ABSTRACT
Materialism might also be called ‘naturalism’ or ‘physicalism’, but these and the other possible terms all have similar ambiguities. The essential position of materialism is that nature, in the sense of the physical universe, is all that can properly be said to exist. Most importantly, mind and consciousness, in so far as they can be said to exist at all, are seen as essentially reducible to, or totally explainable by physical processes. For this reason, ‘reductionism’ might be considered another candidate for the name of this option, but not all those who consider themselves to be materialists are committed to the systematic reduction of all aspects of human life.1 However, materialism is always reductionist to the extent that for the materialist, thoughts either simply are the neurological activities that take place in the brain, or are ‘epiphenomena’ that are totally explainable by these activities. In general, therefore, materialism has no place for the God of theism. Nevertheless, a number of materialists in the past have wanted to use the word ‘God’, sometimes as a way of referring to the whole of nature, and sometimes – for example, in the case of a number of Greek thinkers – for a powerful entity that had a special kind of body. More often materialists prefer to call themselves atheists in order to dissociate themselves from both theism and agnosticism. I have heard a number of sermons lambasting such atheists for arrogance. ‘How can you know that there is no God?’ has been the rhetorical question that features in these harangues. However, this challenge, in the case of some atheists, is quite unfair. There are many dogmatic atheists, just as there are many dogmatic theists, but atheism does not have to be dogmatic. Materialism, at least in its more subtle formulations, is a rational option that can be expressed in a way that conforms to the demands for internal and external consistency. If this is the option taken, then there is no more need to demand that it be ‘proved’, in some absolute way, than in the case of theism. If someone feels, after much reflection, that it is the most plausible option, they cannot be faulted for calling themselves atheists. However reason demands the possibility be considered that one of the other options might be either as defendable, by rational criteria, or more defendable, which, in the case of theism, is my own conviction.
