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Psychology
Psychology is often held to be hostile towards the plausibility of religious beliefs. Historically the influence of Freud and his reductionist account of religion has played a large role in this. However, as Raymond Paloutzian has pointed out, there have been two psychologies of religion: 'one of theories (Freud, Jung and variations), and one of numbers (questionnaire responses on myriad religious beliefs, practices, experiences, etc.)'.[1] Unlike the second strand, which stressed the importance of quantitative methods and the collection of reliable empirical data, the reductionist accounts of religion deriving from the Freudian tradition 'had no major counterpart in empirical research',[2] and this has led to the increasing marginalisation of Freudian and related theories within modern psychology, so it is primarily to the other tradition of psychology of religion that one should probably look in assessing the contemporary relationship between atheism and science.
Paloutzian notes that contemporary psychology is characterised by lack of agreement on overarching meta-theories.[3] One popular candidate for such overarching meta-theories for the discipline - evolutionary psychology - would seem at first sight to pose a challenge to religious belief. Theorists such as Scott Atran, Francois Boyer, and Lee Kirkpatrick have proposed that religious beliefs and behaviour can be explained in terms of evolutionary theory.[4] If, as for example Kirkpatrick has argued, evolutionary psychology can function as an overarching meta-theory for psychology of religion,[5] psychology of religion done in this way would appear to be implicitly reductionist, since evolutionary psychology is often regarded as ruling out a religious interpretation of religion a priori. However, not all agree. Justin Barrett, a pioneer of the recent field of cognitive science of religion (CSR), denies this implication. According to him, 'even if [the] natural tendency toward belief in God can be conclusively demonstrated to be the work of evolved capacities, Christians need not be deterred. God may have fine-tuned the cosmos to allow for life and for evolution and then orchestrated mutations and selection to produce the sort of organisms we are - evolution through "supernatural selection"'.[6]
By contrast, many contemporary psychologists of religion tend to adopt a more methodologically agnostic position which poses no particular threat to religious belief. For example, as Paloutzian observes, 'scholars have recently proposed that the concept of religion as a meaning system provides a common language capable of connecting diverse areas of psychology of religion research'.[7] Paloutzian defines a meaning system as 'a structure within a human cognitive system that includes attitudes and beliefs, values, focused goal orientations, more general overall purposes, self- definition, and some locus of ultimate concern'.[8] This does not presuppose anything about whether the person's beliefs are true or not, the latter issue being beyond the psychologist's proper sphere of competence.
Nor need the discovery that religious 'meaning systems' appear in one sense to be merely natural present any particular problem to belief. As Paloutzian notes, it is 'obvious [to psychologists] that much religious belief and behaviour and many religious emotions and cognitions operate by the same processes by which any other beliefs, behaviour, emotions, and cognitions operate...[but] this should not 'surprise or threaten anyone, including the strict religious believer',[9] since, for example, God can be expected to act through natural processes ('second causes').
References
Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Cognitive Science of
Religion Series. Walnut Creek, Calif. ; Oxford: Altamira Press, 2004.
Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion. New York: Guilford Press, 2005.
"Psychology, the Human Sciences, and Religion." In The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, edited by Philip Clayton
and Zachary Simpson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
"Meaning in the Context of Stress and Coping." Review of General Psychology 1 (1997): 115-44.
Silberman, I. "Religion as a Meaning-System." Journal of Social Issues 61/4
(2005).
Footnotes
[1]↑ Raymond F. Paloutzian, "Psychology, the Human Sciences, and Religion,"
in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. Philip Clayton and
Zachary Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 242.
[2]↑ Ibid., 243.
[3]↑ Ibid., 242.
[4]↑ Lee Kirkpatrick, Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion
(New York: Guilford Press, 2005).
[5]↑ Paloutzian, "Psychology, the Human Sciences, and Religion," 244.
[6]↑ Justin L. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Cognitive Science
of Religion Series (Walnut Creek, Calif. ; Oxford: Altamira Press, 2004),
123.
[7]↑ Paloutzian, "Psychology, the Human Sciences, and Religion," 246. See,
for example, C.L. Park and S. Folkman, "Meaning in the Context of Stress
and Coping," Review of General Psychology 1 (1997).; I. Silberman,
"Religion as a Meaning-System," Journal of Social Issues 61/4 (2005).
[8]↑ Paloutzian, "Psychology, the Human Sciences, and Religion," 246.
[9]↑ Ibid., 242.