[Download] "Psychology and Religion: Hermeneutic Reflections." by Journal of Psychology and Theology * Book PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Psychology and Religion: Hermeneutic Reflections.
- Author : Journal of Psychology and Theology
- Release Date : January 22, 2006
- Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 230 KB
Description
Brent Slife (this issue) contends that classic social science methods quite naively and rather presumptuously have claimed to be value-neutral when, in fact, they are anything but. First, they tend to presuppose a tendentious philosophical naturalism and objectivism that paints a picture of the world and its workings having little if any place in it for spiritual realities or religious meanings, except possibly as whimsical or even dysfunctional fantasies that need not be taken seriously. Second, they seem uncritically to presuppose certain moral ideals about how we ought to regard this world and each other and how we should properly relate to them (Reber, this issue). Clearly, those of us who take religious meanings and spiritual life seriously stand in need of a revised ontology of the human realm and the wider world. This is especially true for those of us who are committed in our work to drawing on the best insights from both religion and psychology. For us, the prevailing naturalistic outlook affords us no fruitful way of interrelating ideas from these two fields. As serious and open-minded investigators, we probably would wish to incorporate psychological theory or research findings in our pursuit of understanding. However, it simply is not possible to do this in any straightforward manner. Such theory and findings are significantly colored by rarely acknowledged and examined assumptions about fundamental matters, like the nature of the world, knowledge, and the good life. We can't accurately or honestly ponder psychological notions or explanations until we have teased out these assumptions, detected what we can of their influence, and begun critically to assess them. Moreover, when we do this, we find that rather than aiding us in blending perspectives from religion and psychology, the naturalist outlook that pervades much psychology either blots out religious realities altogether or distorts them by reducing them largely to playing a role in a drama of a fundamentally alien sort.