The purpose of this article is to examine the 2000 book The Consequences of Ideas and, after reviewing the book, apply the principles of the book to psychology, and specifically to my particular area of psychology: religious conversion and deconversion.
The book itself looks at the history and development of philosophy with the thesis that this history is influential in the way in which current society functions. The question is, can philosophy interact with psychology? This is the question this article proposes to answer.
The Consequences of Ideas (Sproul, 2000) is a book by theologian and philosopher R.C. Sproul wherein he walks the reader through a flyover of the origins and development of philosophy in the West (meaning Mediterranean, European, and eventually American thinkers). The stated purpose of the book is to provide "...an enticing foretaste for future study of theoretical thought." (Sproul, 2000, p. 11). In his introduction to the book, Sproul uses a variety of real-world illustrations to argue that thoughts do, indeed, have consequences. He suggests that what is common-day now - plumbing, cars, computers, and so forth - was once unheard of, and that all of these things were the results of ideas had by ordinary thinkers at one point down the line. As a more startling example, Sproul illustrates an event from his own life wherein he met a philosophy professor-turned-janitor. This now-janitor had been run out of Germany by Adolf Hitler on the basis of the subject he taught (Sproul, 2000, p. 8). The censoring of certain ideas was, in essence, acknowledgement that those ideas had consequences. After stating the purpose of the book, Sproul begins to identify and summarize, in order, the most influential thinkers in the history of Western Civilization.
Sproul begins with the ancient Greeks - well known as the originators of what we commonly recognize as philosophy. He writes that the earliest known Hellenistic philosophers were chiefly concerned with finding a unifying philosophy describing the fundamental substance of the universe and the problem of "the many and the one," meaning "how does one achieve unity out of diversity?"
Following these ancient Greeks, Sproul launches into the most well-known of philosophers: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, illustrating how these three laid down the fundamental building blocks of things like abstract reasoning, recognition of personal limitations when considering ultimate reality, and origins and purpose.
Following the Greek philosophers, Sproul outlines the history and thought of early Christian philosophers Augustine and Aquinas. Sproul shows how these two synthesized Monotheism and Christian doctrine with the foundational philosophies originating with Aristotle.
By way of reviewing philosophers by name, assertions, and influence, Sproul walks the reader on through the following schools of thought:
Sproul's final mention was of the influence of Darwin and Freud on current thought. Darwin's influence was, of course, his proposal on how life and the human race originated, and Freud on how the human psyche works.
My area of research is the study of religious conversion and deconversion. Given the scope of religious and irreligious thought, there is very little in this book that cannot be applied to the study of religious conversion at some level. The ultimate thesis of the book, that ideas have consequences, could scarcely be more pertinent to my work. It needs little illustration to propose that the propagation of religious ideas may conceivably be the most influential driver of individual and social behavior across geography and history. Likewise, the secularization of cultures in the wake of religion creates relatively rapid changes in government, economy, education, and family structure (Zuckerman, 2010). The changes brought about by the adoption of religious ideas by way of conversion function at the macro, meso, and micro levels (Malony & Southard, 1992, p. 163), meaning that an individual who converts will adopt religious ideas and behaviors which influence not only herself, but also the immediate environment she occupies and, by extension, society at large.
Conversely, it is religious ideas, not irreligious ideas, most frequently responsible for deconversion (Pérez & Vallières, 2019). Meaning that if a person's religious ideas are incompatible with their lived experience, those ideas will tend to discredit religion as a system. Because religions have been known to encourage a black-and-white, all-or-nothing approach to epistemology, when one aspect of religion is discredited, the entire religion is discredited by extension (Adam, 2009). It is this rigid function of religious epistemology upon which Peter Boghossian leans in his 2013 book A Manual for Creating Atheists.
Over history, religious conversion techniques have tended in the direction of intuition and emotive experiences (James, 1902). As society begins to prize empiricism and rationality over intuition, those methods of religious persuasion have begun to decline in effectiveness.
However, more recent studies on the conversion of atheists to religion (Langston, Albanesi, & Facciani, 2019) have shown that such conversion can take place by way of rationalism and empiricism. One need only reach the conclusion that religion compliments rather than competes with science and other rational enterprises. Whereas religious conversion is typically a social process (Malony & Southard, 1992, p. 163), for atheists who convert, the process tends to be intensely personal (Langston, Albanesi, & Facciani, 2019). This means that these atheists convert more on the basis of ideas than they do as a result of social forces.
The same tends to be true in religious deconversion. Street epistemologists excepted (Boghossian, 2013), religious people who undergo deconversion do so on the basis of incompatible ideas. They do so privately, and are later faced with the difficulty of revealing their new non-religious identity to the world around them (Pérez & Vallières, 2019). The incompatibility of the deconvert's new, non-religious identity with their religious social group results in a period of being socially disconnected. It is this ideological incompatibility which drastically effects both the deconvert and the former social group to whom the deconvert belonged.
Sproul's book, The Consequences of Ideas, forms a helpful resource for those desiring to familiarize themselves with the essentials of philosophical thought and the history thereof. The underlying thesis of the book, that ideas result in consequences, can scarcely be argued by any serious student of psychology, given that the practice revolves around human thought and behavior. In other words, psychology trades not just in ideas, but in the development and behavioral consequences of those ideas.
Religious conversion is most frequently modeled as a social behavior: individuals join social groups which function under various doctrines that govern behavior. One finds, however, that certain types of people prone towards analytical thought - most notably atheists - undergo conversion as a result of religious and philosophical ideas rather than overtly social forces.
Deconversion, however, results when there is a perceived conflict between religious ideas and ideas which are incompatible with the particular religion from which the person apostatizes. After undergoing a period of mental and emotional discomfort, the individual resolves the conflict by abandoning the source of the discomfort: religion.
In my field of study, therefore, ideas have lasting consequences which extend beyond the intellectual and into the spiritual.