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Psychology Review
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There is a way that seems right to a man but leads to death (Prov 14:12). Sin is that way because of psychological conditioning. It feels good and seems so blissful and necessary.
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All significant sin is caused by forces in subconscious minds. The forces act in a stimulus-response manner, as studied in psychology.
The mind is part of the spirit, not part of the body. Obviously, spiritual beings have minds. Molecules can do nothing but produce chemical reactions, which have no ability to produce thought. Molecules in the brain have been analyzed down to parts per trillion, and they all have biochemical functions unrelated to thought. Molecules doing complex things could never escape detection. Christ said, "It is the spirit which gives life, the flesh is useless" (John 6:63).
This includes animals. It is obvious that animals and insects think. Therefore, there are spiritual beings in those bodies. The Book of Revelation describes spirits being let out of hell by satan and entering insect bodies (Rev 9:1-3). They need bodies to escape from the abyss, but they don't qualify for animal bodies, because others have higher priority for them.
To claim that only flesh makes sin possible, as Paul states (Rom 7:17,18), is absurd. Obviously, satan sins without a body, though he often takes over other bodies for some of his purposes. There would be no reason to do anything about sin if Paul were right, because it would disappear after death. Christ's primary concern was eternal life, not material life.
All minds have stimulus-response reactions in them, because recognition could not exist otherwise. Whatever is perceived results in everything similar being contacted in memories, which is recognition.
Recognition is automatic, because in minds similar realities attract each other, and dissimilar realities repel each other. Therefore, everything which is perceived is attracted to everything similar in memories. However, memory is not perfect, as forces can obstruct contact of some memories.
Recognition is a stimulus-response reaction, because perception creates the stimulus, and recall creates the reaction. All of the stimulus-response reactions studied in psychology are extensions of the recognition mechanism.
The subject of psychology is based on a study of stimulus-response reactions stemming from conditioned, subconscious forces. This subject needs to be understood to understand the forces in subconscious minds which create sin.
This subject began around 1890, when Pavlov made the first discoveries of psychological conditioning. His study defines the subject. So I'll briefly describe what he did.
Pavlov was a physiologist. He fed a dog food and measured physiological responses such as salivation, which increased. Then each time he fed the dog, he rang a bell; and he repeated it numerous times. Eventually, he could do no more than ring the bell, and the dog would show the physiological reactions of eating food, such as increased salivation. Other dogs do not salivate when hearing a bell sound.
What this showed is that memories create reactions in response to stimuli; the reactions include physiology; and the stimuli include whatever is in the memories. Innumerable variations of such studies have been the central focus of psychology for the past hundred years.
With modern awareness, a lot of conclusions can be drawn about minds from the observable evidence. For example, recall must function on a stimulus-response basis, or it would not exist at all. If a person observes a blue automobile, all memories containing blue automobiles are contacted at that instant, minus the ones which are clouded over by occlusions, which create the ability to forget. In fact, all motion within a mind begins with stimulus-response reactions. But when the result is highly complex, such as reason, it has qualities far beyond the starting point in stimulus-response reactions.
This knowledge tells us a lot about sin or corruption. A person can observe in all corruption a stimulus-response reaction which causes subconscious forces to control the result. Of course, nay sayers won't see it. There are nay sayers who won't see the sun come up in the east. (They deny any intelligent design in the image on this page.)
The easiest-to-observe example is probably jealousy. It is the most acted out manifestation of the subconscious forces that create corruption. A jealous person sees the betterment of an enemy and feels threatened by it. He does not understand his own subconscious forces, so he tells himself that the other person is wronging him in some way. He must put an end to it, which is of course extremely irrational; but he is driven by subconscious forces which he does not understand.
The same is true of all of the subconscious forces of corruption, which are based on domination. Corrupted persons are driven to dominate other persons, but they do not understand that reaction, because it is subconscious.
To dominate other persons, or perpetrate any of the subsequent sins, power is required, because the victims try to protect themselves. So power becomes desirable, and it is a positive reinforcement for the subconscious forces of corruption.
Positive reinforcement is a major enhancement for stimulus-response reactions. In Pavlov's experiment, food was the positive reinforcement, except the terminology hadn't been developed yet. When a more complex reaction is produced, the reinforcement is a more distinct part of the conditioning. Animal trainers use food as a positive reinforcement to get animals to keep doing the same thing.
Positions of power do not have the same effect upon everyone. It depends upon knowledge and moral character. Using power to control objective realities is valid; but using power to control persons is always a corruption. There is no such thing as a moral way to subjectively control someone. This is noticeable in how moral persons interact. They use the objective medium to interact, so they are not subjectively controlling anyone.
Sin is a method of subjectively controlling someone. It always degrades. For this reason, domination always involves degradation. Since sin creates subjective influence over other persons, it creates a positive reinforcement for more sin through the resulting power.
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