Christian Psychology
7
used to educate and train psychologists to distinguish
subjectivity, which “is based totally on personal feelings”
(Schweigert, 2012, p. 4) and “is susceptible to . . . bias”
(p. 5) from objectivity, which is based on “systematic
observations” that are “unambiguous and uncontami-
nated by biases“ (p. 2).
These modernist differences between subjectivity
and objectivity imply two key features of the dualism of
subjectivity and objectivity. The first feature, separabil-
ity, is the assumption that the two realms of dualism,
the subjective and the objective, are separable and, in
fact, truly different realms. This is the reason, of course,
that modernist science has presumed that subjectivity
(biases, values) must be separated from the objective
world, as far as possible, to attain truly valid and objec-
tive knowledge (Daston & Galison, 2010). The second
feature of dualism, superiority, follows directly from the
first: the objective realm, at least with respect to knowl-
edge advancement, is considered to be a better source
of knowledge than the subjective realm (Daston &
Galison, 2010). Subjectivity is too opinionated, value-
laden, and error-prone to produce knowledge equal to
objective knowledge. Even a true understanding of hu-
man subjectivity (e.g., cognitive neuroscience) should,
in this sense, be an objective (unbiased) understanding.
Traditionally, this distinction between objectivity
and subjectivity has played an important role in the de-
velopment and arrangement of methods within science
(Jackson, 2012). The scientific method, for example,
was developed to eliminate, reduce, and control the
influences of subjectivity on the research process so that
only objective knowledge remained (Mitchell & Jolley,
2007; Schweigert, 2012; Slife, Reber, & Faulconer,
2012). Once established, the scientific method quickly
became the gold standard for scientific investigation,
due in large part to its allure of superior objectivity
against which other methods were then compared and
could be arranged along an implicit continuum from
more to less objective methods (Daston & Galison,
2010). The adoption of this modernist dualism at the
methodological level also influenced the arrangement of
academic disciplines and fields of study within higher
education. Historically and today, academic disciplines
that use scientific methods to study their subject mat-
ter (e.g., the natural sciences) have been intentionally
and institutionally separated from those that rely on
interpretive methods (e.g., the humanities) with the for-
mer seen as “objective and neutral” while the latter are
understood to be “subjective and charged with values”
(Runciman, 2002, p. 2; Berlin, 1974).
Worldview Dualism
A number of historians, theologians, and scientists have
suggested that theism and naturalism have become part
of this dualistic arrangement of fields and ideas (e.g.,
Byl, 2002; Griffin, 2000; Müller, 2010; Plantinga,
2010). Indeed, as two of the major worldviews of
Western civilization (Smith, 2001; Griffin, 2004), they
may be the most important systems of ideas organized
by this dualism. Many people, including the critics of
a theistic approach to psychology, perceive the theistic
worldview to be more subjective because it is under-
stood to be “a sheer assertion of religious faith” (Hel-
miniak, 2010, p. 65) that is “grounded in nonfalsifiable
claims” (p. 67) and “metaphysical speculation” (p. 49;
see also Hibberd, 2009, 2012; Gasser, 2007; Stenger,
2007). The naturalistic worldview, on the other hand,
is perceived to be more objective because it focuses on
the empirically observable and rationally describable
regularities of the natural world using systematic and
replicable scientific methods that are taken to be neutral
with regard to metaphysical claims and other ideological
biases (Craig & Moreland, 2000, Rouse, 2002). The re-
sult is a wide divide between these two worldviews, with
theism on the subjective side clearly separated from
naturalism on the objective side. Here we examine two
key features of the dualistic arrangement that grounds
the conventional way of relating the worldviews of
naturalism and theism: separability and superiority.
Worldview Separability
We begin with the more explicit characteristic of the
conventional view: separability. Separability is the idea
that theism and naturalism constitute radically different
worldviews that can be understood and exist apart from
one another. The move toward separability stems from
the now strongly disputed traditional story developed
by a number of 16th century humanists and protestant
reformers, 18th century French
philosophes,
and 19th
century scientists that “scientific progress had been held
back by the Church during the Middle Ages” (Hannam,
2011, p. xvi). The supposed conflict between religion
and science during this time and the stultifying effects
believed to have followed from that conflict, however
untrue they may have been, led enlightenment thinkers
to believe that science needed to be disentangled from
the church in order for science to progress (Brooke,
1991).
The separability conception was developed as a
partial solution to this pernicious issue. Indeed, it is
currently popular for many philosophers and theolo-
gians to frame naturalism and theism as being almost
independent of each other, both in property and in
purpose (Barbour, 2000). In Stephen J. Gould’s (1997)
terms religion and science are to be understood as
“nonoverlapping magisteria” (p. 16) with each having a
separate realm of influence and teaching authority. The
dualism of objectivity and subjectivity provides precisely
the boundary and justification needed for this separabil-
ity frame with its claim that the objective realm is the
main province of naturalism and the subjective realm is
the territory of theism. True to this “solution,” Barbour
(1997), like Gould, describes this dualistic separability
frame as a “way to avoid conflict” wherein “each [world-
REBER AND SLIFE
