Ethical And Spiritual Values In The Psychology Of Religion

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For many people, religion shows the darker side of humans. For those people the beginning chapters of Genesis is less a story about the creation than the fall of humanity. Schimel stated the psychology and psychotherapy should incorporate ethical and spiritual values to address contemporary emotional and social problems. It is not surprising that the research in the psychology of religion has tried to emphasize ethical and moral guidelines as proscriptions that prohibit some behaviors or thoughts. The most important example in the religion of literature are the Ten Commandments that are in the Old Testament. Most of his commandments warn us about our human tendency to succumb what is good for us whether it be worshipping false gods, committing …show more content…

There are six core virtues, which are wisdom, courage, humanity, justice, transcendence, and temperance (and self control). McCullough and Snyder stated that people should think about virtues as discrete, coordinated systems of thoughts, reason, emotion, motivation, and action. Exline said that if the psychological study of religion is to advance, people have to look underneath that category of religion involvement to see that effects of specific religious beliefs or doctrines. The first core virtue is Wisdom. Peterson and Seligman defined wisdom as cognitive strengths that entail the acquisition and use of knowledge and such strengths are knowledge hard fought for and then used for good. Specific strengths of wisdom include love of learning, creativity, open-mindedness, curiosity and seeing things in broad perspective. In much religious tradition, wisdom is a common theme. Dahlsgaard, Peterson and Seligman studied the major writing of eight word philosophies. They stated that Confucius taught wisdom as a specific virtue and people gain that knowledge through education and experiences. Aquinas listed wisdom as the most important of the cardinal virtues in his classic enumeration of human strengths. Research on wisdom proposed that wisdom is characterized by a highly developed form of thinking that involves dialectical reasoning, recognition of limitations and an openness to different modes of experiences and to

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