What does psychology have to say about religion?
For example...It is not normal for someone to commit suicide and kill a bunch of people with a bomb attached to them. Thats mental. Then they claim they're doing it for "Allah "or "god". Shouldn't these people, seek professional help?
Edit: I am not trying to bash anyone's religion. I am not an antheist..i believe in something. So don't get me wrong..more of a buddhist.
Answer:
This is a great question.
Psychology is currently defined as the SCIENTIFIC study of human thinking and behavior. Science is based on empirical studies in which observation is paramount, not introspection, faith, or anything more about a personal reality. Because science has become a way of life in America, anyone whose beliefs don't have empirical evidence are often treated as if they are somewhat delusional, and religious ideas or belief in God falls into this grey area. Hence, you will find the most scientific of psychologists tend to be atheistic in their evaluation of the human condition. Psychologists and sociologists might study the behavior of people who are religious, but they will do so in what they claim is an "objective" manner. It's actually biased from the perspective that wants the world to be 100% logical from a Western rational ideology.
One of the so-called movements of psychology included one that supposedly introduced spirituality, but it got less attention than what little attention the humanistic movement still gets. You may have heard of Zen Psychology, but it's ridiculously unpopular. If the field was run exclusively by biologists, cognitive behavioralists, and others who are the most ardent empiricists, religion would never enter the picture. Because these scientists are becoming the large majority of the people who make up the field, don't be surprised if in the future a "delusional" person is defined in such a way as someone who doesn't think like an atheist.
Currently, when a strong belief is held that does not have evidence for its belief, this is a delusion according to the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders) but NOT if the belief is widely a part of the values of a culture, which includes religious ideas. But like I said, in a culture that so highly values scientific thinking this is changing. Scientism has become the new religion for many psychologists, and it has all the same potential for brainwashing your thinking that comes with any religion. I am not anti-science, and science does have its place in our understanding of human behavior, but it's not the whole story. Religious, philosophical, existential, artistic, and other perspectives should have just as much weight in understanding who we are, but because of the high appraisal of science are generally ignored within the field of psycholgy.
So, to answer your question, psychologists and other scientists will study the behavior of people who are religious only with an empirical method, and their conclusions will be based only on this. There will be no faith-based, deeply personal, or introspective evaluations of religious behavior coming from a group of people that have accepted the only thing we can know is what our senses tell us. You are more likely to read the case study about the person living in a box who thinks he's Jesus.
Well i think there is no such thing as psychology take on religion but i can give you my opinion. Many beliefs are dangerous as my personal experience showed me. Many things people believe are only true because they believe it is true.
The most harm religion causes nowadays it due to diversity. People spend years trying to find which belief system works for them and in the end realize they waisted their time. In other words instead of focusing on their health, career, and education they waist their time on a dead end belief game instead of just being a good person and going by their own judgement.
There is no Psychology. There is a collection of individuals doing their best to get funding to work on questions that seem significant to them and the ruminations resulting from the work they conduct after they get funding.
I recently attended a colloquium at UCSD at which the founder of experimental psychology at UCSD, Dr Norman Anderson, spoke.
He has the wisdom and temerity to acknowledge that most things are unknown and that the important questions are not being addressed by people still actively in the field. Many of his colleagues were there only to refute him in the future. Some of the questions he presented to his colleagues and Juniors had been answered by members of the linguistics department, but they don't talk to each other.
When you receive answers form "Psychology," please remember that the useful answers start with your recognition that you are just as much an integral part of the universe as anyone else and that no one, not even you, has an inkling of the potential within you. Most analyses are flawed from the concept of opposition-evil vs good, etc-while reality is really spectral in nature.
Check out <sgi-usa.org> for further material and google Tien Tai.
There is no such thing as a presuppositionless science.
All sciences have *some* philosophical foundation.
For example, the foundation for modern academic psychology is material atheism, which itself is not part of the content of that, but is the foundation for that - the foundation is at a *trans level* to the science itself.
We cannot paint all religious people as being in the same category as the 9/11 bombers - Christianity is radically different from Islam, as Islam is radically different from say Buddhism - to say that all religious people are the same because of the actions of *some,* would be to use the logic that because you observe a human being as a psychopathic killer, then all human beings are psychopathic killers because a human being has been observed as being one.
And one cannot generalize about Christians, no more than one can generalize about people at all - there are stupid Christian and intelligent Christians; there are evil Christians and there are saintly Christians, just as those categories exist in humanity in general.
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