There are times when I am especially glad that I am an atheist and as such do not hold any religious bias, aside from an obvious bias against all religions. Studying a science must be next to impossible for those of a religious background, with knowledge and customs from childhood conflicting so strongly with later knowledge and research at academic institutions - and by this I refer to universities and non-religious high schools. Once, a friend of mine was telling an acquaintance of mine about a feild trip they had gone on for Geology, involving looking at fossils. She had been explaining how interesting and informative fossils were (each to their own, right?) when the acquaintence snorted and said "Fossils were only put in the Earth by the Devil to trick us."
Wow.
You always kind of think "surely not?" and yet time and again, evidence is dismissed. I feel very lucky that I had no such influences and pressures on my childhood, although I do know of a contingent of people that became involved in religion in their teens, which seems even more bizarre as by this age people are obviously old enough to have recieved alternate scientific explanations. I can always understand why older people 'find God' as studies have shown that people become more religious-like when they are forced to contemplate death, but teens? That never made sense to me.
Here's something else that doesn't make a heap of sense. Last week on Wednesday I attended a Psychology lecture regarding intercultural psychology, and let us just say that I don't have enough pages to write the problems with this lecture. Many people walked out due to the culturally insesitive nature of the lecture (ironically enough), others were horrified at the clear lack of scientific theory.
Thelecture was based on Jewish psychology, delivered by an Israeli professor, which initially promised to be quite interesting despite the fact that the lecturer's voice quite cutely reminded me of Eurovision song contest. Alas, it was not to be. She began by listing off four pscyhologists, Freud, Addler, and two others whom I don't really remember because Freud was definately the focus, due to his relatively undeserved fame. These psychologists were mentioned because they were all jewish (personally if Frued were in any way related to my religion I would be glossing over it, not highlighting it, but there you go).
After expaining this, she commented on the dominance of Freud's ideas in western society (what?!) and how very recently an Israeli psychologist had come up with an alternative (alternative to what? Freud stopped being taken seriously about 50 years ago!). This psychologist, Something-berg, suggested that in Israel, the alternative theory, 'Tsum Tsim' or 'Contraction' was based on collaboration, rather than the competition that capatilist western societies were based on. She continued to outline that instead of the competitiona and fighting advocated by western society, Israel had a community focus.
Tsum Tsim is based on the Holy Bible, which of course, she informed us, was the source of all absolute truths (or something bizarre like that) and in Israel, the more you read the bible, the more you will enjoy life. Tsum Tsim is revolutionary, because the only way for everyone to reach heaven is for everyone to pray for each other, because only by praying for each other will the Israeli people be rewarded, praying for yourself does not work (or something along those lines).
After a whole heap of Westerner bashing and religious babble, she began to talk about differenced in cultural perception, which are accounted for in Tsum Tsim, which says that many things in life are not rational...they're mystical, and therefore cannot be dealt with by traditional psychological methods due to their spiritual nature. She went on to give an example.
"If I told you that a man heard the angel Gabrielle's voice every night before he went to sleep, what would you say?"
I'd say he had some symptoms of schizophrenia. She followed up with this:
"Now what if I told you that, according to Judaism, we believe that when you go to sleep, angel Gabrielle is on one shoulder, and angel Michael is on the other. Would you say he is crazy?"
Possibly. No, probably.
"No, he is simply very religious. It is not the way westerners understand."
Here's a note: Western countries have religion, and if they here god talking to them, they still are considered potentially schizophrenic. There is no 'Get out of psych ward free' card for religious people. Here in the western world, we know that people who show signs of schizophrenia can be dangerous to others as well as to themselves.
This atrocious lecture managed to have everyone in the lecture theatre slightly amazed, largely horrified and in the end, trying to muffle their laughter. In one lecture, Psychology managed to strip from itself the little standing it had with other sciences, undoing years of entirely empirical research to try and be taken seriously as a scientific discipline.
Well done University, that was the most hilarious lecture in my life, and it makes me damn glad that I'm not religious, so that there is nothing blinding me from the truth, so that I can always make an educated decision based on fact, not feeling when it comes to other people's health.
But hey, maybe I'm just not mystical enough to suceed in life...
I've got to get myself a unicorn.
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