eChurch Blog

Stacy over at Accepting Abundance has a superb, must read, blog post. But then I would say that wouldn’t I.

Why not hop over and give us your thoughts.

On an aside, the editor of the book I’m reading and reviewing – Professor C H Cook (Psychiatry) – has kindly responded to my unsolicited email requesting a further reading list.

Here’s the list, just in case anyone’s making an Amazon trip and is feeling exceptionally benevolent – I could always set up a wishlist – hey, nothing ventured….

John Swinton’s “Spirituality & Mental Healthcare” (JKP, 2001). – A real classic

“Spirituality & Mental Health” – (Peter Gilbert) – Just out

“Spirituality, Values & Mental Health” (Eds Coyte, Gilbert, Nichols, Publ Jessica Kingsley, 2007)

“Religion & Spirituality in Psychiatry” (Eds Huguelet & Koenig, Cambridge, 2009) – US Scholars

I know I should have done this yonks ago, but I’ve now installed a plugin that should render this blog mobile friendly.

I know a few of you access this blog via iPhones and what have you, and as I haven’t access to such wizardry gadgetry, I would really appreciate someone testing this out for me.

I’m under the impression this blog should now automatically detect you are using a mobile device, and act accordingly.

I’ve opted to utilise the free WordPress Mobile Pack, which seems to have solid and positive reviews.

For anyone strange enough to be curious what this blog would look like on a mobile device, you can click the “Switch to our mobile site” link at the bottom of the page.

Do let me know if it’s OK, as I haven’t made any changes to the default settings or theme and may well have to.

Stacy over at Accepting Abundance (fab blogger – one for your feed reader) has a post up entitled: Scientific Mystery and Absolute Mystery.

Here’s some snippets, but do hop over and read it all:

In Catholic theology it is acknowledged that there are two kinds of mysteries. A mystery is something that is hidden or unknown that we seek to know. The distinction between scientific, or natural, mystery and divine, or absolute, mystery lies in the difference in what the created mind can know and what it cannot know.

We humans want to understand how things work and move, how they are related and how to manipulate matter in order to improve our lives by making them healthier, easier or more beautiful. Science seeks to understand and reveal the mysteries of the natural world. Science, exact science, is the quantitative study of physical things in motion and while that may sound simple, it works so well.

[.....]

The Holy Trinity, the Incarnation and Divine Grace are revealed Truths to mankind, but they are not natural truths of the physical world. They are absolute mysteries, which means that while not contrary to human reason they are, and will always remain, beyond human reason to fully comprehend. They not only surpass the power of the created intellect in this life, but also in eternal life. These highest Truths concern God himself, and simply, creatures (we) are not God.

[.....]

Thus scientific discovery, which must measure physical things, has no business making divine propositions, but the combination of scientific mystery unveiled and divine mystery unveiled can work together to lead us towards ultimate Truth because the One who reveals is the same One who creates, and He is existence itself.

I made the following observations – and please do bear in mind this was written off-the-cuff and I’m certainly a layman in the hard sciences.

According to the book I’m reviewing: “Spirituality and Psychiatry“ the main accusation levelled against exact sciences are that they are prone to reductionism.

This reductionist tendency serves to hinder these sciences from exploring anything other than the quantitative, objectively observable.

As a consequence, issues of the interplay between humans and their spirituality are ignored by these sciences.

What I am in fact proposing, is that even with 100% total reductionist scientific understanding of the physical workings of humans – including neuroscience of the brain – this may not lead us to a better understanding of what it is to be human. The fact we also have the Divine spark within us, confounds this further.

And so your conclusion would seem a valid fix:

…the combination of scientific mystery unveiled and divine mystery unveiled can work together to lead us towards ultimate Truth because the One who reveals is the same One who creates, and He is existence itself.

This was Stacey’s excellent response:

Stuart, this is great! Thank you. I still consider myself new to this stuff and that’s why I am careful to reference where I get the ideas I’m explaining. I love how Stanley Jaki views science. He puts it in its place. These days people make too much of it.

In the theology courses I’ve taken (which are only 4 now) I learned for the first time how these new paradigms are not new at all. Before the general time period of the Reformation, Descartes, Kant and especially Hume, science, philosophy, the human individual body and soul were dealt with holistically. Cartesian dualism invited the materialism and empiricism that the book you are reading (I read your reviews and they are very useful!) is addressing. The short synopsis is that Cartesianism taught that mind and body were separate, the general attitude (protest and reform) away from religion focused on empiricism/materialism, so the mind/spirit/soul were dismissed as things of religion more or less. As Jaki puts it, that’s when psychiatry and psychology “lost their minds” and became weak disciplines in trying to be too physical.

In a Trinity course I learned that the word “person” came from the first century Trinitarian debates to explain three Persons in one God. That concept of individual led to the word person being applied to human individuals (and angels). “Person” is derived from the Greek word “psyche”, thus psychiatry and psychology were never intended to be exact sciences to deal with the quantifiable physical world, but human person sciences that deal with body and soul inextricably intertwined.

The divorce of science and religion was most prevalent in the UK and the US around the 1700-1800′s and it’s permeated our cultures now. People today are not taught how to talk about the “soul” yet it is as much who we are as our bodies – together.

Reductionism in exact science is appropriate. In discourse about the human person, it is not. That’s how I understand it anyway.

The wisdom of the Church! Yet again. It never ceases to amaze me.

As if I haven’t been overly verbose already, I’ll also add that I’ve dealt with mental illness and healing for me really came in learning to accept myself (I’m intense!) for who I am. When I realized God has a purpose and I am the way I am for a reason I learned to use it instead of fight it. Meds helped but only in that context. Thus the title of my blog, in part.

You are onto something in your thinking about bringing faith back into treatment. I with you 100%. Keep saying that! Thank you for saying that!

Super response, which speaks for itself.

On a personal note, this is the second encouragement I’ve received today relating to my Spirituality and Psychiatry book review, which is so motivating.

I’m currently thoroughly enjoying the next chapter entitled: Neuroscience of the Spirit, and look forward to sharing my findings with you.

I’m sorry I simply can’t resist this, even though I’ve already inflicted it on the Twitter community today, and only got one laugh.

Is this not a superb headline:

Historians find old cemeteries in grave condition

Classic. Kudos to USA Today.

Does this quote not capture the very heartbeat of the fallen human condition, namely, the replacement of God with self?

A huge percentage of the stuff that I tend to be automatically certain of is, it turns out, totally wrong and deluded. Here’s one example of the utter wrongness of something I tend to be automatically sure of: Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe, the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely talk about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness, because it’s so socially repulsive, but it’s pretty much the same for all of us, deep down. It is our default-setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not at the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there in front of you, or behind you, to the left or right of you, on your TV, or your monitor, or whatever. Other people’s thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real — you get the idea. But please don’t worry that I’m getting ready to preach to you about compassion or other-directedness or the so-called “virtues.” This is not a matter of virtue — it’s a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default-setting, which is to be deeply and literally self-centered, and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self.

SOURCE

I’ve just posted on a new Gallup poll over at Theology in the News, which looks at American perceptions on moral issues. I’m not sure the results can be extrapolated for the UK, but I did find them interesting nonetheless:

So the top 5 most contentious and divisive issues are:

Doctor Assisted Suicide – Abortion – Having a baby out of wedlock – Buying or wearing animal fur – Gay relationships

The top 5 most immoral issues are:

Marital adultery – Polygamy – Cloning Humans – Suicide – Pornography

The top 5 morally acceptable issues are:

Divorce – Death Penalty – Gambling – Medical research using stem cells obtained from human embryos – Sexual relations between unmarried men and women

Tell me again, why are we bombing the crap out of Libya?

“NATO has intensified bombings and continues to create victims. The missiles are falling everywhere and, unfortunately, not only affect military zones, but also civilian areas. The people in Tripoli are suffering, even if nobody talks about it. ” So says Mgr Giovanni Innocenzo Martinelli, Apostolic Vicar of Tripoli. The prelate said that the bombing last night damaged several buildings, including a Coptic church located a few hundred meters from a military barracks.

According to the Libyan Government, the NATO operation against Gaddafi has killed more than 700 people and injured over four thousand, but so far officials from the regime do not allow the verification of that information. Monsignor Martinelli explains that the city lacks fuel and the population is afraid to leave home; psychological damage is also caused by the bombings.

The prelate emphasizes the active presence of more than three thousand migrant Filipino Catholics, working in different hospitals in the city and throughout the country. They attend Mass every week in the cathedral despite the bombings. For the prelate, “they represent the heart of the local Catholic community and are a testimony of love and service to the Libyan people who suffer.”

….continue reading

I’ve read previously of the love and courage of the Catholic Filipino health care workers in Tripoli. Although they had the option to leave, most have refused in order to continue working in the hospitals.

The superb new Biblioblog Carnival is out courtesy of Joel:

Unsettled Christianity – Biblioblogging Carnival – Unsettled Edition

This is the eighth installment of my posts based on the book: Spirituality and Psychiatry, which was kindly sent to me by the Royal College of Psychiatrists.

The first part can be found here, the second here, the third here, the fourth here, the fifth here, the sixth here and the seventh here.

Spirituality features prominently within substance misuse psychiatry, which is not surprising when one considers the spiritual nature of the hugely influential 12-step ideology of Alcoholics Anonymous.

This spirituality is not explicitly Christian and the references and definitions of God are according to the individuals understanding.

Page 145

God is understood by the individual according to their own faith tradition, folk religion or personal notion of the Divine which is unique to that individual. Alternatively, a ‘Higher Power’ is construed in some even less religious way as ‘the group’, or the 12-step programme itself. What is important is that a power outside of oneself is identified – a power greater than self which is not self. It is not so much that the member of AA has to believe in God (although many do) as that they must believe that they are ‘not God’.

In terms of this generalised spirituality, this chapter provides evidence from studies that indicate an invariably positive relationship between abstinence and spirituality, and length of sobriety and spirituality.

CAVEAT: The one interesting exception to this is a study of clergy alcoholics published by Fichter in 1982 in which spirituality appeared unrelated to abstinence.

In terms of specifically Christian treatment programmes, this chapter only notes one study, which is the only relevant outcome study of addiction treatment and Christian spirituality, with good methodology.

Rudolf Moos and his colleagues (Moos et al, 1978) studied 97 men in a residential Salvation Army treatment programme for the treatment of ‘skid row’ alcoholics. The spiritual components of the Salvation Army programme included attendance at AA meetings as well as more specifically Christian counselling and worship. The programme also included therapy groups and community meetings and opportunity for recreation. Residents improved significantly on seven out of nine outcome measures, and those who participated more actively did significantly better on four of these measures in comparison with those who participated less actively. Comparisons with half-way house and hospital-based programmes were favourable.

Undoubtedly spirituality and substance misuse are intimately related and Qualitative and quantitative research show evidence both for a protective effect against the development of substance misuse, and a positive relationship in recovery.

This is interesting especially given that it’s the BBC’s own research.

Some viewers still believe the broadcaster has a Left-wing or ‘liberal bias’, the consultation found.

Others said ‘positive discrimination’ was still a ‘notable’ problem with the BBC’s recruitment process.

According to viewers, Christians are badly treated with ‘derogatory stereotypes’ which portray them as ‘weak’ or ‘bigoted’.

It was suggested that there was a bias against Christianity and that other religions were better represented.

And some felt older women were being ‘marginalised’.

Read all

I would add that the BBC systematically adopts an anti-Israel bias.

Oh, and they love indulging in a bit of Gaia worship.

If you want to observe the ongoing bias of the BBC, then I recommend the Biased BBC Blog.