Materialism

About 12 years ago I engaged in some lengthy dialogue with a fellow graduate student who had abandoned his Christian faith upon reading Richard Dawkins’ book The God Delusion. Below is one of the emails I sent to “Oleg” (not his real name).

Dear “Oleg”

Please allow me to begin by first expressing my profoundest sorrow over the terrible experiences you have been through. I cannot possibly understand the hurt and anguish these things have caused you. I can only say how sorry I am that this has happened to you and that I hope that in spite of it all, you are able to clearly distinguish between the wickedness of the persons that took advantage of you and the goodness of the God they so poorly represented in your case. My heart truly ached within me when I read your email. I know these words of mine may not mean that much, and certainly they can’t erase your personal history or the present feelings that history may yet arouse within you, but please know that I truly and deeply hurt for you because of this. 

I also want to apologize for taking so long to send a response to your last two emails. Despite the passage of so much time, I still, regrettably, have no elaborate treatise to offer you in defense of my position. I have no knock-down argument to give to you. And truthfully, my suspicion is that given the rather lofty standard of evidence you have raised for justifiable belief in God (namely, a theophany), there is not much I can say that you will likely find especially compelling. Nevertheless, I will try. 

A materialist understands the principle of reality to be matter, with “reality” designating “the actual things which are now.” Materialism can be illustrated by considering the difference between an architect’s idea of a house, and the real house which is the result of that idea. The architect’s idea is “realized” in the wood and brick (i.e., the “matter”) of the structure. Hence, the simple difference between the real and the unreal is “matter.” An extreme materialist denies the reality of anything except matter, while a more moderate materialist allows for some non-material realities such as ideas. For even the moderate materialist, however, such non-material realities arise from matter and are completely dependent upon matter for their existence. For instance, in the philosophy of mind, an epiphenomenalist holds that physical states (i.e., brain and neural activity) are the cause of mental states (mind), but never the other way around. Accordingly, if the physical state ceases, the mental state also ceases, for the mental state is merely a “sign” of matter, much as a shadow is a “sign” of an object. In any regard, for all materialists, the things we see are material and the ultimate elements constitute the principle of reality. Thus, the materialist denies spiritual reality and explains life and consciousness in terms of the non-living and non-conscious. 

In order for materialism to be true, reality must be identical with matter; the sensible must be the real without qualification. It is here that materialism encounters insuperable difficulties. As extreme materialists describe it, matter is always something determinable. We never experience matter as matter but always as some fully determinate kind of matter. At the same time, however, as the principle of reality, matter must also be fully determinate. In other words, materialism reduces to the self-contradictory assertion that the indeterminate is the fully determinate by which the determinable is made determinate. In addition to that, though we unquestionably have experience with material reality, we also have immediate experience of im material reality, namely, our own conscious activity. Our thoughts and choices do not present themselves as sensible things, yet they are just as real as sensible things. As a logical consequence of his basic principle, however, the materialist must affirm that such conscious activities are essentially indistinct from nonconscious activities, a notoriously inexplicable and seemingly counter-intuitive assertion. Thus, while materialism is attractive to many because of its direct appeal to sensible things, it ultimately fails as a metaphysical principle.