Why materialists are predominantly materialists

[Silver]

EVEN IF I had ideas about reality, and they were 100% bang-on correct. . . how would I know this to be the case?  How would I know there were not some additional layer, inscrutable to me, supporting all of that?

You cannot, which is probably why you are not a true atheist. Agnostic, maybe.

Reality is precisely what we experience through our senses, the same senses that can be verified by others when they experience the same thing within the vicinity.

After all, one person make an outrageous claim as another thousands of miles apart, but there is no way to verify that the experiences are connected.

Time matters as much as distance.

There is no veritable, nor historical, way for the bible to make itself known as fact. The nonsensical themes non-withstanding, the logic is missing to the point of absolute disbelief.

[Arkilogue]

Believing in the material world is the starting point. If you don't start by assuming that, we can't go anywhere at all. Since I personally observe that on some level, I'm going to go ahead and leave that as a given. Anything beyond the material world doesn't even have that much to work with yet. That's where I will need more evidence.

This is the "assumption that begs the question" that I was talking about.  You keep talking about "more than" the material world, and now "beyond" it.  You need to start with your belief in a material world at all.  Is it based on your experiences?  The apparent solidity of objects you interact with?  If so, then do you experience them as 99.99999% empty space, and the .00000001% being only describable as a mathematical function?  I'm guessing not.

So if you want to start there, you'll have to explain why you think it's the start.  As I said, since anything we "know" starts with experience, then reality-as-experience must be the default position, and anything else must be supported with some pretty watertight reasoning.

I'm a 100% materialist.

This atomic stiff is like a cloud of vapor off hot breath.

[bennyboy]

Reality is precisely what we experience through our senses, the same senses that can be verified by others when they experience the same thing within the vicinity.

It is real in the sense that is coherent and shared. But it does not mean that anything exists AS you experience it-- in fact, science tells us that nothing exists as we experience it.

Actually, I think this sheds light on both religious AND non-religious views. For example, if I experience a communion with God, I can be sure that, even if there IS a God, God's nature is not as I'm experiencing it. But this goes for things like a table, too.

[Arkilogue]

Reality is precisely what we experience through our senses, the same senses that can be verified by others when they experience the same thing within the vicinity.

It is real in the sense that is coherent and shared.  But it does not mean that anything exists AS you experience it-- in fact, science tells us that nothing exists as we experience it.

Actually, I think this sheds light on both religious AND non-religious views.  For example, if I experience a communion with God, I can be sure that, even if there IS a God, God's nature is not as I'm experiencing it.  But this goes for things like a table, too.

I think I see a brown table, but it's just reflecting brown light....5 to 10 milliseconds ago.

[Pat Mustard]

That was number 20.  Here's number 21. . . .

I think believers who might otherwise be somewhat receptive are often put out by atheists who present the position that materialism is the alternative to religious belief, instead of "mere" non-belief.  I'm an atheist through and through, and (for reasons you will see!  please be patient!) I don't believe our "minds" (I don't like the word "mind" - I don't really know what it means) and experiences happen as the result of processes in material brains.  It's one thing to be asked to consider one's beliefs to be wrong, but another to be told that one has to accept a conception of our nature as beings that, although not part of atheism, is so far from the usual belief of religious people as to be scary.

The number of atheist I know of who present materialism as an alternative to religious belief: 0. This includes public atheists, atheists I've ineracted with online and atheists I know personally. The whole materialism as a substitute for religion thing is a fundie slander, as they associate materialism with want for things.

People are asked to accept that they are material things because the evidence is increasingly saying that that is the case. For example neurology has pretty much shown that the brain does everything ascribed to souls. We should no more accept the validity of belief in souls than we do the validity of belief in phlogiston.

[Pat Mustard]

I'll weigh in here and agree with the OP that there's no evidence for material or anything like it.  In fact, given double-slit experiments (quantum eraser) I'd say even a physical monism is on shaky ground, especially when idealism subsumes materialism and physicalism anyway.  "Reality" is almost for sure unknowable; what we DO know is only what we experience, and relationships between the things we experience.

I propose we remove the unknown/unknowable from science altogether, and treat it for what it is-- a system of categorization and interaction with EXPERIENCES, with no need to cling to instinctive but unfounded assumptions about the nature of reality.

I refute it thus!


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

[Excited Penguin]

I'll weigh in here and agree with the OP that there's no evidence for material or anything like it.  In fact, given double-slit experiments (quantum eraser) I'd say even a physical monism is on shaky ground, especially when idealism subsumes materialism and physicalism anyway.  "Reality" is almost for sure unknowable; what we DO know is only what we experience, and relationships between the things we experience.

I propose we remove the unknown/unknowable from science altogether, and treat it for what it is-- a system of categorization and interaction with EXPERIENCES, with no need to cling to instinctive but unfounded assumptions about the nature of reality.

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 get it.

[LastPoet]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSUOFgj97M

[Excited Penguin]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNSUOFgj97M

You have been ninja'd by post #12.

[LastPoet]

Great minds think alike. Thanks lol.