Just including all my notes here…

Wednesday, February 19, 2020

I was listening to the car parts episode. That was a good one. I think we need to take more seriously the duty or whatever to be able to explain how something works, like depression and anxiety. We take time, and I’m thinking of a textbook, going through each individual theory and explaining how it accounts for why something or other happens, but we don’t take enough time synthesizing the insights of those theories to explain in a real, substantive, helpful way how they help to explain how something happens actually. I remember in undergraduate school studying psychology, and after having read this entire textbook which had the above approach meaning that of treating each theory kind of separately, somewhere at the end as if in a little footnote, it was stated that the authors believe that all of the theories help to explain a different aspect of what’s happening. Well if that’s the case, don’t you think you should synthesize them and use them to explain what’s actually happening??? What are you trying to do anyway? Aren’t we trying to understand these things? A lot of good you do telling students about all these different theories as if they individually can explain everything, and then move onto the next theory that thinks it can explain everything too. They obviously contradict each other. At least if you try to do it that way. They can’t all be right.

And don’t theorists need to be a little more responsible and a little less dumb and realize that one insight will not explain every phenomenon in psychology? Surely we can be better. And surely we can have more discussions about how the different theories work together and what might be missing and surely other things. Lots on the spiritual side for sure. Which psychology wants to shun since it’s not scientific. You’re right it’s not scientific. It has to do with things of the Spirit, which is the part of matter science doesn’t see. It doesn’t deal with it. Science deals with things you can see.

Wednesday, Feb 19, 2020

Every thing that has knowledge has the ability to act according to that knowledge. A gnat has knowledge, and is free to act thereon. Beasts don’t have a knowledge of good and evil, so they can’t act on that, but we can. Beasts can act upon other things, including us.  Just not per good or evil. We can act upon them for good or evil. A rock doesn’t have knowledge, and so can’t act. Only be acted upon. 

So that is how we get our ability to act, by our knowledge.

We were given a knowledge of good and evil in the garden of eden. Before that Adam and Eve didn’t have it, and were therefore like children. Can I say like beasts?  No, they could speak and stuff, right?  That I don’t know. 

But they were at least like children. Power isn’t given unto children to sin because they don’t know sin from righteousness. They don’t know good and evil yet. That’s how the power isn’t given unto them. 

Thursday, Feb 20

A lot of good it does to go through the more famous theories of psychology as they try to explain everything all by themselves in turn.  Do you have students think about these things themselves?

Adam and Eve must not have had self-reflection before the fall, before they partook of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil.  They didn’t know they were naked before, and then all of a sudden they knew they were naked.  They could see themselves from another person’s point of view.  They could see themselves from outside of themselves.  They could imagine what they looked like from another person’s perspective.  They became self-reflective.  And it all happened when they gained a knowledge of good and evil.  How did that happen?  We have the time correlation, but not the link between knowledge of good and evil, and self-awareness or whatever.

It had been given unto them to choose, before they transgressed.  They had the commandment not to eat of the tree (it was forbidden), while they were yet child-like and innocent.  Only after they made the choice to transgress the commandment did they gain a knowledge of good and evil, right?  Only then did they become self-reflective, and see that they were naked, and were ashamed. 

Saturday, Feb 22, 2020

Just read something online that put brain chemicals at the top of the list of possible causes for mental illness.  You’re trying to be nice.  But you’re not helpful.  You’re the coach who tells the basketball player it’s not their fault they keep missing.  You’re trying to make them feel better by telling them it’s out of their control.  Big help.  Thanks a lot.

Brain chemicals.  Same website linked to another website that said brain chemicals as a cause is a weak argument often meant to make it feel less personal and easier to talk about and get treatment for.  Well which website it right??  I say the latter.  The latter cited a number of different factors, called it a complex combination of factors, but it didn’t put brain chemicals and head trauma at the top of the list.  My goodness!

Friday, Feb 28

It’s an addiction.  It is an addiction.  Surely it is an addiction.  Depression and anxiety are addictions, the same as alcoholism or drugs or pornography are addictions.  They’re a trap.  They come in grades – or it runs on a continuum from none to mild to serious.  The more serious it is means the harder it is to escape.  It’s a trap of Satan.  And yes, Satan is involved in depression.  Sorry everybody.  But it’s a disease, you say, and it comes on at no fault of the person involved.  Well diseases sometimes do and sometimes don’t, right?  Lifestyle and other things that happen can be factors in diseases forming.  But you’re right – it is a disease, and it can come regardless of the actions of the person involved.  Still involves Satan.  I’m sure you think diseases don’t involve Satan either – then how does Jesus rebuke them at his word?  Why does it say Jesus rebuked the fever? 

——

Stop blaming it on the brain, guys!  Stop blaming it on the brain!

The brain is like gravitons.  It’s an unnecessary postulation for explaining stuff.  Nobody understands it anyway.  We push it off to something we can’t understand, phenomena that nobody’s observed, to explain what self-deception can explain just fine.  Like the theory of relativity.  Genetics is like gravitons.  Genetics isn’t understood, and while all these people think it’s going to soon explain everything, let’s face it, it’s not.  But why wait?  We can see how people learn from the modeling and so forth of their parents and others how to behave and cope and think and feel and everything else, for one, and genetics isn’t needed.  You people!  Why push off the explanation to something that nobody understands, which nobody can see?  The Jews sought for things they couldn’t understand, and so the Lord gave it to them.  They didn’t like plain things.  They didn’t want the simple explanations, the things right before their eyes.  They wanted to look beyond the mark.  Isn’t that what we do when we push the explanation off to the brain, the mysterious brain, and to genetics?  Who understands genetics?  Very very little is understood of genetics.  A few physical traits, may be understood.  But people give it way too much responsibility.  Stop blaming everything on genetics, guys! 

Stop blaming everything on the brain.  Let’s face it, you don’t know that the explanation lies with the brain, you’re just postulating that!  You haven’t seen it in the brain! 

Q:  Do we have a sixth sense? 

A:  Whatever you want to call it, we definitely have the ability to sense things spiritually, just like we do physically.  We are half spirit, you might say.  We’re spirits housed in a physical body.  And just as we have sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, do we not have similar senses on the spiritual side?