Psychology, like all sciences, concerns itself with the things that can be experimentally confirmed, that can be seen and measured, that we can then agree is the way of things. So clinical psychology observes genetics and brain chemistry, the whys and hows of complex molecules moving through the canals of the brain. All things we can assign definite value to, things we can sign off on and say: This is how things really are. But also important to understanding the mind is to understand the value of spirituality and religious belief.
Which is maybe way more than you want to hear. For the scientific mind, fears of fundamentalism and blind faith swim up. The physical brain and the ephemeral soul can seem to be pretty strange bedfellows. But more and more, psychologists are coming to believe that a person who has a spirituality, has a faith, either through a religious community or just something as simple as communing with nature, will live a measurably fuller, healthier life. And be more able to handle those things that lives often throws out.
The Evolution of Faith
This all seems sensible, if you think about it, that we'd be wired to seek the spiritual. A big moment in the evolution of human consciousness was when we developed what has been called the "theory of mind." Theory of mind is the ability to project thoughts and emotions onto others and to understand that these mental states exist independently from the observer's own mind.
Theory of mind has allowed us to forge bonds with one another and ultimately create a civilization. The thinking goes something like this: If we can understand the thoughts and intentions of others, it makes it easier for us to work together. And going one step further, we can also see thoughts and intentions in other things, nonhuman things such as weather phenomenon, the cycles of nature, animals. We began assigning names to these things. We began calling them gods.
Minding Your Matter
Thousands of years later, the diversity of religious beliefs has made a colorful tapestry of our human civilization. It has proved its importance to human life, and now spirituality is being regarded by psychology too as a valuable part of our lives. Believing something, believing anything, is better than believing nothing. Faith itself has the ability to reduce stress, to provide stability to lives that may often seem the opposite. Spirituality, in other words, may have been essential to human health since we first developed minds.
Science and spirituality are not always on good terms. But more and more, the two reconcile their differences in strange and wonderful ways. Which only makes sense, because after all, they're both seeking the same thing -- an understanding of the world.
Which is maybe way more than you want to hear. For the scientific mind, fears of fundamentalism and blind faith swim up. The physical brain and the ephemeral soul can seem to be pretty strange bedfellows. But more and more, psychologists are coming to believe that a person who has a spirituality, has a faith, either through a religious community or just something as simple as communing with nature, will live a measurably fuller, healthier life. And be more able to handle those things that lives often throws out.
The Evolution of Faith
This all seems sensible, if you think about it, that we'd be wired to seek the spiritual. A big moment in the evolution of human consciousness was when we developed what has been called the "theory of mind." Theory of mind is the ability to project thoughts and emotions onto others and to understand that these mental states exist independently from the observer's own mind.
Theory of mind has allowed us to forge bonds with one another and ultimately create a civilization. The thinking goes something like this: If we can understand the thoughts and intentions of others, it makes it easier for us to work together. And going one step further, we can also see thoughts and intentions in other things, nonhuman things such as weather phenomenon, the cycles of nature, animals. We began assigning names to these things. We began calling them gods.
Minding Your Matter
Thousands of years later, the diversity of religious beliefs has made a colorful tapestry of our human civilization. It has proved its importance to human life, and now spirituality is being regarded by psychology too as a valuable part of our lives. Believing something, believing anything, is better than believing nothing. Faith itself has the ability to reduce stress, to provide stability to lives that may often seem the opposite. Spirituality, in other words, may have been essential to human health since we first developed minds.
Science and spirituality are not always on good terms. But more and more, the two reconcile their differences in strange and wonderful ways. Which only makes sense, because after all, they're both seeking the same thing -- an understanding of the world.
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