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Psychology and Values Need a Personal God

 

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Given April 18th, 2004

 

 

A very thought-provoking lecture about the sociology of Knowledge

and the question whether there are objective states of mind and a morality of psychology

 

summary:

 

The word “logos” means a reasonable explanation of the mind. In our society, psychology for the most part tries to make people better and has to do with fixing, healing, improving.  All these terms assume that some things about the nature of reality are true, namely that we can distinguish between a healthy and an unhealthy state of mind. In a totally relativistic society such a claim is not possible.

 

Can we claim that there are universal standards of beauty and objective states of consciousness? What about the notion of happiness and morality? Can there any objective claims?

 

In our hedonistic society where people do what feels good the ultimate judge is whether something gives a pleasurable sensation. If someone feels happy he is accepted to be happy.  Is the state of happiness a serial-killer experiences different from that of a person who experiences happiness by helping people? Are we prepared to say that both experience the same pleasure, consciousness and emotion? If we don’t argue that they do, we are facing a linguistic problem. If happiness is subjective, both experience the same emotion. Obviously that cannot be. If someone is happy to kill innocent people and someone else is happy to help innocent people, they cannot refer to the same emotion when they use the same word. And if there is a problem in language there is a problem in culture. 

 

If we agree with the modern idea that happiness is subjective then we have to agree that there is no sense that real happiness comes from helping people or murdering innocent people is not real happiness because the very adjective “real” is meaningless in a relativistic framework. This is the problem in relativistic and hedonistic society.

 

And what about psychology? What if people get a drug which doesn’t make them more intelligent, but which doesn’t make people feel good. If happiness is subjective why not medicate everybody and create a brave new world? Is there any sense that a state of happiness which is earned from knowledge and virtue is superior to a state of consciousness which comes from popping a pill?

 

Approximately 100 years ago there was an explicit attack among philosophers on metaphysics. The school of behavioral psychology (which should get an award for stupidity) was part of that attack. They claimed that one cannot talk meaningful about internal states; anything you know about someone is from their behavior.

 

So the question is can one objectively talk about higher or lower, healthy and unhealthy states of consciousness? Is there a morality to psychology? How gross does immorality have to be so that we can call it immoral? If we can call any act immoral and do so objectively, on which grounds can we do that? How can we impose our values on a rapist?

 

 

Justice and morality and even beauty are metaphysical principles. In Western science there is only a quantitative notion about objectivity, not qualitative. Accepting God leads to qualitative and valid objectivity. There is logical connection between the validity of metaphysics and the validity of God, even a personal God. Psychology without metaphysics can only be something like a drug, to make people feel better but not to make them into better persons. For psychology to even speak about normal states of consciousness with any kind of moral sense means to enter a metaphysical realm.

 

 

Conclusion: Right or wrong are objective metaphysical terms. People do believe something is right or wrong. That means they accept the validity of metaphysics. Ultimately it means they accept a Personal God. To be truly rational one has to understand that there is a Personal God.

 

 

V    Vedic culture is a culture that claims there is objective reality, quantitatively and qualitatively.

 

For an agnostic (Sanskrit ajnani, someone who doesn’t know) it is logically impossible to say “it is just your opinion” to a theist who believes in God, because he needs to know the true answer in order to say something is wrong. An agnostic forfeits any right to say a claim about God is right or wrong. They can only say something is their belief.