Ruling the Environment: The Failure of Modern Psychology

Today while I was teaching Biblical Worldview at GPS I was struck by the contrast between Genesis 1:26-27 and the presentation I was making about Behaviorism. At the risk of being too simplistic I would present the following thought.

Behaviorism (And even Cognitivism) seems unable to escape the idea that humans are ruled by their environment. Psychologically we are responders to Stimuli who can be conditioned to respond in desired ways. If humanity is composed of a material substance that reacts to the surrounding that impinges upon our senses, we are inevitably ruled by our environment. Cognitivism recognizes the reality of mental states in the process, but cannot escape the reductionist dillema of determinism. Under this form of thinking. Environment rules humanity.

Enter Genesis 1:26-27

26 Then God said, “Let us make man 1 in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

27 So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

The significance of being created in the image of God is attached to the task that is made possible by the reality. Mankind is to exercise dominion (over all the earth). The passage highlights a fundamental difference of Psychology advanced by a Biblical Worldview. Man has been created to rule the environment, not to be ruled by it. Any Psychology that fails to account for or consistently ground our responsibility to actively engage the world around us is a dismal failure.