and meta-analyses”. Concepts such as this add validity to theistic psychology.

 

            Theistic science and theistic psychology have many complimentary fields of study, such as creation science.  Creation science, which deals primarily with the creation the universe, directly rebukes the work of Darwin and his theory of evolution. Creation scientist believe that a higher being (God) created the earth and the heavens instantaneously, and in six 24 hour days(http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/creatdef.htm).  Now this is not supported in the writing of Swedenborg, but it does at least accept the existence of God and His role in the creation of the natural universe.  While creation science is a lot different from theistic psychology it still uses a religious and scientific approach to understanding the natural world. 

 

10. Conclusion

 

            Sometimes in life it is very easy to believe that you are all alone, very easy to think that your experiences and ideals are original or out of touch with the rest of the world.  In researching this topic, I have found that there are millions of people just like me struggling to make sense of it all; millions of people trying to decide if they have been mislead by religious fanatics or blinded by the light of science.  On a different note, I have also realized that my life and the lives of others are directly connected to one another and interconnected with our religious, or a lack of religious beliefs.

 

  Researching theistic psychology has made it very clear to me that, what the world needs is a tool to bring religion and science together, because only together can any sense be made of the world we live in, and without one the other falls short.  Future generations could be spared the hardship of spiritual discovery if the respective leaders of both fields could come together and reach some sort of an accord.  Were this to happen, we would see a fundamental advancement of psychology, and every other area of science, art, religion and life as a whole.

 

11. Future Generations

 

            My spiritual journey has been one of wonder and discovery, a journey full of excitement and controversy.  The writings of Swedenborg and the topics discussed in this class have added greatly to my spiritual and developmental growth.  The topics covered in this course very controversial, so my only advice would be to keep an open mind.  Try to approach the subject with a positive bias, because only a positive bias will allow you to truly analyze the information in a helpful and creative way.

 

Class Homepage

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s2004/

My homepage

http://www.soc.hawaii.edu/leonj/459s2004/clark/homepage.htm