The
“New” Psychology
If
you went to college, you probably took an introductory Psychology class – Psych
101. If your children go to college, they will probably take one too. But for students
today, Psychology class will be very different than it was for their parents –
way back when. Today, students taking Psychology do so at a time predicted by
Charles Darwin in the final chapter of The
Origin of Species. Darwin described a new paradigm for understanding human
psychology, an evolutionary paradigm that 150 years later dominates modern
psychology.
Darwin
predicted:
“In
the distant future I see open fields for far more important research.
Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement
of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the
origin of man and his history.”
That
is bold. That is the state of modern psychology today. Darwin’s theory quickly transformed many
sciences, but it was slow to penetrate psychology – its implications were too
shocking. Evolutionary Psychology (EP) is called “new” because only recently
has it become the dominant naturalistic paradigm for describing Mankind’s Mind.
Until recently, Behaviorism, Freudian psycho-dynamic psychology, and humanism were
the dominant theories.
But
Darwin left nothing to doubt – “each mental power and capacity” means every
topic in every Psychology textbook. According to Darwin, we acquired all our
mental powers and capacities (even those we think of as uniquely human,
special, and God-like) bit by bit, over a very long time, through variation and
natural selection. Evolutionary Psychology explains the Mind -- consciousness,
morality, our capacity to make decisions and plans, religion, love, altruism,
hate, dreams, and everything else that makes us human -- in terms of mental
modules that evolved to solve problems of living faced by our Pleistocene Epoch
ancestors.
The
challenge for Christian students taking psychology today may be to not laugh
out loud in class at the evolutionary explanations of the Mind. The opportunity
is for students to understand and effectively communicate that the Christian
worldview is a more logical, internally consistent, and meaningful paradigm for
understanding the big questions about the Mind. After all, it is God’s grandest
creation.
There
is an opportunity because many who believe in Evolution may not have really
thought it through, stopping short of believing that it applies to them. But Darwin was clear. The whole Theory of Evolution,
not just evolutionary psychology, hinges ultimately, not on fossils and geology
or even sub cellular irreducible complexity, but on the wonders of the human
mind. It requires that every human psychological characteristic, all humanity
throughout human history, be explainable by variation, survival and
reproductive advantages in an unbroken line backwards through to the
Pleistocene and beyond.
The
evidence is weak for a faith so strong.
©2013
Tim Rice
.
Tim Rice, D. Min., LPC teaches
Psychology from a Christian Perspective to High School students. He is the
author of Psychology: A Christian Perspective, High School Edition and
Homeschool Psych: Preparing Christian Homeschool Students of Psych 101. Dr. Tim
and his wife Tina are 20 year homeschool veterans. Contact Dr. Tim at tim@homeschoolpsych.com or www.homeschoolpsych.com.
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