Mental Symmetry Forum

Mental symmetry approaches the topic of religion from the rational viewpoint of programming the mind and it comes up with results that are consistent with the content of Christian doctrine (though not the mindset of religious fundamentalism).

Ravi Zacharias is regarded as one of the top Christian apologists, who uses rational arguments to defend the Christian faith. I thought that it would be useful to compare his approach with mine by going through his book Beyond Opinion, because we both claim to use rational thought and we both end up with the Christian message.

In general, the level of rational thought is quite high, and the book makes a number of interesting and insightful statements. However, the tendency is to begin  with rational thought and a discussion of universal principles, and then make a leap to blind faith in the specific words of the Bible.

A 26 page analysis can be found here. I discuss what it means to make a leap from universal principle to specific religion, and I attempt to provide  cognitive explanations for many of the statements that are made in the book.

Reformed theology says that God controls every decision and action made by humans. Open theism, in contrast, suggests that God does not know beforehand every decision that humans make.  Open theism says that if God is responsible for every human decision, then God is also responsible for evil, and it addresses this issue by suggesting that humans can make decisions independent of the foreknowledge of God. Reformed theology dislikes open theism because it limits the sovereignty of God.

Beyond the Bounds was written by a dozen Reformed theologians in order to respond to what they see as the threat of open theism. This book is interesting for two reasons: The obvious reason is that it explores some of the ramifications of attempting to combine the concept of a universal God with the concept of human personal freedom.  The less obvious reason is that the method of thinking that is generally used by the writers illustrates the cognitive limits that result from starting with the assumption of religious fundamentalism. In other words, even if the Bible really is the ‘Word of God’, starting with the attitude of blind faith in the Bible will end up warping the way that a person interprets the content of the Bible.

My analysis can be found here. In brief, I suggest that if one begins with a cognitive model, then it is possible to combine the Calvinist concept of a sovereign universal God with open theism’s concept of personal human freedom.

As my family name of Friesen indicates, my background is Mennonite. I am not personally  familiar with the Calvinist form of Protestant Christianity, and so I thought that it would be good to take a look at Calvinism.

The goal of this analysis is not to quote bible verses or to try to prove that Calvinism is right or wrong. Instead, I have tried to examine Calvinism from a cognitive perspective. In simple terms, what is the mental motivation for believing in Reformed theology, and does this set of beliefs succeed in meeting its objectives?

It appears that the prime purpose of Calvinism is to emphasize the Teacher universality of a mental concept of God. However, Calvinism runs into several problems because it proclaims a universal concept of God rather than building a universal concept of God.

A friend of mine is taking a class on Christian ethics and asked me to look at the textbook. The book is called Exploring Christian Ethics: Biblical Foundations for Morality and is written by Kyle Fedler. My analysis can be found here.

On the good side, I liked the author’s concept of value ethics, because it recognizes that ethics are an expression of personal character. On the bad side, it appears that there is a cognitive disconnect between the author’s theology and his system of morality.

My understanding is that a universal system of morality should be based in universal concepts. The author does state universal concepts using theological language, but he does not explore what these theological terms actually mean.  Instead, he  bases his system of morality in the general attitude of behaving in a way that is unlike the surrounding world. Essentially, he defines Christian morality as a counterculture: “Don’t act like the secular world around you.”

Don and Katie Fortune have been giving seminars on the system of cognitive styles upon which the theory of mental symmetry is based since the mid 1970s. They published their first book on the subject in 1987, and this book has sold over 300,000 copies.

They live northwest of Seattle and I recently visited them for the first time. I’ve gone through their first book, which they recently edited, and have put together a brief analysis.

Their main focus has been upon describing the seven cognitive styles and giving seminars, primarily within a church context. In brief, there appears to be a 90% agreement between the traits which they’ve discovered and the ones which we have uncovered. The main feature which appears to be lacking from their description is an understanding of Teacher thought and Teacher emotion–a feature which is also lacking from most descriptions of human behavior.

The fact that the Fortunes independently came up with a list of personality traits that are consistent with the traits that Lane and I discovered provides substantial corroborating evidence for the theory of mental symmetry. And, the fact that they have sold 300,000 books suggests that we are both describing something which really exists. Finally, because their book has been a consistent best seller for almost 30 years, this tells us that we are not dealing with some religious or psychological fad, but rather addressing fundamental human qualities.

Angelina Van Dyke and I recently gave a 90 minute presentation at the Canadian national TESL Conference. The PowerPoint slides for the presentation can be downloaded from the bottom of the conference website.

We spent three months preparing for this presentation. Angelina, who is the expert in TESL, kept sending me papers, while I tried to integrate the findings into the theory of mental symmetry. By the end of this process, we had managed to use the theory of mental symmetry to cover major aspects of the TESL field.

Most scientific fields are specialized and objective. TESL, in contrast, looks at the general task of teaching an entire language, and it deals with both the intellectual side of linguistics and the subjective side of cultural interaction. Thus, a general meta-theory such as mental symmetry is especially suited for the TESL field.

Dooyeweerd reminds me of Swedenborg. In both cases, I suggest that one finds deeply insightful concepts combined with troubling theology. Dooyeweerd is significant because he puts together a ‘Christian philosophy’. Christian philosophers are becoming more common, but an integrated Christian philosophy is still somewhat rare.

Therefore, I’ve taken the time to put together a 60 page analysis of Dooyeweerd. I must confess that I did not read Dooyeweerd in the original. Instead, my analysis is based on two extensive websites on Dooyeweerd: Andrew Basden’s Dooyeweerd Pages, and J. Glenn Friesen’s Studies Relating to Herman Dooyeweerd. Dr. J. Glenn Friesen happens to be my first cousin, which adds a personal twist to this analysis.

I have attempted to go beyond merely critiquing Dooyeweerd. Instead, I have tried to place the concepts of Dooyeweerd within the framework of mental symmetry in order to come up with a more valid Christian philosophy.

Swedenborg’s religious doctrine is surprisingly easy to analyze, because he claims that heaven is an expression of the mind. Therefore, if one knows how the mind functions, then one can evaluate both Swedenborg’s doctrine and his description of heaven from a cognitive perspective. And, when one uses mental symmetry to analyze Swedenborg, one concludes that he is accurately describing the functioning of a partially programmed mind. There is structure, but this structure is flawed; however it is flawed in a consistent manner which can be explained from a cognitive perspective.

On the positive side, Swedenborg’s idea of ‘ruling love’ is remarkably similar to the concept of mental networks, and he accurately describes what it would be like to exist as a disembodied mind without a physical body in a society of disembodied minds.

On the negative side, because Swedenborg did not understand how the mind functions, I suggest that his theory suffers from three basic flaws: First, he did not realize that Teacher thought and Teacher emotions are different than Mercy thought and Mercy emotions. Thus, he tries to explain everything in terms of one fundamental substance, an approach known as monism.

Second, Swedenborg says that heaven reflects the internal structure of the mind, but he did not know the structure of the mind, and so he describes a heaven which reflects the external physical structure of the human body.

Finally, even though Swedenborg talks about going beyond blind faith to rational thought, if one analyzes his vision of heaven from a cognitive perspective, one concludes that it is a portrayal of blind faith and not rational thought.

Thus, Swedenborg’s concepts are profound, but his theology is deeply flawed and his description of heaven is juvenile.

You can read a 22 page analysis here.

My premise is that religion makes sense when viewed from a cognitive perspective. I have applied this analysis to Christianity, Judaism, and Buddhism, but I have not yet looked at Islam. Therefore, I have put together a 38 page cognitive analysis of Islam.

I found An Abridged Koran by Bill Warner to be very helpful, because the chapters of the Koran are not in chronological order. Instead, they are arranged from longest to shortest. Warner takes the chapters of the Koran, rearranged them in approximate order, organizes them thematically, and relates them to the corresponding events in the life of Mohammed.

My premise is that a concept of God emerges whenever a sufficient general theory explains personal identity. Mental symmetry is a general theory about personal identity, which suggests that this theory will potentially lead to the formation of a mental concept of God.

The concept of God that emerges from applying the theory of mental symmetry appears to be similar to the concept of God described by open theism. Whether such a God really exists or not, it is still worth exploring the concept of open theism from the viewpoint of mental symmetry and seeing where this leads.