Biblically Thinking About Psychology - Download

ACCORDING to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, psychology is “the science of mind and behavior.” That definition has some serious flaws. Is psychol- ogy a science? Well, yes and no, depending on one’s understanding of the term science. If one views the study of psychology as simply the pursuit of the knowledge of human behavior, some are satisfied with the definition of psychology as a science.

Yet that rather vague meaning is far removed from real scientific knowledge that is gained through a scientific methodology involving objective obser- vation, evidence, hypotheses testing, induction, repetition, and verification, and ultimately resulting in a commonly accepted cumulative knowledge. Psychology differs greatly, for example, from the sciences of astronomy, physics, chemistry, geology, and biology, the knowledge of which has been amassed though objective means.