Materialism and Idealism are competing views debating a particular question: "What exactly is the precise nature of reality?" or "What singular substance composes reality? Matter or Mind?" or: "Does matter produce mind, or does mind produce matter?"
Both positions are committed to the view that reality is only comprised of one substance, but disagree on the nature of this substance.
Atheists and Theists can adhere to either one of these views. Both positions are compatible with Atheism or Theism. In today's post I would like to introduce an Atheist Idealist. That is a person who does not believe that matter (commonly viewed as mind independent physical nature) is all that exists, but rather an Atheist who believes reality is non-physical and composed by merely mind or consciousness. In this Idealist view matter is an emergent property of consciousness, in the Materialist view mind is an emergent property of matter, though in both cases they are only viewed as properties, not as distinct substances since reality has one single substance according to both positions.
Both Theists and Atheists have this debate among themselves, in their own inner-circles and with each other. My position is if I were an Atheist, I would still be an Idealist. I think the Atheist Idealists happen to have a decent argument, and I will appeal to one to explain why.
"This qualified form of moral nihilism is active Nihilism not passive. It is a skepticism or disbelief of claims to objective or absolute meaning morality and purpose, a recognition that moral dogma along with religious & political ideologies are a means of control or gaining power over others. It contends that the existence of a God or Gods is insufficient to bridge the is-ought gap or produce objective moral values & duties." (source)
Similar to Anti-Theists he argues even if God existed he would not submit to God, he does not grant that anyone has authority to make him comply with any particular moral norms including the notorious: "Golden Rule". He views himself as a kind of God and/or Superman, and views Judeo/Christian modernity like (Nietzsche) virtually as a curse. (1). In one comment in his own video he comments:
"I'm not down with calling the universe god or defining myself as a pantheist, due to the massive baggage acciated with those terms. I will use the term god when referring to myself, since I am highest in my own hierarchy of values, and I create my own values instead of borrowing from social norms and the herd." (source)
And:
"You seam to 1 have mistaken me for a materialist/physicalist but I'm not. 2 i don't "believe" in anything (depending on what you mean by belief). 3All praise Allah? No I am my own God. I am an I-Theist. You can grovel and subjugate yourself all you want. As long is doesnt thwart my will to power progress I could careless. Most people are by nature slaves like and so if there is no master around they will invent a Skye Daddy. That's fine with me as long as you leave me out of it." (source)
Stillwell therefore views himself as a God rather than a slave, which represents the majority of humanity. He has this emancipation complex similar to that of Tyler Durden in the movie Fight Club. He is free from the bonds of modernity, society and Judeo-Christian values and ethics and is in his own right a kind of Creator and has been set-free from the sheep and masses.
Despite being no friend of theism or Christianity, seemingly defining himself as an enemy of our God, you can see in the above quote (emphasized in red font), that he rejects a common position that many Atheists identify with, known as: "Materialism".
As mentioned, in it's base line form materialism asserts: "physical matter is all that reality consists of." This is a monistic view of reality, that is the belief that all reality consists of only one singular substance. Particularly in this case, that substance is physical, natural, material, commonly identified as: matter. This is in contrast to methodological naturalism which according to the Supreme Court can be described like this:
"Expert testimony reveals that since the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries, science has been limited to the search for natural causes to explain natural phenomena.... While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science." Methodological naturalism is thus "a paradigm of science." It is a "ground rule" that "requires scientists to seek explanations in the world around us based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify." (source)
Theists are quite often accused of the "God of the gaps" fallacy, meaning that when science cannot explain something we provide magic or "God did it" as an alternative hypothesis, which is really no explanation at all, it's certainly not science. However ironically this is nearly the exact same fallacy of the materialist otherwise known as: "Naturalism of the gaps".
The idea is when science cannot account for, or explain a natural phenomenon, we must be apriori commit to an eventual and inevitable materialistic explanation that will in the future be provided by science. This is despite not having any current and/or contemporary evidence for such a belief, we are expected to trust in science as the golden calf or holy grail of all reality and truth because of it's proven track record and consistent observation that all has been explained in terms of physical reality.
The typical justification for this is view is according to the principle of induction, science has resolved similar situations in the past and will inevitably do so in the future (belief on materialism). For example the storm god Thor is no longer viewed as the cause or source of thunder, rather the typical modern scientific view is that thunder is the result of a shock wave caused by the rapid expansion of hot plasma contained in lightening. Richard Carrier expands:
"The cause of lightning was once thought to be God’s wrath, but turned out to be the unintelligent outcome of mindless natural forces. We once thought an intelligent being must have arranged and maintained the amazingly ordered motions of the solar system, but now we know it’s all the inevitable outcome of mindless natural forces. Disease was once thought to be the mischief of supernatural demons, but now we know that tiny, unintelligent organisms are the cause, which reproduce and infect us according to mindless natural forces. In case after case, without exception, the trend has been to find that purely natural causes underlie any phenomena. Not once has the cause of anything turned out to really be God’s wrath or intelligent meddling, or demonic mischief, or anything supernatural at all. The collective weight of these observations is enormous: supernaturalism has been tested at least a million times and has always lost; naturalism has been tested at least a million times and has always won. A horse that runs a million races and never loses is about to run yet another race with a horse that has lost every single one of the million races it has run. Which horse should we bet on? The answer is obvious." (source)
One of the main criticism of this methodology is that when I don’t know how something works or how to explain it, the correct conclusion is “I don’t know.” A second problem is while science has aided us in providing a better and proper coherent explanation of these observations, the belief that what we are studying is mind-independent "matter" (naive realism) and that this matter has to be physical/material is now a belief independent of science. It is highly controversial in physics to advocate a particular definition of matter/energy. The reality is we don't really know what energy/matter is. However there are good reasons for rejecting the view that matter is merely "physical stuff" that exists in and of itself, that is independent of mind. I think there are plenty of other responses to the so-called defenses of "materialism of the gaps", but I don't want to go into exhaustive detail.
Instead, I will appeal to our Atheist friend Stillwell to explain, ultimately why Carrier (and other Materialists) seem to be wrong according to science.
The Case For An Immaterial Soul
While Stillwell may not use the term: "soul" (I would have to ask him, but it's unlikely given his agenda to avoid giving credence to anything associated with theism), I use "soul" here as a synonym for an individual perceived sense of personal self (distinct from other independent selves/entities), a mind embodied and self awareness and consciousness. One could argue such a metaphysic is in contradiction with Christianity in general or not present in the Bible, that's fine, that is a separate argument. My personal view however is the Bible is not teaching metaphysics in either sense and is possibly compatible with both. But, that is a debate in and of itself for another time. Moving on to the evidence for the Soul.
Stillwell began in 2012 to make public videos inclining towards a non-materialistic view, that is that while reality is monistic (is composed of one substance) that substance is not necessarily physical, but rather matter is an emergent property of an immaterial substance, namely consciousness. But lets hear him explain it in his own words:
Later that year he published this:
The next year he strengthened his belief in Idealism, and argues materialism just cannot explain consciousness/mind:
And finally he made this video in 2014:
He also linked to the following video (in his 2013 vid) that argues that materialism/dualism are both refuted faith positions, and that the mind transcends all physicality, which indirectly is a good argument for the use of the word: "soul":
Stillwell, is correct. Berkeley argued as an empiricist that Locke (a fellow empiricist) should be an idealist. As wiki notes:
"An argument for idealism, such as those of Hegel and Berkeley, is ipso facto an argument against materialism. Matter can be argued to be redundant, as in bundle theory, and mind-independent properties can in turn be reduced to subjective percepts. Berkeley presents an example of the latter by pointing out that it is impossible to gather direct evidence of matter, as there is no direct experience of matter; all that is experienced is perception, whether internal or external. As such, the existence of matter can only be assumed from the apparent (perceived) stability of perceptions; it finds absolutely no evidence in direct experience."
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