Religion, Spirituality, Philosophy and Science Essay
This week you must defend your perspectives in an academic fashion by using psychology concepts
as references. There are three reasons why this is important:
1) personal opinions are idiosyncratic and cannot possibly be objective,
2) personal experiences cannot be measured or proven right or wrong. Finally,
3) in psychology unscientific theories and methods of exploration are considered to be subjective and
unethical. In short, relying exclusively on personal opinions and experiences is unscientific and
contrary to the field of psychology.
Keeping this in mind, when you write your paper on the subject described below, make sure that you
rely on academic concepts rather than personal knowledge. Personal opinions or perspectives may
be appreciated insofar as they provide real-world examples. Here are the guidelines for these essays:
All your perspectives are to rely on academic concepts that belong to the field of study.
The use of a minimum of four (4) scholarly references is mandatory. Essays exclusively
based on personal opinions will be considered unacceptable for grading and assigned a zero.
It is mandatory to use the textbook as a scholarly reference and highly recommended to use
at the very least one of the weekly articles or chapters. All citations and the reference list must
follow APA style guidelines.
References to the videos posted on the learning materials files, references to films, websites
are all welcome as long as you understand that they do not count as scholarly references.
The required length for this essay is four (4) pages minimum and five (5) pages maximum.
Subject of the Essay
Religion, Spirituality, Philosophy and Science: What do they bring to the understanding of human
behavior?
Subjects Description
For centuries, religious beliefs and philosophical concepts have inspired different theories of human
behavior. While religious beliefs classified human behavior according to moral principles, philosophy
encouraged a self-reflective and objective observation of thinking process. After the 19th century,
when psychological science was born from the first laboratory trials, scientifically-grounded theories
and methods have been viewed as the only acceptable framework to explain human behavior and the
mental processes that underlie it. From the last 30 years, clinical psychology and neuroscience have
been inspired by Eastern spirituality. Today, yoga and meditation-based psychotherapies are
numerous. The potentially transformative effects of some of these spiritual practices on the human
brain have been proved by behavioral neurosciences.
Questions to Address
Should scientific psychological theories and methods substantiate the importance of spirituality?
Should spiritual and religious theories validate the exploration of psychological science? Are
psychological science, philosophy, spirituality, and religion entirely different? Are they incompatible?
Or, on the contrary, do you think that they should be simultaneously explored? However you choose
to answer to these questions, you must explain why.
