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| Behavioral Sciences in Support of Religion, Part 1
Dr. Barrios, a clinical psychologist and founder/director of the Self-Programmed Control (SPC) Center in Los Angeles is fast becoming one of the leading authorities in the field of Alternative Therapies. His invention - the Stress Control Biofeedback Card; his pioneering work in psychoneuroimmunology and cancer; and his highly effective SPC program for dealing with addictions have added a new dimension to the field of medicine. Formally with The Institute of Comprehensive Medicine and The Health Care Management Institute, Dr. Barrios has lectured to thousands of medical professionals across the country. In 1996 he received the first annual Cancer Federation Award in psychoneuroimmunology and was nominated for the prestigious Norman Cousins Award in Mind-Body Health. In the Fall of 2001 his comprehensive Theory of Hypnosis was published in Contemporary Hypnosis.
There are many who believe that science and religion are antithetical, at opposite ends; that one contradicts the other. This paper is presented to show not only that this need not be so but that in fact science can actually be used to support many religious beliefs and phenomena that have heretofore been scoffed at by many. As a result, it is hoped not only that many former atheists and agnostics will now also be able to derive the benefits of religion but that religion too will as a result learn additional ways of being more effective.
I feel that a major cause of the rift between science and religion has been that in the past religion has relied heavily on super-natural (beyond the laws of nature) explanations for religious phenomena. But it is the contention of this paper that it is no longer necessary to do so; that there is now more than sufficient logical and scientific support for these phenomena so that we no longer need to rely on the super-natural explanations; that we no longer need to simply accept things on faith alone. Yes, many of these phenomena can be considered super-normal or extra-ordinary in the sense that they are definitely not your average everyday occurrences, but this does not mean that they have to thus be considered super-natural. In support of this contention, this paper will attempt to present the logical, rational or scientific support for a number of key religious concepts and phenomena one by one. This will be done by logically and rationally answering a number of questions that have heretofore been thought by many to be impossible to answer in this way. This includes the following questions:
(1) Is there a God? (2) Is There a Heaven and Hell? (3) Is Christ God? (4) What is Religion? (5) What is Belief and What is Its Purpose in Religion? (6) Is There Free Will and Are Some Religions Fatalistic? (7) Is Religion Needed? (8) What is the Basis of Altruism? (9) What is the Purpose of Life? (10) Can There Be False or Dangerous Religions? (11) Can Some Religions Be More Effective Than Others and How Can We Measure This? (12) Is Faith Healing Real? (13) How Does Prayer Work? (14) Is There Life Everlasting?
Is There A God?
To begin with, before any such question of whether there is a God can be answered, it would be helpful if we first provide a definition of what we mean by God. I feel the following definition is one most people would accept: God can be defined as a concept made up of three major components. Or to put it another way, God is a concept made up of three subconcepts:
(1) The first subconcept is the lawfulness of nature; that is that there are universal laws of nature throughout the universe. Knowing that there are such laws will help to rationally explain and predict many phenomena and allow us to more readily use these laws to our benefit. One such major benefit would be a peace of mind that comes from knowing that things can be explained and predicted thus providing a harmonious or ordered and non-chaotic view of the universe - a way of lessening the fear of the unknown so to speak.
A second major benefit is that certain gains can be derived from following and using these laws as opposed to the pain and suffering that occur if one goes against them. An example of the former would be learning how to harness the power of explosions for the benefit (rather than the destruction) of mankind - as in harnessing the explosion of gasoline for moving vehicles or the explosion of dynamite for "moving mountains". An example of the latter would be the consequences of defying the law of gravity by jumping out of a tall building. It can also be used to support such religious contentions as "the wages of sin are death". For example, we know that lifestyle sins of excessive drinking, excessive eating (gluttony), excessive smoking, excessive drug taking, or promiscuity can lead to serious health problems (such as cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, lung cancer and AIDS) and eventual death - by defying the laws of physiology and pathology.
It could even help to support the contention that God (through His laws of nature) created the universe. Although we don't currently know the exact laws of nature explaining the start of the universe, it does not mean that such laws do not exist or that we won't someday know what these laws are.
This first subconcept of God can be looked upon as where the all-knowing or omniscient aspect of God Comes from.
(2) The second subconcept of God would be that if you follow a particular way or ideal guidance in life, you will be more likely to achieve optimum peace of mind, fulfillment and happiness (heaven) and a minimum of suffering (hell) in life.
When we have incorporated this way of life into our innermost being, we can say we have God within us; and when we personify Him and ask for His help and guidance, we are using a general approach to tapping into this wisdom, this built-in way of life to find the appropriate aspect of these teachings to help us with the need at hand. This points out an important point for insuring that God is with you and will help you to the fullest - namely, that you should make sure you are fully aware of all His teachings. To merely pray to God for His help and guidance without fully knowing or following what God stands for is not going to help you as much.
This second subconcept of God fits in with that part in the bible - the 14th chapter, 6th verse of the gospel of John, where Christ is quoted as saying, "I am the way, the truth and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me."
(3) The third subconcept of God would be that through our strong belief in God we can have greater control over our destiny. This has to do with the "higher power" aspect of God. It is through the power of belief that we can tap into the higher power aspect of God that will in turn allow us to fully incorporate the guidance aspect of God ("...the way..."). For most people it is normally very hard to change. The power of belief facilitates change. The scientific basis of this belief factor and how it can give us the will or power to control and redirect (if necessary) our lives so as to achieve optimum happiness and fulfillment is discussed below in the section on belief.
This third subconcept of God can be looked upon as support for the omnipotent aspect that is often ascribed to God.
If one accepts the above three-component definition of God, then when you say you believe in God, you are essentially saying: that you believe in the lawfulness of nature; that there is ideal way of life that can lead to optimum peace of mind and happiness; and that through the power of belief you can have greater control over your destiny. You are also saying that if you go against God (i.e., if you go against the laws of nature, do not try to lead a more ideal way of life, and do not believe that you can have control over your life), you will suffer the consequences.
The latter also helps to answer a question often posed by skeptics: If God is an all-loving God, a benevolent God, then how do you account for all the pain and suffering in the world? The answer, simply stated, is that much of the misery in the world is caused when people go against God (as defined above). Is Christ God?
The answer to this question again depends on how you define God. According to the definition given above, we can say that to the extent that Christ is "...the way..." (John 14:6), that Christ's teachings epitomize the ideal way of leading one's life, to the extent that Christ personifies or embodies this concept of God (subconcept 2), Christ then is God.
Even most non-Christians would agree that Christ's basic teachings are right in line with a philosophy of life for helping one achieve self-actualization - the highest levels one is capable of. His concepts of "Ask and ye shall receive"; "Seek and ye shall find"; and "Believe and all things are possible" are a truly powerful means for helping one break free of negative programming and producing positive changes. And His focus on looking for the good in others, looking for the good in ourselves, looking for the good after a tragic situation, learning from our mistakes, being able to admit our faults, etc. are part of a set of positive attitudes towards oneself, others and life aimed at helping people achieve optimum peace of mind, fulfillment and happiness. To the extent that these teachings are ideal, Christ would then personify God.
Obviously, the same approach could be used to determine if Mohammed or Moses or Buddha or... were God or personified God. The obvious question is how would one determine which of the above mentioned great beings' teachings was closest to being the ideal; i.e. which one of the above beings was closest to personifying the true God? This question can best be answered by following the suggestions given in the section below entitled "Can Some Religions Be More Effective Than Others and How Can We Measure This?"
What is Religion and What Are The Main Functions of Religion?
I feel that religion is made up of three basic components: an anti-chaos or order-to-the-universe factor; a guidance factor; and a belief factor. And the three main functions of religion are to provide: (1) answers to allay fears of the unknown; (2) guidance or a way of achieving optimum peace of mind and happiness; and (3) ways of building belief.
What Is Belief and What Is Its Purpose In Religion?
I would define belief as a state of mind, usually evoked by words, whereby there is concentration on a thought to the exclusion of any thoughts or sensory stimuli that would contradict that thought. This definition of belief allows you to more readily see the reality of belief in terms of: how it can affect behavior; how it can directly affect the body; and why and how this effect can be so powerful.
The two major components of belief are: (a) the thought focused on along with the response connected to the thought; and (b) the inhibitory set inhibiting any stimuli (both cognitive and sensory) capable of interfering with the response to the thought. The stronger one believes, the stronger will be the inhibitory set blocking any interference and thus the stronger the response to that thought. In support of this contention see the sections on belief in B.F. Skinner's Verbal Behavior (1957, pp. 159, 160 & 366) and suggestion in Pavlov's Conditioned Reflexes (1927, p. 407).
To verify the reality of belief, then, we would first have to confirm that thoughts can automatically evoke actual responses. Pavlov was perhaps the first to shed light on this area when he spoke of the potential of words and thoughts to evoke responses as a result of previous conditioning or association:
"Speech on account of the whole preceding life of an adult is connected up with [through association or conditioning] all the internal and external stimuli which can reach the cortex signaling all of them and replacing them and, therefore, can call forth all those reactions of the organism which are normally determined by the actual stimuli themselves" (Pavlov, 1927 p.407).
An obvious example of this is the effect a word or thought like "lemon" can have. If someone were to suggest to you thoughts of biting into a sour, tart and tangy lemon, you might find yourself quickly starting to salivate. This, because the word or thought "lemon" through previous association with the natural salivary response to biting into a lemon becomes a conditioned stimulus able to evoke the same salivary response. And the stronger you believed you were actually biting into a lemon, the more focused you would be on the thought and the more likely you would be to start salivating. (See also the chapter "Belief becomes biology in Cousin's book Head First: The Biology of Hope, 1989.)
The second component of belief that needs to be verified is the inhibitory set aspect. Since belief can be looked upon as one way of focusing attention on a particular thought, one area that can provide such support is the area of the neurophysiology of attention and the work of such pioneers as Hernandez-Peon (1959). The latter has shown that when an organism is attentive to one stimulus (thoughts can be looked upon as cognitive stimuli), other stimuli impinging on it tend to be inhibited. And the more focused the attention, the stronger the inhibitory set. The converse would of course also be true - the stronger the inhibitory set, the more focused the attention (and reaction) to the stimulus.
Work in the area of hypnosis and suggestion can also be used to support the concept of an inhibitory set aspect to belief. The concepts of hypnosis, suggestion and belief are all closely related:
Suggestion can be defined as a verbal means of evoking a belief in a person. Lindzey (1954, p. 27), summarizing a number of definitions of suggestion, states:
"In these and in similar definitions, attention is called to some arbitrary restriction in the determinates of behavior...Granted that suggestion proceeds according to the laws of association (conditioning), still we must allow for the blocking of normal associations so that the end result in behavior is due to a selected field of determinants."
Barrios (2001) defines hypnosis as a heightened state of suggestibility (or belief) resulting from a heightened inhibitory set produced by the hypnotic induction. To get some idea of how strong this inhibitory set can be, one need only look at studies summarizing the effectiveness of the use of hypnosis in surgery. Under hypnosis, suggestions of anesthesia lead to such strong inhibition of pain stimuli that even amputations can be conducted without a pain response (Kroger, 1977. p.212).
As Pavlov puts it, in the state of heightened belief produced by hypnosis, a suggestion
"in correspondence with the general law concentrates the excitation in the cortex of the subject (which is in a condition of partial inhibition) in some definite narrow region, at the same time intensifying (by negative induction) the inhibition of the rest of the cortex and so abolishing all competing effects of contemporary stimuli and traces left by previously received ones. This accounts for the large and practically insurmountable influences of suggestion as a stimulus during hypnosis". (Pavlov, 1927 p. 407, italics added).
To fully appreciate how much stronger the response to verbal stimuli can be in a heightened state of belief as a result of the strong inhibitory set, perhaps it might be useful to use an analogy or two:
"The result of this elimination of competing negative thoughts is analogous to a tug of war where the other side suddenly lets go. An even better analogy to illustrate the power of [heightened belief] is that of the laser beam. We all know how powerful a laser beam can be; it can cut through thick steel. But how many know that a laser beam is ordinary light that has been treated so as to concentrate all its rays and bring them into harmony. Ordinary light emits light rays in all directions and at different phases. In the laser beam all rays are emitted in one direction and all at the same phase. This concentration and lack of conflict is what produces the tremendous power of the laser beam." (Barrios, 1985 pp. 16-17).
Studies on the placebo response (which is based on the power of belief or expectation) also support a strong inhibitory set component. Take for instance the study of Dr. Stewart Wolf (1950) of women who endured persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy:
"These women swallowed small, balloon tipped tubes that once positioned in the stomachs, allowed researchers to record the contractions associated with waves of nausea and vomiting. Then the women were given a drug they were told would cure their problem. In fact, they were given the opposite - syrup of ipecac - a substance that causes vomiting. Remarkably, the patient's nausea and vomiting ceased entirely and their stomach contractions, as measured through the balloons, returned to normal. Because they believed they received antinausea medicine, the women reversed the action of a powerful drug." (Benson 1996, p. 32).
There are actually two ways that belief can play a part in affecting behavior. In addition to intensifying the response to a particular thought at any given point in time it can also play a key role in facilitating the programming in (conditioning in) of a new positive behavior that will now automatically occur in all future relevant situations. It facilitates such reprogramming by blocking out, at the time of the new imprinting, any interference from previously programmed contradictory negative behavior (thanks to the inhibitory set component of belief). In support of this see Pavlov (1927, p. 407):
"The command retains its effect after termination of hypnosis [of the heightened state of belief], remaining independent of other stimuli, being impermeable to them, since at the time of primary introduction of the stimulus into the cortex it was prevented from establishing connection with the rest of the cortex." (italics added)
We know that it is possible to condition in new behavior by means of words. As pointed out by Barrios (2001), Mowrer's theoretical formulations on the sentence as a conditioning device (1960, pp. 141, 147-150) tend to support this contention. However, what often keeps us from programming in the new behavior is the ever presence of the old behavior (the old programming). In order to condition in the new behavior effectively we must be able to block out the old long enough to establish a strong new connection. Thus we can see how the inhibitory set component of belief can play a key role here.
Looking at belief in this new light can also help us to better understand the concept of exorcising (blocking out) of the demons or the devil (negative programming) within us and the role that belief can play.
Another way to appreciate the key part belief can play in affecting our lives is to realize how difficult it usually is for most people to change their negative ways. How often don't we see good advice simply go in one ear and out the other. Most people do not seem to have the will to change. It seems that although we have learned a great deal about how to program and re-program computers, when it comes to reprogramming the main computer - the human mind - most people are still in the dark. Seeing the mechanisms whereby belief facilitates reprogramming can now show us the way out of the dark. (See next section for how belief plays a key role in giving one greater free will.)
This also helps us to more fully understand the far-reaching and in-depth changes that can often be produced (almost instantaneously) by "a religious experience"; how it can indeed be possible to be reborn or born again as a result of such an intense heightened-belief experience.
Now we come to the question of the purpose of the belief factor in religion or faith. It is felt that the purpose of belief here is as a means of giving us greater control over our destiny, in facilitating the programming in of the guidance factor by blocking interference from any previous negative programming. (Faith can thus be defined as "guided" belief). The guidance factor, as pointed out above would include a set of thoughts and beliefs aimed at helping you achieve optimum peace of mind, happiness and fulfillment in life. The more strongly you believe in this way of life, the more focused your mind will be on, and therefore the more likely you are to bring about, the fulfillment (the programming in) of these guiding thoughts.
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Published 2002.05.06
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