The Myth of Materialism-Part I
The modern age is very materialistic and scientific. We won’t believe anything that is not empirically verified. If we can’t taste it, touch it, hear it, see it, or smell it—it doesn’t exist.
It is why so many people in our materialistic age refuse to believe in God or some other higher power. They believe there is no evidence to support it and they refuse to believe in a fantasy.
These hard-headed realists only believe in something they have hard empirical (sense-based) evidence for. Nobody is going to pull the wool over their eyes.
Belief in Materialism is More Fantastical than a Belief in God
Unfortunately, this belief in materialism is at least as fantastical as any belief in God or a higher power, if not more so.
How is this possible you ask? How is materialism not an empirically sound position?
After all, if I pound the table with my fist, I have sensory evidence that the table and my hand are solid material objects.
Quantum Physics Tells Us So
Well, that’s not exactly true. First of all, quantum physics has shown us that the atom, once thought to be something solid like a billiard ball or a BB, is actually 99.9999… percent empty space, thus they are not solid.
They are the exact opposite. If atoms are not solid and everything is made of atoms, then no objects are solid. It’s a fantasy to believe they are.
So, what is the cause of the sound of one fist pounding a table? It is the negative charge of the electrons in my hands repelling the negatively charged electrons from the table. We know when we try to put the negative charged ends of two magnets together a force field is created, causing them to repel each other. The same thing occurs when my fist pounds the table.
In short, the matter of my hand never touches the matter of the table because there is no matter involved. “Physical” objects are not material.
This may be a bit hard to swallow for some people. As I am sitting here writing, my butt is sitting on a chair, but it is not actually touching the chair, but rather an electromagnetic force field is created between my butt and the chair, and that is what gives me the illusion of solidity.
Nobody’s Lips Ever Meet in a Kiss
I tell my students that when they kiss their significant other, their lips never actually touch. So, if they happened to be kissing someone they shouldn’t be, and their significant other calls them on it, they could respond by saying,
“Do you mean were my lips actually touching the lips of another person?
Their partner would say, “Yes, that is exactly what I mean.”
You could then reply, “I can say with complete honestly that my lips never touched the lips of that person.”
Despite our modern age reluctance to accept the science on this (a bit of a paradox, don’t you think?), it is a fact.
Comparing Non-Materialism to the Copernican Revolution
I liken this situation to the Middle Ages when the Church, through Aristotle, taught that the sun circled the earth.
In fact, even before our scientific age of empiricism, people could go outside and verify the truth of that statement.
They could see the sun rise in the east, go around the earth, and then set in the west. It did indeed, circle the earth. Case closed. Only a moron would believe otherwise.
We Can’t Trust Our Lying Eyes
Yet, as we all now know, we can’t always trust our lying eyes. Sometimes what we see, just ain’t so.
The same thing is happening in our modern world with our belief in materialism
Our senses also tell us the world is solid and physical. It looks physical, and it sounds and feels physical like when I bang my fist on the table. All the empirical evidence supports this conclusion. Only a moron would believe otherwise.
Yet, science has once again entered the picture and told us that our senses are lying to us. The so-called physical world is not material and solid, but non-material and almost all empty space.
The Copernican Revolution in science proved that the earth orbits the sun and not the other way around. This had enormous implications for the worldview of humans at the time. It showed God’s created earth was not the center of the universe, but just another small dot in space. Likewise, the change in the modern worldview that the world is non-material will have profound implications for us.
Materialism = Separation and Isolation
If we believe in a materialistic universe, then we have to acknowledge that all material objects are separate from each other.
That’s easy enough to see. As I look around my room, I see a number of “physical” objects, all separate and distinct from all the other physical objects in the room.
So, a materialistic worldview tells us we are all separate, with no connection to each other and the earth around us.
When we don’t feel connected to other beings or our planet, we don’t value them as much. We see them as just other objects to be used for our own advantage, as we do when we exploit the earth for its resources.
Non-Materialism = Relational and Interconnected
However, if we see and feel the world as non-material, relational as the quantum physicists call it, then we see that we are deeply interconnected with everything around us. In fact, we are our relationships.
Quantum physics has shown that the notion of ourselves as separate entities is an illusion. We couldn’t define ourselves without taking into account our relations with others.
Since we are a part of everything, we see that how we treat others is how we treat ourselves. As Jesus said,
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
He also said,
“Love your neighbors as yourself.”
When we feel connected to the people and the planet around us, we will naturally care more about how we treat both because it will directly affect us.
The point of all this is to say that this unfounded belief in materialism is the root cause of many of our problems today.
If we can accept the science nullifying materialism, then we could make a huge first step in solving our global and personal problems.
So believing in the fantasy of materialism is not only like believing in the fantasy of God or a higher power, but it’s much worse. There are other modes of knowing (such as inner awareness) that we have to verify a higher reality, but there are no other modes of knowing to verify materialism.
The Next Article Will Show We Never Experience Materialism
In the next article I want to show that even before the advent of quantum physics, modern philosophers, who believed that the outer world was physical, still understood we had no direct empirical evidence to support this claim. So stay tuned.
To learn more: Click this link: The Magical Universe.
