Secularism, Psychology, and Hermeneutics

Abstract

We are fortunate, indeed, have received thoughtful and astute commentaries on our articles. My task is reply briefly Dallas Willard's remarks. It is quite a privilege have a distinguished philosopher and philosopher of religion like Prof. Willard join a few of his thoughts this project. His reflections on cognitive and nature of knowing as a human achievement and practice constitute a valuable addition in their own right this effort. And his remarks about how a hermeneutic approach rethinking interplay between psychology and religion might be strengthened will surely further that aim. Professor Willard speaks for all of us in insisting that cannot afford be impatient with kind of philosophical clarifications of assumptions, including moral underpinnings, animating our lives and inquires at their core, that this special journal issue investigates. Otherwise, we simply fail carry out our responsibilities and are doomed repeat errors of past in one form or another. Willard accurately summarizes and clarifies our basic concern in these articles in a fresh way. On one hand, we want forcefully critique sheer arbitrariness of a strictly secular approach psychology, one that dogmatically excludes any consideration of idea, in Willard's words, that the human being is built live in relationship God. On other hand, we oppose all dogmatisms and want affirm a kind of psychological inquiry that is people in general, including nonbelievers. That, indeed, is our challenge. Willard wonders why dominant secular methodologies in psychology have such a grip on field. How and on what basis do they claim cognitive authority, authority to claim know and exercise power based upon that claim? His answer is illuminating. Secularism and naturalism have come dominate intellectual professions for largely extraneous reasons. One reason is protect these professions from inappropriate interference by religious or civil authorities. Another is that many of these intellectuals simply assume that religion is unworthy of serious consideration and hostile or at least irrelevant good social science. The second of these reasons is arbitrary and dogmatic, something that has been proven or even rendered plausible. The first has its merits, namely protect freedom of inquiry. Unfortunately, however, this ideal is not defended in an entirely open and honest manner, where its true meaning and relation other ideals and values will be clarified and deepened over time. Rather it is grounded in a usually in a version of liberal individualism (Richardson, 2005) asserting that all moral and spiritual values are ultimately subjective or preferential except moral principle that everyone has right pursue good life as they see fit, so long as they do not interfere with rights of others do same. It has been suggested that this approach is too thin even support its own best values of equal rights and human dignity and that and its contradictions actually help generate many of debilitating tensions of modern life and (Sandel, 1996). Just this disguised ideology produces bizarre and tortured situation in social sciences where investigators adopt value-freedom or value-neutrality as a firm moral principle (Slife, Smith, and Burch-field, 2003), thus building a degree of inauthenticity into groundwork of enterprise. This situation has deep political roots, Willard reminds us. They go back at least Max Weber, I might point out, who in early part of last century laid basis for a conception of social science as Wertfrei or value-free. As philosopher Richard Bernstein (1976, p. 46 ff.) notes, however, Weber's struggle with this issue was more searching and complex than social scientists usually appreciate. …