The Resurrection

[The Grand Nudger]

Materialism has gotten as close as one can get to proof in philosophy.

What's the evidence for this proposition?

Firstly, in that philosophy is not in the proof business.  That would be math.  Philosophy is chiefly concerned with conditional propositions.  In validity and soundness.  Reference and reliability.

(yes yes yes, western philosophy, contemporary philosophy, etc etc etc)  

It's not exactly true to say that materialism is axiomatic, because we didn't really begin with the notion and proceed from there.  What we found, instead, was that materialism was capable of producing sound premises which had utility in valid inferences.  Things which not only accurately described (apparent..hello empiricism!) truths, but that could also inform us of true things that were not readily apparent and when what was apparently true was in fact false.  All along the way the products of materialistic endeavors were compared and contrasted with other products and those products found wanting, or reducible to materialistic endeavors and processes themselves.  

To the point that, right here in this very thread, an alleged christian who is not a materialist is premising the possibility of divine action on the products of materialistic technological ability.  Materialism and it's products have become the concept to steal in any competing ideology and that's really all there is to suceeding at philosophy.  When your ideas become critical to everyone elses ideas and even (or especially) to countervailing premises.

Bringing it back to the initial comparison, this is itself a conditional state of affairs. The god botherers could god a mass into orbit at any time and change peoples minds about this...but we're not even being treated to this as a premise at present. We're hearing about god the materialistic mechanic. Spirit as just another type of matter.