Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Excited Penguin]

Great minds think alike. Thanks lol.

Sure thing, friend.

[LastPoet]

Great minds think alike. Thanks lol.

Sure thing, friend.

Does that mean you have shaven your balls off?

[Jehanne]

Dan Barker makes the excellent point that a soul, spirit, etc., is always defined in terms of what it is not ("non-material", "immaterial", etc.) as opposed to what it "is".  Consciousness and free will (if the latter even truly exists) are mysterious, but saying that there are non-material things responsible for such is kind of a "soul of the gaps".

Hang on, there.  Define "material" if you're so sure that reality is definable from any perspective.  What is "stuff"?  What is "energy"?  What is gravity, or anything else?  What do we really know?

Given that I know all I know only through my capacity for subjective experience, you're going to have to come up with some pretty sound logic if you're going to demonstrate that ANYTHING at all is more than that, without accepting philosophical assumptions that beg the question.

I'll say right now, and unambiguously-- it cannot be done.  You cannot demonstrate even that the keyboard you're typing on is anything more than a collection of ideas.

For starters, you can weigh it (material things), something that I do nearly everyday!

[Excited Penguin]

Sure thing, friend.

Does that mean you have shaven your balls off?

Lol. What?

[Joods]

Seems like our OP has abandoned his thread.

[bennyboy]

Seems like our OP has abandoned his thread.

Nope it's been moved.

[bennyboy]

I refute it thus!


If you don't get that reference, sit on a chair the tactile experience is proof of a material existence.

I dreamed I fucked Tomb Raider era Angelina Jolie. It felt real, so it must really be real! My Christian friends feel "God" in their hearts, so that must prove God is real too.

Oh wait. . . experiences don't necessarily validate our beliefs about where they COME from.

[Excited Penguin]

I refute it thus!


If you don't get that reference, sit on a chair the tactile experience is proof of a material existence.

I dreamed I fucked Tomb Raider era Angelina Jolie.  It felt real, so it must really be real!  My Christian friends feel "God" in their hearts, so that must prove God is real too.

Oh wait. . . experiences don't necessarily validate our beliefs about where they COME from.

Everything is real. Dreams, feelings, the whole lot. There are degrees of real to be considered, however, for the purpose of intelligibility.

Everything is physical, too. That doesn't refute solipsism, which is as strong as ever and will forever remain as such to our minds. It does help to better describe the world, however. Science is concerned with being as parsimonious in its explanatory power as possible. That is a good thing. There is nothing to be gained from chasing nonsense which is what happens when one questions the reality of something so ubiquitous and self-evident as matter and/or the physical world.

[bennyboy]

There is nothing to be gained from chasing nonsense which is what happens when one questions the reality of something so ubiquitous and self-evident as matter

Are you sure matter is self-evident? If so, then you must have at least a pretty good understand of what it is. Okay. . . what is it?

[Excited Penguin]

There is nothing to be gained from chasing nonsense which is what happens when one questions the reality of something so ubiquitous and self-evident as matter

Are you sure matter is self-evident?  If so, then you must have at least a pretty good understand of what it is.  Okay. . . what is it?

It is that which occupies space and has rest mass, as distinct from energy.

You might want to question a physicist for more details about that. Or use google, for that matter.

Whether what we experience exists outside of our minds or not is a moot point. Whether it does, or it doesn't, we will never know and we have no reason to believe it would make any difference either way. 

Reality is there. We have to describe it somehow. The best way to describe it is as physical and/or material. To claim there's some other plane beyond that is to delve into stupidity. Just so, matter is simply an idea used to explain certain phenomena. Unless you scientifically arive at a better way to describe these things, you're doing nothing but circling the drain of intellectual bedrock.