Materialism is a philosophy; science is a method for discovering physical causes of events. Science can’t explain all events because not every question has been (or will ever be) answered, and some questions are outside its scope, such as anything of a “spiritual” nature that can’t be measured. "Science” is neutral. Scientists may be materialists, naturalists, theists or agnostic.
Personally, I’ve known a lot of scientists (IRL and online), and I’ve never met one who was an actual “molecules to outcomes” materialistic determinist. I think it’s kind of a boogeyman.
Agree. Also just my opinion, but I think it’s a category mistake when people equate consciousness with the soul.
My dad had a stroke at 57 that entirely changed his personality in the three or four days he lived until a second stroke killed him. Some church friends came to pray for him and he sent them away with the final thought, God doesn’t even know my name. That would’ve been unthinkable for him prior to the stroke. Obviously, more than 40 years later, I still think about it.
I do like it. Or as Depeche Mode put it, “I don’t want to start any blasphemous rumors. But I think that God’s got a sick sense of humor. And when I die, I expect to find him laughing.”
Consider a computer as the interface between software and a person: the software can’t perform any better than the computer is capable of. Or, from older days, consider a modem as the interface between a computer and another computer: the performance of the one is heavily dependent on the performance of the modem (for those who remember back that far, I was once playing a game via modem when suddenly it dropped from 2400 baud to 300, and a friend joked the modem had had a stroke).
I once had hallucinations due to a provider putting 300mg meds in my bottle that were supposed to be 200mg. The doctor wasn’t entirely surprised even though hallucination wasn’t among the most common side effects of an extra-high dose. But thinking back once the meds were back where they were supposed to be, it was obvious that the hallucinations were unreal events.
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gbrooks9
(George Brooks, TE (E.volutionary T.heist OR P.rovidentialist))
186
How would you apply the guiding rule you describe (above) to my view that
CONSCIOUS is so inexplicable to explain, to its core, it implies that there is
some universal property of consciousness that defies scientific analysis?
So sorry. It is difficult to understand. I had a patient once in the nursing home who was a retired pastor, and with his mental changes cussed like a sailor (or now, a politician) and was very handsy with all the nurses. It was sort of funny to all the caregivers who were used to dealing with dementia, and gave him grace, but to his son, who was a member of our church it was very embarrassing and humiliating, despite assurance that this was just the disease process.
I don’t deny that — but what shapes public perception is the way materialism is presented to mainstream audiences. And more often than not, it’s portrayed not as a philosophical theory, but as a scientific fact.
And in the age of post-truth, narrative often matters more than truth itself.
When I speak of faith or salvation, I’m not claiming exhaustive knowledge of realities that exceed human understanding. What I am affirming is commitment—commitment to a particular claim about God’s action in history, and to the responsibilities that flow from that commitment.
IMO, faith is not best understood as a posture of maximal tentativeness, nor as a refusal to say “this, rather than that.” It is a form of trust that necessarily limits one’s interpretive freedom. To confess Christ is not to close off mystery, but I do accept that some possibilities are no longer interchangeable.
This matters because religious language—biblical, theological, ethical—does not float free of the commitments that generated it. One can certainly learn from such language without sharing those commitments, but Christian faith involves being answerable to them. At some point, fidelity becomes more important than provisionality.
Stubborn attachment to the status quo can be a failure of faith. But so can a posture that indefinitely postpones commitment while continuing to draw on the meaning, authority, or moral capital of religious traditions. The question, for me, is not how little we can commit in order to remain open, but what we are willing to bind ourselves to once we believe something has been truly disclosed.
To expand on my previous post, we can also consider the question of the historical Jesus. The so-called Third Quest has significantly strengthened the historical credibility of the Gospels — despite the fact that many of the scholars involved were non-Christians or came from other religious or secular backgrounds.
Modern scholarly consensus (based on the Third Quest) affirms several key points about Jesus:
That He was a real, historical figure, a Jewish teacher active in first-century Palestine.
That He was known as a miracle worker or exorcist — even if some scholars interpret this symbolically.
That He proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God.
That He had a group of close followers (disciples) and clashed with religious authorities.
That He was crucified under Pontius Pilate, a Roman prefect — a fact considered historically certain by virtually all serious historians.
That His followers believed they had seen Him alive after His death, which led to the explosive rise of the early Church — regardless of how one interprets those experiences.
These are not just claims of faith — they are widely supported by serious historical research, even from secular scholars like E.P. Sanders, Bart Ehrman, or James D.G. Dunn.
And yet, mainstream public perception knows almost nothing about the historical Jesus. Many people today are under the impression that the Gospels are about as historically trustworthy as Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. Is that true? JNot even close — in fact, the reality is quite the opposite. And yet, for many people — I’d argue the vast majority of non-Christians (probably over 90%) — Jesus is seen as some kind of vague, ethereal figure about whom we know virtually nothing beyond what we choose to believe
Even among believers, this idea is surprisingly common: that Jesus is more of a spiritual symbol than a real person rooted in historical fact (or better yet: many believers do think that Jesus was a historical figure — but they also believe that we can say virtually nothing about Him with any real certainty.). The same goes for materialism — which is indeed, as you said, a philosophical position (and in my opinion, a poor one) that’s often disguised as science and presented to the public as objective fact.
The point is this: there is reality, and then there is narrative — and the dominant narrative in much of today’s culture is aggressively anti-Christian. We must respond, not with outrage or sentimentality, but with the weapons of reason, evidence, and truth.
As Jesus Himself warned:
“The children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
— Luke 16:8
We must be wise as serpents and innocent as doves because there is the eternal destiny of many people at stake, here, and only God knows how many have been led astray by the narrative of this world. And we know full well who the prince of this world is.
With consciousness, quantum fields and God I think we have to know anything we might think has to be tentative. We just aren’t equipped to study them in a purely rational way. QM can be approached objectively and so long as the math works it doesn’t much matter if we have a good intuitive grasp of what is really going on.
But how we understand consciousness and God feedback on important aspects of our being. A faith stance of trust matters. But proofs are a waste of time.
True, but the question for many people is whether something has been truly disclosed or is still open to question/doubt.
Thanks. It’s been a long time now, and your retired pastor suffered the same symptoms as George H.W. Bush in his final years. Just ruminating on the fact that a pill or a stroke or dementia can totally change a person’s lifelong personality. That says something about consciousness and the soul, doesn’t it?
Synchronicity. I happen to be giving feedback on a first draft of a manuscript by an author most of you would recognize. He’s a philosopher and is arguing along the same lines as you. I made the same points I made above, and he somewhat sticks to his guns, like you. I don’t blame either of you for making the case. The difference is, he admits it’s a case made by philosophers and a few scientists. He feels he has to address it because of the academics, but materialism is not a mainstream belief nor something promoted in the mainstream media. It’s something one runs across in Christian apologetics, not in real life.
The historical Jesus is an interesting subject, but I’ll have to come back to it tomorrow.
This is very interesting, I would love to read something about it.
Uhm… yes and no. It’s true that the theoretical premises and conclusions of materialism are rarely discussed explicitly in everyday life — I don’t deny that. But in the West, especially in Western Europe, materialism underpins much of the cultural, moral, and ethical landscape. Not always in a conscious or direct way, but it has gradually crept into the collective consciousness of Western society. Many people, who rarely (if ever) reflect on materialism or its consequences, simply live by it.
Some of its core assumptions — the inherent meaninglessness of life, love reduced to mere chemical reactions, God treated as a joke or confined entirely to the private sphere — are often accepted as self-evident truths. The same goes for many of its ethical implications: for example, abortion is widely regarded not just as a right, but as a kind of sacred human right. That view only makes sense within a deeply materialist moral framework, whether or not people are aware of it.
So yes, it’s rare to encounter an explicit defense of materialism in normal life. But that’s precisely the point: there doesn’t need to be one. When materialism has already shaped your beliefs, and your way of understanding the world, its work is done — quietly, efficiently, and thoroughly.
It reminds me of something I once said to a friend of mine about Freemasonry: “Most people think Freemasonry is sinister and dangerous — and yet, they already agree with basically all of its core tenets.”
From what I’ve seen, the situation in the United States appears to be (though I welcome correction if I’m mistaken) more of a cultural war between opposing camps. In Western Europe, by contrast, the dynamic is quite different.
My view is that we are living at the very apex — or rather, the lowest point — of the Kali Yuga (to borrow a term from Hindu tradition that has always resonated with me).
Anyway, I’m really looking forward to reading more about the philosopher you mentioned in your post. You’ve really aroused my curiosity.