Materialism before Matter by Paul Ross The materialist would have you believe that the whole show of reality is nothing more than matter and energy. Then again I understand that such a state of mind is relatively easy to slip into; just look around you, everything that our five-physical-senses encounter is made up of a lot of material stuff. But is ultimate reality more than meets the eye? I would say yes. In fact I part company with materialists’ when they conclude - from their philosophical presuppositions - that immaterial things do not exist. Moreover, I just don’t think that such a philosophical conclusion can be drawn given that matter and energy were not the origin of the big bang in the first place. It seems to me that the materialist stops a little too short as far as going back is concerned because matter and energy didn’t exist before the big bang but came into existence at that time. In short, the origin of the big bang (initial cosmological singularity) was the by-product of something that was not material because - before the big bang - matter had not yet come into existence. What’s more this could mean that the materialist may very well have an immaterial first-cause for the origin of his materialism. I wonder could the materialist be hanging his material hat on an immaterial hook. Personally I think it’s just too easy to adopt a materialistic interpretation of reality once the initial miracle has already occurred; what’s more, it takes no great gifting to believe in matter after matter has already arrived. But is this materialistic fixation for all things purely material nothing more than a materialistic prejudice? For the believer God is the creator, God is the source of human consciousness and mind. God is the explanation for intelligence, reason, morality, purpose and design in our universe - whereas atheism seeks to strip all this away in exchange for an alternative explanation. Jesus said God is Spirit – in other words – a conscious incorporeal immaterial being of immense power that is the source of life. God does not consist of mass, volume, density and atoms as we understand mass, volume, density and atoms. God is not a part of the stuff of the universe but is transcendent over it. Moreover this makes perfect sense given that the origin of matter is something that is not matter - subject to the fact - that matter came into existence for the first time at the cosmological singularity. The Bible says that in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth … so here we have an immaterial first-cause that would perfectly explain the immaterial origin of all things material; now if you don’t like the miracle of divine creation than you have a miracle without a miracle worker – but a miracle nevertheless. Philosopher Terence McKenna says that modern science is based upon the principal: Give us one free miracle and we will explain the rest. Biologist Rupert Sheldrake says that the ‘one free miracle’ referred to by McKenna, is the appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, and all the laws that govern it, from NOTHING in one single instant. In fact, the whole atheistic enterprise owes its very existence to that ‘one free miracle’ idea and now that the grand miracle has been provided, all the atheist has to do is simply assert that this incredible miracle of nature was wrought by nature itself. Obviously an interpretation of reality coming to us through the finite gateway of our senses is going to arrive at an interpretation of reality that is partial and incomplete; moreover we don’t even know what we don’t know - to even know what kind of questions to ask in the first place. Now when it comes to things that I don’t know I’d have to confess that I don’t even know what’s out there to lack a belief in; furthermore lacking a belief in something does not cause that something to not exist, what’s more ignorance of a thing is only evidence of ignorance and nothing more. We have eyes to see but given the limitations of our five-physical-senses these eyes could not discern or see everything that makes up ultimate reality and yet many arrive at a conclusion of what true reality is through the limitations of their five-physical-senses.
Posted on: Tue, 10 Sep 2013 08:21:18 +0000
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