Why Materialism Is Not Skeptical

For years, doctors said that my tonsils and my appendix didn’t do anything, so it was ok to simply remove them with almost no provocation whatsoever.  “Apologetic Professor,” they’d say in their deep doctor voices, “I notice your tonsils look normal.  As you know, research shows that a normal tonsil often turns into a slight cold, so I recommend taking yours out. Remember that a Normal Tonsil is a Dangerous Tonsil, and also remember that Tonsils Don’t Do Anything but Carry Horrible Diseases.”  (They often spoke in capital letters back then; no one knows why).  Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel good about that line of reasoning.  I have always thought it colossally arrogant to say because I can’t figure out what this thing does, it must not do anything important.  Maybe it’s just me.

See, I’m a little more skeptical than my doctors.  I prefer to keep an open mind about things I don’t fully understand – I prefer not to trust that I’ve already figured everything in the universe out.  I mean, I can’t figure out what Windows 7 actually does (besides accumulate viruses), but I don’t automatically assume it does nothing.  I leave some room for my own limitations.

Well, I feel a little bit about materialism – the belief that all that exists in the universe is matter – the way I feel about doctors’ dogmatic view of my tonsils.  Their unbelief in the usefulness of my tonsils is essentially evidence by absence.  Why do they believe that?  They believe it almost by extending their own inability to come up with a reason for the tonsils’ existence into the entire universe.  They read in their doctor textbook that the tonsils don’t do anything; and I’m not sure they ever questioned it. And that’s kind of how I feel about materialism; and I want to tell you why.

Imagine that I tell my friend Hezekiah that there is a spider in the room next door.  Hezekiah, if he is the allegorical figure that I take him to be, huffs and puffs and says he refuses to believe me, because he doesn’t believe in spiders.  I take a picture of the spider and show it to him – but he refuses to look at the picture.  I drag him grumpily into the other room to see for himself – but he breaks away, crawls into a fetal position, and listens to Michael Bolton on his IPad.  (It is a known scientific fact that all grumpy allegorical characters love Michael Bolton).  Nothing could possibly ever convince him to look at that spider.

Now imagine that the good folks from the Aliens Are Real So Get Over It Center (AARSGOC) send Hezekiah some literature on the existence of extra-terrestrial life.  It contains pictures; it contains beautiful well-crafted arguments that make the faithful weep with joy; it contains quotes from famous scientists.  This isn’t any old group, for crying out loud – it’s the AARSGOC.  These folks are serious. Now what does Hezekiah do?  He is an allegorical character, which means he does the same thing all the time; so he buries his head in the sand. He refuses to look at the pictures.  He refuses to read the arguments.  He does not weep.  He knows aliens do NOT exist because he hasn’t seen any; and there’s an end to it.

Now my problem with ol’ Hezekiah isn’t so much that he disbelieves in spiders or aliens.  After all, he may end up being right for all I know.  Maybe that spider in the next room moved and isn’t there anymore.  Maybe there aren’t any aliens after all.  No; my problem isn’t his conclusion – it’s how he gets there.  Hezekiah predetermines the answer before he bothers to look at all the evidence.  It’s a big world, and Hezekiah acts like he’s seen it all – but he hasn’t.  You see, he isn’t skeptical enough for the thinking person.
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Hezekiah would make a good materialist.  There is a kind of rumor floating on the wind that says materialism is the bastion of skepticism; that the truly open-minded people are materialists.  I find this rumor something between insulting and comical.  It’s simply untrue.  The truth is that materialism may end up being right; but it is certainly not skeptical.  It is hard to imagine a less skeptical view in the known universe than materialism.

I am both a skeptic and a scientist; and I am not a materialist in part for those very reasons. Materialism is a dogma that rules out, up front and without keeping its mind and eyes open, the possibility of anything beyond atoms existing. Whatever else is skeptical, I’d venture to say that this viewpoint isn’t.  Whatever else is filled with the scientific spirit, that isn’t it.

No; materialism is like our friend Hezekiah. Materialism asserts by fiat that there is nothing in this universe beyond atoms, just like Hezekiah asserts there are no aliens.  The parallel is apt.  Both are colossally arrogant.  I can’t see any aliens, says Hezekiah, so they must not existI don’t perceive anything beyond this world at this moment, says the materialist, so it must not exist.

Now I’m not in any way suggesting this is an argument against materialism.  It isn’t.  The fact that it’s kinda impossible to argue definitively for materialism doesn’t mean that it’s false.  I could tell you a spider is in the next room and yet I might be lying.  Hezekiah might be right about the aliens.  Maybe a tonsil is just a throat ornament after all.  My point isn’t that materialism is wrong (though I think it is).  So let’s not get hung up on that.  Just because I say that you ought not decide that ghosts don’t exist without considering all the evidence, that doesn’t mean I think you are wrong about ghosts’ non-existence.

My point is not that materialism is wrong; it’s that materialism isn’t skeptical.  Materialists act like their point of view is the truly intellectual, skeptical one; they act like they are the open-minded lot; they score media points with their bold proclamations of how intellectually broad-minded they are.  But they aren’t.  It’s all a ruse. The true skeptic doesn’t believe a dogma based on evidence by absence.  I don’t believe what I believe because of such evidence.  I believe in spiders because I see them.  I don’t disbelieve in aliens because I can’t see them.  I’m agnostic about aliens and ghosts.  The materialist is so shockingly sure of their own inferential abilities that they decide that nothing beyond nature can exist because they can’t, at this tiny moment in time in one infinitesimally small corner of the universe, perceive it. Well, it’s a big world, and I say, it’s best to keep your mind open.

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8 Responses to Why Materialism Is Not Skeptical

  1. Uh-Oh says:

    I wrote a response, but the security question is malfunctioning and preventing it from being posted. Unless 3 +5 doesn’t actually equal 8…

  2. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Uh-Oh,
    I just noticed your comment — I’m sorry about that! (I was wondering why I was getting off the hook so easily for my cheeky article, haha). I’m going to check out the security question and see what’s wrong. Apologies!

  3. Ned the Angry Argumentative Guy says:

    I am posting as my alter ego to see if the security question fiasco has been solved. Here’s hoping!

  4. Uh-Oh says:

    Alright, now that the comments are working again, I’ll post what I wrote about a month ago:

    I think that if you were to take any conclusional perspective like Materialism, say Christian Dogma or Deism or the like, and arrive at it by a non-skeptical method, you could make the exact same argument against it. Since you say a few times that while Materialism may be right it isn’t in itself skeptical, it appears you attack the route to arriving at its conclusion more than it in itself AS a conclusion about the nature of the universe.

    The major difference I can see between Naturalism (close if not the same as Materialism, where the universe consists of the natural laws and phenomena and all of its products – no suspensions or miracles actually occur) and Theism (that there is/are divine beings capable of suspending natural laws – discount the mere benders, since they could just be highly-evolved beings like any other natural being like us), is that the former I can arrive at by requesting and observing evidence, while the latter relies on a component of faith – unless some of the mythologies supporting such a deity were verifiable, which none exist with incredible evidence.

    I do not need to entertain faith or hope at all in arriving at a provisional (for all conclusions are provisional to a reasonable degree) acceptance of Naturalism as I understand it. The trouble I have with supposing there ‘could be’ areas that suspend natural laws is that it is almost purely defended in a negative way. In your argument for example, the person merely isn’t seeing evidence for this or that or is ignoring supposed evidence – the latter a personal fault not against the conclusion itself and the former the negative base nature of the argument ‘for’ the supernatural. What if the person WAS looking at all the evidence as a properly skeptical person, as opposed to a dogmatic either of Natural or Theistic background? Then they would probably still reject Theism in this argumentation, because much of its evidence is simply negatively based, like the following:

    The negative argumentation that ‘we don’t know everything, thus we cannot make claims about everything’. It is true in a direct way – we don’t know everything there is to know about the universe. However, what we do know, all of the testable and observable and rationally thought-out parts of our exploration into the world, strongly suggests universal laws governing in predictable ways despite location that may only be bent but never demonstrated to be broken. That we can predict how to sent ships into outer space or land a Mars rover millions of miles away while blind in the landing for instance speaks to the power of this, albeit small, amount of knowledge and observation. The universe appears to be governed by non-suspendable laws of a Materialistic nature. If there is a Divinity who can suspend it, well, it hasn’t as far as we have thus verifiably observed.

    Your point, and my point, are the same here: Arriving at this conclusion in the incorrect way, that is to say non-skeptically and taking it on dogma or faith alone, may result in the right answer. BUT the incorrect pathway to concluding it will obscure and taint the process of learning more in the future about any of these worthwhile topics. What I add on here is that from my perspective, because Naturalism offers positive evidence (we observe this and that), the skeptic can far more easily accept it with high-confidence than they can the negative evidence offered by Theism, which takes the form most generally of ‘you don’t know everything’ and ‘absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence’. Both true, but these sentiments don’t offer the skeptic anything but confirming their previously held doubts that are independent of Theism.

    Finally, on ‘absence of evidence’ specifically, the statement can be true – but the lacking of evidence puts whatever argument it would be supporting strongly on the side of ‘unlikely’ to the point of provisional non-belief. Arguments that offer positive evidence that are demonstrably true and repeatable and so on place their subjects far further towards the ‘likely’ end of the spectrum for a skeptical perspective. What I am saying is while it isn’t ‘impossible’ that Theism is correct and there is a divine being puppeting affairs and suspending natural laws at work in the universe, it is so unlikely as to have it filed away with the rest of the matters that play absolutely no advisory role in my daily affairs or my lifelong goals – and becomes even less credible when that being is supposed to actually care about the habits of humans amongst other petty concerns in the grand scheme of the universe.

    But surely there has been some forms of positive argument for Theism, else it would not have entertained the beliefs of thinking people for so long.

  5. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Uh-oh,
    Thanks for your excellent comment! Very well thought-out and articulated.

    I’m sitting in a Starbucks on a borrowed computer out of town…and my family is waiting for me in the car…so I’ll have to keep this short. I’ll resume the dialogue in about week — I won’t have much e-mail access in the meantime.

    I think I agree with you — and certainly agree about applying skepticism to theism as well as naturalism — as long as you treat naturalism to mean “the existence of a natural order that is material in essence.” You are right in that sense — I can see that with my own eyes, also.

    But when you mean, as you explicitly state, that naturalism means “no suspensions or miracles actually occur,” I think you are wrong to say that I can arrive at that by “requesting and observing evidence.” That’s simpy incorrect, and was part of my point — you have to accept THAT part of naturalism on blind faith, because it is a sheer negation. You do not arrive at that part of naturalism by observation; at least, you do not arrive at it by observation anymore than I arrive a Theism by observation.

    Thus, all your arguments about the existence of the natural system is correct, if you limit it to the existence of the natural system. Both naturalism and theism agree that there is a natural system. The whole idea of “miracles” could not exist without a natural system that generally went on guided by laws — you cannot “break” a law if no “law” exists.

    In short, I agree with you (and any theist would agree with you)…about the ability to observe the natural system with my own eyes. But I cannot observe the abscence of miracles with my own eyes…and quite contrary to your assertion that I accept miracles solely on faith, I in fact believe I have seen miracles (and a huge portion of humanity reports belief in supernatural things more generally).

    I have much to say about your claim that naturalism is not based on faith and theism is — actually, they are both equally based on faith — but my family is waiting in the car, and I’ll have to wait until your resposne. Apologies for the delay — will have lots of time to respond in about one week, and hope to resume the dialogue then. In the meantime, hope you have a happy holidays and thanks for your very thoughtful comment!

  6. Uh-Oh says:

    Take your time and enjoy the holidays – these debates have been going on for centuries, so no reason they won’t continue next week!

    Now, your argument summarized here is that Naturalism cannot arrive at the conclusion that no miracles (defined as suspensions of the natural system, which is by definition non-consciously directed in itself) exist because it is not possible to provide evidence for an absence. That is true, but it is also true that I can no more provide verifiable evidence for miracles like the parting of the red sea or city walls crumbling to trumpet blasts than I can for the Valkyrie phenomena with fallen warriors or the generation and infestation of poltergeists. If you are to defend that some miracles exist while others do not, then I must ask what is the reason you believe in the resurrection of Jesus while not-believing the resurrection of Osiris?

    But more than that, at the core of the argument here, the question is how any system of reasoning could say definitively that something doesn’t exist? Like you said correctly it can’t be done 100% for sure, because it could very well be that we just haven’t seen the evidence. BUT! And it is a big but for a reason – that statement in itself provides absolutely no more weight to the existence of miracles as to the existence of other cultural phenomena. I could say millions of people have experienced and would attest to the reality of ‘lucky objects’ for instance. Is there any evidence for these lucky objects? Not so far aside from easily turnable and interpretable personal experience. But so far as our trusted techniques of testing go that have unveiled untold knowledge about the natural world, there so far appears to be no evidence of lucky objects actually conferring skewed chances for people.

    Okay, so my argument and point is that I can with a high degree of confidence state that lucky objects are so unlikely to exist that I shouldn’t let the assumption of their existence influence my decisions. In a shorter and less accurate way to say that, lucky objects don’t exist. I could be wrong, but the chances of that given the current evidence suggesting nothing of the sort are terribly slim despite personal tales of intense luck from such things. An even more extreme example has been given for the ‘celestial teapot’, as such an object floating about in space would not have any evidence to support it (it’s too small), but I can still claim it exists because absence of evidence isn’t evidence of absence. Neither you nor mean however would reasonably assume it does exist and bend our lives around that assumed fact.

    So, the positive claims of Naturalism are built on testable and repeatable observations, and the negative claims are strongly suggested (never dogmatically asserted as some proponents erroneously do) by the lacking of such positive evidence. This differs very much from Theism’s system in which the positive claims are built on faith, untested personal experience, cultural tradition, and negative-based arguments such as I described before, and negative arguments are largely those things that conflict with its positive claims in a sweeping fashion.

    You can address this and your other thoughts in your next blog post if you like so this does not force you to write two whole articles on the matter.

  7. The Apologetic Professor says:

    Uh-oh,
    A very clever and – might I add, very fair – argument. I think you have offered a genuinely excellent assessment of the situation. Because you have raised a lot of really good questions worthy of discussion, I’ve decided (after writing a comment in response and realizing how long it was getting) to take your advice and write some additional posts in the series (instead of responding here). In these posts, I will deal directly with these excellent questions/comments. So stay tuned! I hope to continue the dialogue next week, where I trust you will continue to keep me honest and on my toes.

    First, I have to finish up the “movie” series currently in progress. Also, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, my spam blocker seems to have completely failed…please allow me to throw in an “AAARRRGH!”….so I’m trying to figure that out.

    Thanks as always for your excellent comment — I thought it was really super.

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