Can you be a psychologist and believe in God?

The question at the top of this text may be surprising to some, but the truth is that it is a doubt that on many occasions assails people who study psychologyespecially during your first years of college or before deciding on this career. And yes, there is a logic behind these kinds of concerns.

After all, the study of cognition and psychological mechanisms, historically, has been more related to atheism than other areas of knowledge. For example, the atheism of figures like Sigmund Freud and of B. F. Skinner is well known despite being rare in its day, and today two of the five great representatives of the absence of faith in the divine are investigators of the mind: Sam Harris and Daniel Dennett.

On the other hand, there are incidents that indicate that analytical thinking, necessary in any field of science and therefore also in psychology, weakens faith in God. In more general terms, moreover, it has been seen that psychologists who teach at American universities they are the least religious group of teachers. What happen?

Psychology Professionals and Consistent Believers?

After all, one of the great sources of religious faith is the idea that one's own mind and consciousness exist outside of the material world. It is very easy to naturally assume that "the mind" is something separate from the brain., something spiritual or originating from an extraterrestrial reality. Now, psychologists are in charge of discovering how the mind works and what rules guide it, and they do it just as a geologist would study a rock: through the scientific method.

That is, for a psychologist no god enters the equation of how the mind works. Does this mean that you cannot be a psychologist and a believer at the same time? In this article I will not try to solve the question of whether there is a higher intelligence or not (that depends entirely on what you choose to believe yourself), but I will reflect on the way in which religion relates to the work of psychologists in their professional field and on the way in which this can be mixed with beliefs personal.

The Atheism and Agnosticism Debate in Science

If we look closely at the kind of concern from which we started, we will realize that the debate really is broader. When we ask ourselves if psychologists can be believers, we are really wondering if scientists in general can be believers.

The reason is that one of the pillars of scientific progress is what is known as the principle of parsimony, according to which, other things being equal, the simplest explanation (that is, the one that leaves fewer loose ends) is better. And when it comes to religion, belief in a specific god can be tremendously difficult to sustain without raising more questions than it tries to answer.

Although the idea that the universe, human beings and what some people call "psyche" are the creation of a higher intelligence It is not a totally crazy idea and rejectable by science as such, which is practically impossible to defend from the science is that this god meets a series of specific characteristics that are written in sacred texts. That is why it is considered that scientists, during their working hours, should act as if they were agnostics or atheists.

In other words, religious belief cannot play a relevant role in the theories and hypotheses with which one works, because religion is based on faith, not on reasoning derived from deductions about what kinds of explanations are most useful in describing reality with what is known and proven. Faith is based on ideas we believe a prioriWhile in science any idea can be revised or discarded if better explanations appear when contrasting ideas with reality. This applies to psychology as well.

Beliefs or proven facts?

Based on what we have seen about how to work in science, if defending the idea that our minds are actually entities created within a simulation carried out by a large computer the size of the universe already means committing, basing the ideas with which we work in psychology on the belief that not only There is such a god, but it is also as described in the Bible (who watches us to see if we act good or bad, that he loves us, etc.) it is tremendously unlucky.

And it's unfortunate because, scientifically, to assume very far-fetched ideas about how we behave without having proof supporting them is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty. For example, proposing solutions to a patient based on the idea that certain acts will cause a god to reward that person "healing" is not only a violation of the ethical code of the psychologist, but it is also totally irresponsible.

Now, does not believing in a god and getting involved in his religion imply doing it 24 hours a day? For some people this may be so; as I have said, each one lives her religion as they want. However, the important thing to bear in mind is that religion, based on beliefs that one decides to embrace by choice, cannot be imposed on others. And science, which is a collective effort to create knowledge that does not depend entirely on faith and belief, cannot be distorted by the influence of religion.

There is no one way to believe

So to the question of whether or not psychologists can believe in God, we must answer: it depends on how it is created.

For those who believe in God means literally believing religious dogmas and acting accordingly all the time, the answer will be no, because psychology, as a science, consists of questioning all ideas and not taking any explanation for granted on the functioning and origin of mental processes, all without making value judgments based on religious texts about certain behaviors and tendencies (homosexuality, polygamy, etc.).

Who, on the other hand, is clear that no action derived from the belief in a god can harm others, religiosity does not have to be a problem. Maybe the cognitive dissonance from leave beliefs aside That they believe themselves to be fundamental and structuring of their own identity is uncomfortable, but it is a sacrifice without which there can be no progress in this scientific field.

The idea, in short, is the following: in working hours, psychologists must keep religion (not morality) totally out of the question. If you think that you cannot do that because it involves a great cognitive dissonance in believing that you must always be devout and submitting all ideas to faith, psychology is not for you.