“Over half of psychology studies fail reproducibility test.”  “Scientists replicated 100 psychology studies, and fewer than half got the same results.”   “An ambitious effort to replicate 100 research findings in psychology ended last week — and the data look worrying. Results posted online on 24 April, which have not yet been peer-reviewed, suggest that key findings from only 39 of the published studies could be reproduced.”  “The Stanford Prison Experiment was massively influential. We just learned it was a fraud.”  The Independent, the British newspaper, characterized the above with the following headline:  “Study reveals that a lot of psychology research really is just ‘psycho-babble’.”

I’m telling you what the research on the research actually says, but I think in reality it’s worse than reported.  A lot of what is repeated, and called science, especially in the field of psychology, is the opposite of the truth.  It isn’t being said or quoted because it is the truth, but because of its personal usefulness either excusing past or justifying future sinful behavior.  There is no science behind a lot of what people say or do today.  There is no scientific proof for homosexuality, that a baby in the womb is not a person, and for the secular or naturalistic explanations for origins today.

If something is scientific, it should mean that it is true.  If it’s a lie, that shouldn’t be science.  Science should be about getting to the truth, but it has become about supporting a presupposed position, usually today something that is politically correct and more.

Notable evolutionist, Aldous Huxley, the grandson of Thomas Huxley, wrote Ends and Means and said (1937):

I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; and consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do. For myself, as no doubt for most of my friends, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. The supporters of this system claimed that it embodied the meaning – the Christian meaning, they insisted – of the world. There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and justifying ourselves in our erotic revolt: we would deny that the world had any meaning whatever.

Marxism is not an economic science.  The Patriarchy is not a social construct based upon tyranny.  Darwinism is not science, but “an instrument of liberation from a certain system of morality,” especially that interferes with sexual freedom.

Enter 1 Timothy 6:20-21 from the King James Version:

O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: Which some professing have erred concerning the faith. 

The last part of verse 20 reads literally, “the antithesis of the false so-called knowledge.”  “Science” translates gnosis, found 29 times in the New Testament, and it is translated knowledge almost all of those times, but here it is translated “science,” and it fits.  John MacArthur writes:

Over the course of human history, all kinds of speculative ideas have been falsely labeled “science” and mistakenly accepted as true and reliable knowledge by otherwise brilliant people. The now-discredited dogmas of older scientific theories are numerous—and in some cases laughable. They include alchemy (the medieval belief that other base metals could be transmuted into gold); phrenology (the Victorian belief that the shape of one’s skull reflects character traits and mental capacity); astrology (the pagan belief that human destiny is determined by the motions of celestial bodies); and abiogenesis (the long-standing belief that living organisms are spontaneously generated by decaying organic substances). All those false beliefs were deemed credible as “science” by the leading minds of their times.

The psychological writings are the place of the greatest abuse of science today.  Like Paul was writing, it is pseudo-intellectualism, just trying to sound smart, but a true antithesis to actual knowledge, so that Paul calls it just “so-called,” because it isn’t.  It is made up.

Some might say that advocates approach their psychological speculations like religion — since there is no proof, it is only matter of faith for them.  This actually is an even bigger problem.  Biblical faith does depend on evidence.  What has occurred over numbers of years is the bifurcation of the sacred and the secular, separating the Bible into a religious category inferior to science.  The Bible is science.  The Bible is true, but the psychological studies are false, which is why the Bible is science and the studies are only falsely so-called.  Now someone can immediately relegate something to speculation by calling it religious or faith.

Much of psychology has earned the derisive “psychobabble,” because it isn’t scientific or true.  Despite that, the psychological still brings an unmerited force to an argument, because of its unworthy elevation over the sacred, condoning whatever psychology promotes.  Like with Huxley above in his quote, the psychology is a useful tool for bad or sinful behavior.  It has also driven professing Christians from standing in the public square and led many to succumb to the prevailing cultural norms.

One of the evil lies of the so-called science of psychology is its ability to help or give aid and its superior compassion.  Someone doesn’t really care about another person unless he offers a psychological solution to a problem.  He’s not even credible, because he doesn’t have a popular treatment to promote. In certain cases, psychology does give someone a kind of short term relief from symptoms, which are then offered as evidence of a solution.  They don’t solve the actual problem, but along with the popularity of the psychological remedy, better feelings are a powerful defense.  Actual studies will show that it’s only a placebo and doesn’t really work.  It isn’t even science, but it’s acceptance by the culture is enough confirmation.  It really is a bias toward an antidote that matches a desire, interpreting information in a way that approves a preferred behavior.  I’m saying its driven by lust.

The person who relies on a lie of psychology enjoys the acceptance of the mass, often an entire association of people invested in its proliferation.  There are paid proponents with economic motivation even to perpetuate the myth, if not the problem.  Someone needs the existence of the problem to stay employed.  They depend on belief in the falsehoods.

For people who merely want to look like they care in order to receive that recognition, it doesn’t matter if someone really gets help.  It is cheap promotion.  You don’t need to study.  You don’t need to know.  You just use the acceptance lingo for the consequential plaudits.  Few need to notice if it makes you feel good about yourself.  You don’t have to help anyone.  You just have to look like you care, and while you do, you imagine that people are impressed, and then you feel good too.

Man’s biggest problem is his sin, because of the sin itself and its offense to God, but also because of the consequences.  Sin causes short term problems with the mind, emotions, and body, but it also separates someone from God in this lifetime and then forever in Hell.  The world will support your advocacy of social issues and psychobabble, because it’s most interested in how it feels in this temporal world, all that it has and can do.  It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t want to relieve and comfort you in this lifetime, but what’s most important is preparing for eternity.  A true believer will not focus on the best life now, but on the one forever with God.  This is science.

This post introduces a short series on certain psychological science, falsely so-called, or psychobabble.  The goal will be to disabuse the readers from the lies they embrace to continue according to their own lust and excuse or justify that false way.