Scientific discovery of Spiritual Laws given in Rational Scientific Revelations. TheisticPsychology.org

Diagnostic Test of Rational Spirituality

 

 

The purpose of this test is to help you to critically examine your thinking about spiritual topics. These include:

 

What or who is God

What is heaven and hell

What happens when we die

What are spirits and can we communicate with them

What are angels and devils and do they affect us

Why God allows evil in the world

What is sin, rebirth, reformation, regeneration, and salvation

What is the importance and role of revelation

Can there be a science of God from God about God

What is love, good, truth, and wisdom

What is spiritual enlightenment and higher consciousness

What is the role of marriage in creation and the future

What is the relation between the finite and infinite

What is the relation between the natural and spiritual or supernatural

Are miracles real

 

Instructions:  For each question, select the alternative that is closest to your current thinking by circling the appropriate choice on the Answer Sheet below. Then rate the description you selected in terms of how much confidence you have that this view is correct by writing in one of the numbers on the Answer Sheet next to the choice you selected:

 

Uncertain   1 ..  2 ..  3 ..  4  .. 5 ..  6 ..  7 ..  8 ..  9..   10   ..11 ..  12   Absolutely certain

 

This test has 100 items and many of them require reflection. To minimize fatigue or boredom I recommend that you take several sessions to complete it.

 

Use the Answer Key given below to figure out your score. The score reflects your dominant level of thinking regarding spiritual subjects. Each question has three alternative answers and each alternative reflects one of the three ideologies of rational spirituality – phase 1 ideology, phase 2 ideology, phase 3 ideology. These three phases are explained in the book. The Answer Sheet allows you to circle the alternative that most closely represents your way of thinking about that topic. When you complete the test, you can lay your Answer Sheet next to the Answer Key. You can then circle the phase of the alternative you selected for each item. You then count the number of answers you selected from each of the three phases. That’s your score. It is made up of three numbers. Instructions on how to interpret your score are given on the Answer Key below.

 

 

ANSWER SHEET

 

For each of the 100 questions, circle the alternative that best represents your thinking on the topic. Then write a number 1 to 12 in the box next to it to indicate your rating of certainty. Answer every question. When in doubt, pick the best possible answer for you. Scoring instructions and an explanation of how to interpret your score, appear at the end of the test items.

 

 

1.     a    b    c   

 

21.     a    b    c   

 

41.     a    b    c   

 

61.     a    b    c   

 

81.     a    b    c   

 

2.     a    b    c   

 

22.     a    b    c   

 

42.     a    b    c   

 

62.     a    b    c   

 

82.     a    b    c   

 

3.     a    b    c   

 

23.    a    b    c   

 

43.     a    b    c   

 

63.     a    b    c   

 

83.     a    b    c   

 

4.     a    b    c   

 

24.     a    b    c   

 

44.     a    b    c   

 

64.     a    b    c   

 

84.     a    b    c   

 

5.     a    b    c   

 

25.     a    b    c   

 

45.     a    b    c   

 

65.     a    b    c   

 

85.     a    b    c   

 

6.     a    b    c   

 

26.     a    b    c   

 

46.     a    b    c   

 

66.     a    b    c   

 

86.     a    b    c   

 

7.     a    b    c   

 

27.     a    b    c   

 

47.     a    b    c   

 

67.     a    b    c   

 

87.     a    b    c   

 

8.     a    b    c   

 

28.     a    b    c   

 

48.     a    b    c   

 

68.     a    b    c   

 

88.     a    b    c   

 

9.     a    b    c   

 

29.     a    b    c   

 

49.     a    b    c   

 

69.     a    b    c   

 

89.     a    b    c   

 

10.     a    b    c   

 

30.     a    b    c   

 

50.     a    b    c   

 

70.     a    b    c   

 

90.     a    b    c   

 

11.    a    b    c   

 

31.     a    b    c   

 

51.     a    b    c   

 

71.     a    b    c   

 

91.     a    b    c   

 

12.     a    b    c   

 

32.     a    b    c   

 

52.     a    b    c   

 

72.     a    b    c   

 

92.      a    b    c   

 

13.     a    b    c   

 

33.     a    b    c   

 

53.     a    b    c   

 

73.     a    b    c   

 

93.      a    b    c   

 

14.     a    b    c   

 

34.     a    b    c   

 

54.     a    b    c   

 

74.    a    b    c   

 

94.     a    b    c   

 

15.    a    b    c   

 

35.     a    b    c   

 

55.     a    b    c   

 

75.     a    b    c   

 

95.      a    b    c   

 

16.     a    b    c   

 

36.     a    b    c   

 

56.     a    b    c   

 

76.     a    b    c   

 

96.     a    b    c   

 

17.     a    b    c   

 

37.     a    b    c   

 

57.     a    b    c   

 

77.     a    b    c   

 

97.     a    b    c   

 

18.     a    b    c   

 

38.     a    b    c   

 

58.     a    b    c   

 

78.     a    b    c   

 

98.     a    b    c   

 

19.    a    b    c   

 

39.     a    b    c   

 

59.     a    b    c   

 

79.     a    b    c   

 

99.     a    b    c   

 

20.     a    b    c   

 

40.     a    b    c   

 

60.     a    b    c   

 

80.     a    b    c   

 

100.     a    b    c   

 

 

 

Questions

 

 

1.  What is your view on immortality?

 

a.  Every human being is immortal. Upon death of the physical body the individual awakens in the world of spirits to continue life in a spirit-body that is immortal.

b.  In the future, prolonging life by artificial means could postpone death indefinitely. In this sense we are potentially immortal.

c.  Immortality is the gift of resurrection and eternal life for all those who have faith in the Lord as the Savior and have thereby been declared righteous in the eyes of the Father.

 

 

2.  Where is the mind of a human being?

 

a.  The mind of a human being could not exist anywhere in the natural world, but exists in the spiritual world only. Hence we are born dual citizens – our physical body on earth which is attached to our mind in the world of spirits.

 

b.  The mind is in the brain but the spirit is with God. Upon death, the body and the spirit are separated, but then reunited at the universal resurrection.

 

c.  The mind is an emergent epiphenomenon of the brain’s evolutionary activity. If you destroy the brain, the mind is also destroyed.

 

 

3.  What happens when we die?

 

a.  When the physical body dies, the immortal mind awakens a few hours later in a spirit-body that lives forever in either heaven or hell.

b.  When we die, the brain stops functioning and the entire body disintegrates, returning to its originating elements. The mind cannot survive without this body.

c.  When we die, it is only temporary until some future time when things are ripe on earth, and all who died will awaken and begin again a new life, repopulating the earth under better conditions than before.

 

 

4.  What determines your fate in the afterlife?

 

a.  If there is an afterlife people’s fate there would no doubt depend on their intelligence and skills of survival.

b.  Your faith determines whether you’re going to heaven or hell.

c.  Your character determines whether you’re going to heaven or hell.

 

 

5.   Is sex possible in heaven?

 

a.  In heaven we do not have a sensuous body capable of eating or engaging in sexual activity. We are then more like angels than people on earth.

 

b.  Upon death of the physical body, we awaken in a spirit-body which is even better equipped for a sensuous life, including sexual activity. However, this is not a material physical-sensuous experience but a substantive spiritual-sensuous experience.

 

c.  Sex is a physical activity, and without a physical body sex cannot exist.

 

 

6.   Is sex possible in hell?

 

a.  Those in hell do not have a sensuous body capable of sexual activity. They have a spirit that is afire with lusts that cannot be satisfied and for which they are tormented.

 

b.  Sexual activity in the afterlife depends on possessing a spirit-body equipped with the five senses and its organs. Those entering the afterlife who bring with them a character of evil loves, enter the life of hell. All bodily acts are therefore possible there, including sexual activity.

 

c.  Sex is a physical activity, and without a physical body sex cannot exist. Hell is what you feel here on earth when you’re depressed or in agony, or when you’re tormented with bad luck and failure. In that sense you can have sex in hell.

 

 

7. Angels are people from earth who made it to heaven.

 

a.  True

b.  False

c.  It’s not possible to know

 

 

8. Devils are people from earth who ended up in hell.

 

a.  True

b.  False

c.  It’s not possible to know

 

 

9.  There are many heavens, one for each religion

 

a.  True

b.  False

c.  It’s not possible to know

 

 

10.  What is most crucial to our salvation?

 

a.  The right faith

b.  The right character

c.  The right deeds

 

 

11.  Consciousness raising and spiritual progress is accomplished most by:

 

a.  By practicing of the right physical and mental disciplines

b.  By experiencing ecstatic union with God

c.  By accumulating genuine truths in the understanding and goods in the will

 

 

12.  What is heaven and hell?

 

a.  Heaven and hell are operations in the human mind maintained by our chief love and affections.

b.  Heaven is the Kingdom of God on earth restored to its glory. Hell is the prison of the damned.

c.  When you feel great, you’re in heaven. When you’re depressed, you’re in hell.

 

 

13.  There is a natural world and a spiritual world.

 

a.  True

b.  It depends on your assumptions

c.  The spiritual realm is the holy and the Divine. God is a Spirit, and so is the Holy Spirit, as well as angels and Cherubim. Also the devil.

 

 

14.  When we die we eventually return to earth for another life, until it is no longer necessary for us to do so.

 

a.  An awful lot of people have thought this for millennia so there must be some truth in it.

b.  There is no returning  to earth once we are cut off from this world and enter the afterlife where we pursue life to eternity.

c.  This may be true for some individuals in special cases like Elijah who returned as John the Baptist.

 

 

15.  Is God Divine and Human or only Divine?

 

a.  God is only Divine while humans are Divine only when they reach their highest self

b.  God is Divine and we are human

c.  God is Human as well as Divine

 

 

16.  How do you see the relation between God and human beings?

 

a.  God is in every human being, hence we can meaningfully say “the God in me greets the God in you”

b.  Nothing that is Divine can belong to a human being, though we can be conjoined to God through love and truth received in our mind

c.  God is far above human beings though some people can be saintly enough to be nearer to God than most.

 

 

17. On the relation between God and human beings:

a.  God inflows into every human being with love and truth

b.  God is part of every human being

c.  God dwells in every human being

18.  What’s the difference between natural matter and spiritual substance?

a.  Matter is more fixed; substance is more fluid

b.  Matter is in space-time; substance is not

c.  There is no essential difference, though there may be surface differences

19.  Which assertion about planets represents more nearly your own view?

 

a.  Most planets do not support human life, but some might. Space exploration will provide a valid answer.

b.  Life was created on this planet. In the coming future, all planets and stars will be destroyed and a new Kingdom of God will arise with those who are saved, and it is going to last forever.

c.  An endless number of planets are constantly being created to support a human population that can prepare itself for heaven.

 

 

20. What is consciousness?

 

a.  Consciousness is the indwelling of the Holy Spirit when we are receptive

b.  Conscious awareness is a higher order emergent epiphenomenon

c.  Consciousness is the elevation of the mind into rational perception when we receive truth

 

 

21. What are the parts of the human mind?

 

a.  Spirit, truth, and love

b.  Natural mind, rational mind, and spiritual mind

c.  Cortex, cerebellum, and brain stem

 

 

22.  What is a discrete degree “within”?

 

a.  What is within is above, higher, and superior in rationality

b.  What is within is more mystical and less rational

c.  What is within something is revealed by structural and chemical analysis

 

 

23.  What produces consciousness in the mind?

 

a.  Emergent evolutionary capacity

b.  Miraculous gift of life and love

c.  Rational understanding of Divine Truth

 

 

24.  What is the meaning of the assertion: “Heaven is within you.”

 

a.  Heaven is a poetic reference to an imaginary utopia of happiness and immortality

b.  Heaven is a state of mind that is fully receptive of the Lord’s love and truth

c.  Heaven is the Kingdom of the Lord to which are admitted those who are saved by their faith in His sacrifice

 

 

25.  What is the meaning of the assertion: “Hell is within you.”

 

a.  Hell is a state of mind when we turn ourselves away from the Lord’s love and truth

b.  Hell is a poetic reference to an imaginary place of torture and despair

c.  Hell is the punishment of the damned

 

 

26.  How many layers or levels of heavens are there?

 

a.  Natural Heaven, Spiritual Heaven, and Celestial Heaven

b.  Imaginary heavens in potentially endless layers

c.  One Heaven under One God

 

 

27.  Which reasoning is closest to your own thinking?

 

a.  The idea of higher and lower heavens is discriminatory of some people, which God does not do, and therefore all faithful believers who are sincere and good, are in one Heaven under God

 

b.  All social groupings must have status differentiation of members based on power and influence

 

c.  Heaven is not a reward or an honor, but a state of mind or character, some of which are good but simple minded, while others are good and wise. Therefore the good and wise are in a higher heaven than the good and simple.

 

 

28.  The idea of  “hell forever” is controversial. Which reasoning is nearest to your own thinking?

 

a.  It is repugnant to suppose that a loving and omnipotent God could keep people in hell forever, no matter what they did before getting there. Hell is a place of purification from evils that we picked up along the way, and when it is done, we emerge from hell

 

b.  God allows people in hell to exit by giving up their injurious intentions, but they stubbornly refuse, even to eternity, testifying to the truth of the expression “I rather rot in hell forever”

 

c.  The idea of “hell forever” testifies to the depth of depravity of the human psyche

 

 

29.  What does spiritual salvation consist of?

 

a.  Salvation is by means of sincere faith in the cleansing power of the blood of Christ

b.  Salvation is by means of progressive character reformation from evil to good

c.  Salvation is by means of religious piety sincerely performed until death

 

 

30.  Is doing “good works” and “charity” necessary for salvation?

 

a.  Salvation is achieved when we reform our character from evil to good, by daily struggles with our temptations, made effective by relying on God

b.  Salvation is by sincerity of faith, not by changing our sinful nature

c.  Altruism counteracts selfishness and benefits society, insuring its survival

 

 

31.  What is the relationship between truth and love?

 

c.  With a sincere person, love and truth are both from the heart

a.  Love is immediate in experience while truth is more abstract

b.  Love is within truth, and therefore truth is the outside form by which love manifests itself

 

 

32.  Are there different types of truth?

 

a.  There is natural truth, spiritual truth, and celestial truth

b.  Truth from God is unitary, not varied

c.  Truth is drawing correct conclusions after considering all the facts

 

 

33.  What is scientific dualism?

 

a.  The premise that there are two separate and interacting worlds, natural and spiritual, with God creating and managing both

b.  A contradiction in terms since dualism refers to God or spirit, which is outside the purview of science

c.  The theory that consciousness is an emergent phenomenon from brain evolution

 

 

34.  What is theistic science?

 

a.  The attempt to turn science into religion, or to blur the differences

b.  Scientific dualism in which God’s role in every phenomenon is explained by means of scientific revelations given through the Word

c.  An intellectual movement in the history of science that ended with the modern era in science

 

 

35.  What is the Threefold Word in which God gave us scientific revelations?

 

a.  The Word of God is Sacred Scripture -- Old and New Testaments

b.  If it’s the Word of God, it is about religious revelations, not science

c.  The Threefold Word is The Hebrew Word, the Greek Word, and the Latin Word

 

 

36.  What is the relative standing between religion and science?

 

a.  Religion is above science

b.  The two cannot be compared in this way

c.  True Science, which is from the Threefold Word, is above religion

 

 

37.  Can atheistic scientists be rational?

 

a.  Yes -- atheistic science has done well in its own sphere of civilization and technology, due to the rationality of scientists

b.  God does not intervene in the experiments of scientists but lets natural laws govern the results

c.  No -- the success of atheistic science and engineering was brought about by Divine Providence despite the lack of rationality of atheistic science

 

 

38.  What does it mean that Swedenborg had a dual consciousness?

 

a.  That he was capable of trance like states during which he was possessed by spirits.

b.  That he was consciously aware of what went on around him in the natural world and in the spiritual world.

c.  That he developed the ability to be consciously awake in his visionary states.

 

 

39.  Did Swedenborg’s exploration of the spiritual world include scientific experiments he conducted while there?

 

a.  No. Scientific experiments are conducted in the natural world.

b.  Yes. He had the assistance of angels to introduce experimental states in spirits, and then observe the consequences, and this repeatedly.

c.  The departed in spirit are in the Lord and are not involved in scientific research.

 

 

40.  What kind of information about the spiritual world did Swedenborg report in the Writings?

 

a.  Subjective personal accounts

b.  Objective empirical observations

c.  Interpretive descriptions of spiritual visions

 

 

41.  Can God be a legitimate concept in scientific explanations?

 

a.  Yes because the universe is a global system acting as a whole, which can be described by more and more abstract principles. These super-abstractions give rise to the idea of God, and in that sense, God is an appropriate concept to use.

b.  Yes because God provides scientific revelations of Himself and His rational methods of achieving creation and management it.

c.  No because God is beyond scientific description. To try describe God by science is to turn God from an infinite Spirit, into a finite natural thing.

 

 

42.  Can the Writings be considered True Science?

 

a.  Religious revelations are for people’s salvation and not for science. They may contain scientific references used for illustrating theological points, not for science.

b.  Yes, the Writings contain scientific revelations about how God created the universe and how He manages it by means of rational laws that are observable and verifiable.

c.  The only “true science” is the entire enterprise of science by which it progressively gets more and more exact and inclusive, advancing by spurts, changing directions, always pursuing truth.

 

 

43.  Can the Lord appear to people again in the natural world as He did before?

 

a.  Yes

b.  No

c.  No one can know such a thing.

 

 

44.  Is it rational to think that there is a Trinity of Three Divine Persons?

 

a.  A valid definition of God awaits further scientific progress on explaining the universe as an integrated system. It is possible that a “Trinitarian” system of super-abstractions can act as one.

b.  It is not rational because “three persons” cannot be one person, and therefore three Divine Persons cannot be One Divine Person. The Trinity refers to God’s three Divine Aspects as Creator, Redeemer, and Regenerator.

c.  The Trinity is a Divine mystery that cannot be rationally comprehended. Our faith is that Three Divine Persons constitute one Godhead.

 

 

45.  When is the Second Coming of Christ supposed to take place?