The Folly of Materialism

Everything is just Atoms?

Materialism/physicalism is the belief that the basic constituents of the universe are material. There is nothing beyond atoms in more or less complex arrangements. Certain things may not seem physical, like mathematics or consciousness. But the materialist insists that even these phenomena are reducible to a material basis. They are just different manifestations of atoms in certain arrangements.

If materialism is true, then we, Homo Sapiens, are just complex arrangements of atoms. If materialism is true, there can be no intelligence directing the emergence of matter. Materialism maintains that matter is fundamental, not an immaterial mind. So, if materialism is true, we arose by an undirected, chance process that is not subject to the guidance of a mind. Atoms whirled around and eventually produced us.

We have no free will, since free will would suggest some ability to master material processes. But, we are nothing more than the sum of the material processes constituting us, according to the materialist. So everything we do is the sum total of all these atoms moving around, without intelligent direction. Our minds only appear to have the capacity for deliberation. This is an illusion generated, again, by swirling atoms with no capacity for reflection or choice.

I think materialism is prima facie false. How can a purely material process, just atoms whirling around without direction, generate something as complex as the human body? How can what is non-rational, produce something that is rational? Atoms don’t plot their destiny, or weigh alternatives according to an assessment of risk and benefit. And yet, the materialist has to maintain that these same non-rational atoms, somehow come together to produce a rational being like ourselves.

Look at human society around you. Everything we create—buildings, cars, planes, restaurants—has a rational purpose. The materialist denies purpose to the constituents of reality. Little atoms have no goal in mind, and simply move according to external pushes and pulls. And yet somehow these atoms are supposed to transition into beings capable of generating complex designs and systems of social organization.

I think a much more plausible explanation for our presence here, as rational, complex beings with purposes, is that the original ground of the universe is not blind matter, but some sort of intelligence. We have intelligence, insofar as intelligence is the original infusion of energy that generated the universe. Purpose created the universe, and we participate in this original purposive person.

I would like to direct your attention to a poem by Sri Aurobindo, a great poet from India. It is called “Dreams of a Surreal Science.” This poem describes a dream in which material, physiological processes, like glands, hormones, and thyroids, produce great human achievements. A gland generates Shakespearean poetry, hormones produce the Illiad, and thyroids undergo the spiritual enlightenment of the Buddha. This dream is surreal, in that it seems impossible to generate this sort of complexity from blind arrangements of atoms.

This poem ends ominously, mentioning a scientist who toyed with atoms and blew up the world, before God had time to shout. This is obviously a reference to the atomic bomb.

The splitting of the atom is capable of great destruction. Atoms do not create. They can only destroy. Atoms without mind generate entropy, the force of disorder. They do not generate of themselves order, but only disperse and generate randomness. There must be a purposive mind to arrange atoms in structurally coherent ways, just like intelligence is necessary to put down words on a page in a fashion that produces meaning.

Here is the poem quoted in full:

One dreamed and saw a gland write Hamlet, drink
    At the Mermaid, capture immortality;
A committee of hormones on the Aegean's brink
    Composed the Iliad and the Odyssey.

A thyroid, meditating almost nude
    Under the Bo-tree, saw the eternal Light
And, rising from its mighty solitude,
    Spoke of the Wheel and eightfold Path all right.

A brain by a disordered stomach driven
    Thundered through Europe, conquered, ruled and fell,
From St Helena went, perhaps, to Heaven.
    Thus wagged on the surreal world, until

A scientist played with atoms and blew out
The universe before God had time to shout.