Living in a material world

Most of the people living in the world today believe in the supernatural.

If you’re surprised or shocked by that statement, bear in mind that many types of things are said to have the characteristic of being above the laws of nature (supernatural) and hence out of reach of scientific explanation. These include not only ghosts, magic, psychic powers, extraterrestrials, cryptids (Bigfoot and Mothman), and the motley crew who turn up at Halloween (vampires, werewolves, witches, zombies, fairies), but also angels, spirits, souls, and deities.

Although philosophical investigations tend not to be concerned with ghosts or extrasensory perception, theories of the mind and mental activity have a long history, and ‘mind’ was for a long time seen as distinctly different from ‘body’. Is human consciousness a physical phenomenon or are persons made up of two types of stuff? If there are in fact two types of substance, how do body and mind interact with each other? These and other questions about the nature of mental activity are part of the subject matter of philosophy of mind, which today has considerable disciplinary overlap with neuroscience, cognitive science, and computer science. While the view that the world (including its inhabitants) is entirely physical is the dominant perspective in Western philosophy today,²questions about the nature of subjective experience and perception are still live issues. Outside the academic context, a belief in souls may or may not involve an account of their characteristics or of what is entailed by their existence.

God

Belief in God is widely considered to be quite different from belief in ghosts or fairies – or belief in anything else for that matter, supernatural or otherwise. Indeed, many followers of monotheistic religions would put belief in more than one god in the same category as belief in one or more of the creatures and phenomena listed above.

For theists whose belief takes the form of a regular or constant engagement with God, or who see their belief or that relationship as guiding their decisions and conduct, much more hinges on their maintaining the belief than a metaphysical commitment. In countries where most people are religious and respect for religious belief is fiercely defended and enshrined in law, it is socially unacceptable to portray religion as a peculiar curiosity or a pathology. Conversely, tolerance for the views of non-believers can depend on their being low-key or diffident about it. This obviously does not apply to social environments in which discussion and interrogation of positions and claims is a regular occurrence.  

Not religious, but spiritual

‘I’m not religious, I’m spiritual’ is a phrase that has been around for at least 20 years and has surely been a line of dialogue in a few satirical TV shows and movies. It may mean the person doesn’t adhere to the doctrines of any organized religion, but believes in God. It may mean he doesn’t believe in God but values the fellowship and community of attending a church or synagogue. It may mean that he has a sense of awe and concern for the natural world in all its beauty and sublimity, or respect and care for humanity, or both, and considers those things to be the proper objects of the kind of reverence that others have for God. It may mean that the person tries to cultivate mental health and serenity through practices such as meditation. ‘I’m not religious’ may signal a lack of belief in and worship of any superhuman entity, or simply a rejection of institutional structures and codes. Some who use ‘spiritual’ to qualify that stance may seek experiences similar to those offered by religion, but prefer individual, personal practices to those of a group. To ‘be spiritual’ may also or alternatively mean, quite literally, a belief in a spirit or spirits, perhaps just one’s own spirit. The only way to determine what the utterance means is to ask the utterer and hope for a coherent answer.

Spirituality

An element common to many definitions of ‘spiritual’ is the belief (or hope) that reality cannot be fully apprehended or described by the tools that human beings have at our disposal: the senses, logical inference, science. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,/Than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’ says Hamlet.³ Here is a non-exhaustive list of the elements of spirituality as described by people who self-identify as having that disposition:

• the feeling or conviction that there is something outside the grasp of sensory experience and that this ‘something’ is awe-inspiring, although it may or may not be a traditional deity

• the feeling or conviction that one is connected in some way to the ‘something’

• the conviction that one’s life (and presumably everybody else’s life as well) is objectively important⁴ and has purpose, which each person can and should seek to fulfill.⁵

• the feeling that science and philosophy are not the only tools for determining what we ought to know and how we ought to go about acquiring knowledge, and not necessarily the best.  

A religious upbringing or conversion would explain why someone might find such a viewpoint natural or compelling. Considered apart from and independent of religious doctrine, however, the question of why people believe in ‘the spiritual’ (the causes of their beliefs) falls within the purview of psychology or sociology, and assessing justifications for belief in immaterial entities such as God and the soul has always been the job of philosophy. Neither of these sorts of inquiry cuts much mustard with the self-identifying spiritual person for whom analysis fails to capture or satisfy subjective desires. As well, one might ask: what’s the harm in spirituality, anyway? The fact that it’s amorphous enough to accommodate a variety of conceptions could be seen as a point in its favor: it’s unifying rather than divisive.

On the other hand, concepts for which it’s impossible to specify necessary and sufficient conditions (or at least a set of ‘family resemblances’ among the term’s referents) are too vague to be useful, and what sort of evidence would support the existence of things that are neither subject to empirical investigation nor play any role in mathematics or logic?

Materialism

‘Materialism’ is the philosophical thesis that everything that exists is matter and its movements and changes, including the mind and mental activity.⁷ In other contexts, the word refers to a preference for material possessions and physical comfort over intellectual and moral virtues. Dictionary definitions of this sense of materialism – greedy acquisitiveness – typically include a direct reference to ‘the material aspects of life, as opposed to the spiritual’ (suggesting that dualism is not dead, at least in its linguistic traces). Given the term’s ambiguity and the history of connections between religion and morality, uneasiness about a world that is wholly material (including us) is understandable.

An alternative term is ‘naturalism’. While the word doesn’t enjoy universal agreement about its meaning and application, the word has the virtue of containing the word ‘natural’ – that is, not ‘supernatural’. It carries the implication that everything in existence is part of nature – that is, natural as opposed to ‘supernatural’ – and that the scientific method is the authoritative means of investigating the world.

The meaning of life

There’s no shortage of social science research (and plenty of armchair speculation) on why people are attracted to the idea of a world beyond the reach of sensory experience. One reason often cited is fear of the unknowable state of being dead. Another is wanting one’s life to matter – not just matter to other people or humanity as a whole or the planet, but to be of significance: to matter, full stop.

It’s not immediately obvious why the existence of such a fact would require a non-material realm. Nor do I know how someone could check to see whether his or her life has purpose in this sense, the way we can check to see whether we’re doing all of the things that we believe will further our goals and values. Perhaps it’s a matter of feeling content that it does. It would be odd, and I think wrong, to speak of such desires and the emotions that motivate them as detrimental, however perplexing they may be to those who don’t share them or who think moral objectivity is perfectly compatible with a material world.

Scientific and philosophical method

Thus far I have suggested that spiritual beliefs are different from the conclusions of scientific inquiry, but have said little about the specific differences, apart from the types of entities with which each is concerned. Other differences include the ways in which the beliefs are formed and the ways in which they’re justified (what kind of evidence is considered adequate).

Nor has this discussion said much about the field of philosophy, except to distinguish it from religious and spiritual pursuits.⁸ Some of the key differences between science and philosophy can be summarized as follows:

• Science is the study of natural phenomena; it relies on observable, testable evidence.

• The subject matter of philosophy is broader and its method is logical argument. It is concerned with questions about existence, values, and the nature of knowledge, among other things.

• Philosophical inquiries can proceed independently of empirical observation (although as noted earlier, interdisciplinary studies can and do occur).

• Both science and philosophy deal in descriptive facts, and in both fields those facts are provisional in the sense of being subject to revision if further evidence comes to light. However, the subject matter of philosophy includes abstract objects (for example properties or characteristics of things; relations between things; and the concept of time), not just physical ones. Additionally, philosophy investigates ideas about what is good and what is right. Even within a naturalistic framework, not all conclusions are reached through empirical observation and experiment. For example, philosophical inquiries encompass questions about what it means for a word to refer to something; about what it means for something to belong to a category of things; and about what it means for a statement to be true in all possible circumstances, or true but only under certain conditions, or impossible ever to be true. These types of questions are not addressed by science, just as questions about the number of protons in a carbon atom or the air speed of an unladen swallow are not the province of philosophy. The idea that the methods of natural science are equally appropriate to other disciplines, with a poor fit implying that those other fields have little epistemic value, indicates an intellectual imperialism and a blindness to the difference between the kinds of questions that science and philosophy are each best equipped to answer.⁹ Science, like philosophy, is silent about questions outside its scope. 

Scientific investigation and philosophical reasoning share the requirement that evidence must be provided for claims about which people can disagree. While religious believers and communities may also place a high priority on the reasons for beliefs, these communities and the ways in which discussions and debates are conducted within them are quite diverse, and there is no consensus of the sort that characterizes the scientific method or the rules that govern argument in the practice of philosophy.

Religion as a ‘third way’

Religion is different from both science and philosophy in both its purposes and its subject matter, as well as in the range of accepted justifications for claims made from within it. Religion also holds a unique place in social and legal frameworks, with its practice protected explicitly, not merely as an aspect of freedom of expression, freedom of association, or academic freedom. This is hardly surprising.¹⁰ 

Some people who trust the methods and the findings of science also believe in God and in the value of a religious framework and community. One of the ways in which they seek to reconcile these beliefs is superficially similar to the way in which we can and should endorse both science and philosophy: by recognizing that they have different objects and purposes. As we’ll see later, others have argued that this move is wishful thinking and amounts to a futile effort to accommodate inconsistent beliefs.

Proselytizing for disbelief

Around 2004, the so-called ‘New Atheism’, embodied by four prominent intellectuals¹¹ who somehow acquired the toe-curling sobriquet ‘the Four Horsemen of the Non-Apocalypse’ burst onto the cultural scene. Their aim, at first individually coincident, was to fatally puncture religious faith and replace it with reason and a god-free sensibility, while preserving the aspirations and achievements of the arts and sciences. Their intended method was to appeal directly to people’s reason. And that they did, with blithe disdain for some inconvenient historical facts and while alienating a large swath of the public with condescension, arrogance and insults. Even some who already agreed that the best, most honest means of persuasion is rational argument were put off by the tone and by some unsavory prejudices that came to light. The four freely admitted that their agenda was to evangelize and convert. It didn’t work.

Good, bad, or mostly harmless  

Religion is a beacon of hope for millions, a tool of oppression for others, a harmless pleasure for some who don’t take it too seriously, and an albatross in the opinion of those who would have us live by reason alone. Let us look at a very small selection of the pros and cons, in no particular order.

Associations with injustice

Religion is sometimes portrayed as harmful because of its historical coexistence with some pernicious ideas and practices. For instance, women’s rights, responsibilities and status have been different from those of men at some stage in most societies, and religious doctrines, teachings and practices have in many cases reinforced such arrangements, some or all of which were or are morally monstrous. Systemic injustice of a particular kind may be so pervasive and complex, however, that attributing it to a single cause is likely to be a mistake.

To focus on the specific injustices rather than singling out one of the contributing factors is to wield a more precise instrument, with a greater chance of keeping dialogue open.

Good works

Religious groups, their members and their leaders do good. They provide food and shelter to the hungry and the homeless, safety and support to people in danger, refuge and advocacy to asylum seekers, comfort to the bereaved. They embrace the creation and sharing of art and they offer a place of fellowship and celebration within their communities. A list of philanthropic and compassionate projects and acts by religious organizations and individuals would fill a world of libraries. While other hospitals have been established and other masterpieces composed under entirely secular auspices, this in no way diminishes the accomplishments that did come about by a spark of faith that caught fire. Motivations to help, to create, and to resist injustice are diverse and the proof of the worth is in the pudding.

Contradiction of science

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition to pop up again. Astronomers, physicists, and evolutionary biologists do not feel compelled to be cautious in the way they present their findings for fear of legal or extralegal repercussions. This is not only due to respect for individual liberties, but because the scientific outlook is now the dominant paradigm in public intellectual life.¹² People have their own ways of resolving tension between their acceptance of science and of a religious framework. To account for how the entire solar system including Earth, all of its geographical features and all of its life forms came into being in six days, countless parents have explained to their children that a Genesis day should be understood not as 24 hours, but as 4.5 billion years. The contents of the geological and fossil records are literally true while the account contained in scripture is understood as symbolic or illustrative and directed to a higher purpose.

On some views, attempts to reconcile faith and science by treating them as different tools for different purposes are vulnerable to the charge of self-deception. Designating some of one’s religious beliefs as central, minimizing the importance of others, and reinterpreting the content of beliefs to make them more palatable are some of the tactics used to compartmentalize and insulate beliefs that are inconsistent with science. These tactics may constitute a recipe for cognitive dissonance on the part of the individual.¹³ A more salient criticism is that scientific facts and religious doctrine do sometimes make claims about matters supposed to be in the other domain, and that treating them as separate in one’s private life amounts to ignoring relevant evidence.

Whether widespread acceptance of beliefs that contradict science also holds back scientific inquiry is a separate question. It could be argued that when a significant segment of a population does not accept scientific methodology in one or more fields, there are likely to be other features of the society that are not conducive to critical reflection or even to unfettered intellectual freedom.

Indifference to science

A different and perhaps more insidious form of science denial is the kind that, while not flatly declaring that it’s not true, instead suggests with a shrug that while it may be true, it’s not that important. If you’re wondering how climate change could possibly be considered unimportant to anyone who cares about the current or future inhabitants of the planet, you may not have encountered people for whom the most pressing concern is the state of their own and everyone else’s souls. From this perspective, efforts to slow the pace of global warming are more a hobby than a life-and-death struggle.

None of these features of some religions, some of the time, together or separately, constitutes conclusive evidence that religion is more harmful than beneficial, or vice versa.

Belief and behavior

It doesn’t take much provocation to portray proponents of evidence-based inquiry as people in the grip of a faith as blind as that which they decry – a faith not in God but in reason, in argument, in the power of evidence. This is an unorthodox notion of faith and a straw person argument. How could any debate between believers and non-believers take place at all, if not through reason and argument? The person of a naturalistic bent does, however, have to confront the question of where she wants to locate the real vice: in faith or in theism. After all, some theists do not rely primarily on faith per se as the foundation of their belief: instead they believe that they have had first-person experience of the presence of God.

I do not think that today there is ‘widespread acceptance of beliefs that contradict science’.¹⁴ Nor do I think that those who value both scientific evidence disconnected from faith and faith kept separate from science necessarily suffer from cognitive dissonance, self-deception or hypocrisy. One need not regard religion as just as epistemically legitimate as science to find value in one’s own or other people’s religious belief. Religion does not investigate natural phenomena; science does not (usually) get into trouble for insisting on limits and striving for consensus. Call it compartmentalized if you like, but it’s no more so than the sort of special status that we give literature and other art: while it’s nothing to do with the results of empirical investigation, it has worth to us.

Earlier in this essay, I drew a distinction between religion (belief in and worship of a God or gods) and spirituality (belief and interest in entities and forces that are not material in composition and not subject to scientific investigation). Defining spirituality is notoriously difficult because there are diverse views on what the object of the belief is, and even on whether it has to be ‘belief in’ anything. But let’s adopt a broad understanding of the concept. 

To the non-believer, religious metaphysical and epistemological views can be problematic: for example if they include interactions between the material world and the divine, or answer the question ‘On what evidence?’ with ‘Faith.’ The common ground to be found lies elsewhere, namely in the ethical obligations that religion can mandate and facilitate: others over self, community rather than the individual. While religions do not have a monopoly on compassion and service to others, they do help people, as observed earlier, in ways that include healing, teaching, counseling, advocacy, and serving as a community resource. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam all command their followers to act with beneficence; the precepts of Buddhism and Hinduism contain duties to help others, too. We all probably know ‘spiritual’ people who do these things also, some from motivations they describe as having to do with their spirituality. But the indeterminate nature of spirituality makes it a highly individual proclivity, and one that may appear to be a lot more inwardly focused than religion.

Heaven and earth, spirit and matter

Once people have formed views about whether the world is wholly material or whether it’s inhabited by, set in motion by, or suffused by spirit, they seldom change their minds. It has not been my aim to change anybody’s mind. Instead I hope this exploration has raised some questions about why each of us has certain beliefs and commitments, and clarifies some of the views that are held.

There is wonder to be found in the natural world, connection in relationships, and well-being in meditation, study, activity, or art. Not everyone associates feelings of awe and interconnection with spirituality, and not everyone wants to assert that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in science and philosophy. Even so, for the person who understands and accepts whatever is needed to maintain a belief in the holy and the sacred alongside assent to the methods and conclusions of science, surely there’s no harm in doing so.  

Photo and video credits

Iguana, Barrancabermeja, Colombia, by Bayron Morales Linares on Unsplash

Notre Dame de Paris, by Eric Terrade on Unsplash

Link to HD Remastered music video for Madonna’s ‘Material Girl’, directed by Mary Lambert. Original song from Madonna’s ‘Like a Virgin’ album released on Sire Records, 1984

Barn swallow, Netherlands, by Vincent van Zelinge on Unsplash

Friday prayer, by Matin Firouzabadi on Unsplash

The hospitality of Abraham, mosaic from the Basilica of St Vitale, Ravenna, Italy (c. 525),  by Lawrence OP on Flickr, licensed under CC Attribution – No Derivs 2.0 Generic (CC BY–ND 2.0)

Shooting star, Rye, by Kristopher Roller on Unsplash

Citation

Please cite as: Miller, L. Elaine, ‘Living in a Material World’, It Could Be Words (blog), 30 October 2021, https://it-could-be-words.com/living-in-a-material-world

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1. Linda Rodriguez McRobbie, ‘The Strange and Mysterious History of the Ouija Board’, Smithsonian Magazine, 27 October 2013, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-strange-and-mysterious-history-of-the-ouija-board-5860627/ [↩]
2. A close second is functionalism: the view that types of mental states or mental activity are best understood in terms of their functions – the roles that they play in the ‘system’ constituted by a person – rather than their internal characteristics. [↩]
3. William Shakespeare, Hamlet (1.5.167­­–8), Hamlet to Horatio. This is a line that has thrilled many generations of starry-eyed students before they turn their attention to the ambiguities and puzzles about Hamlet’s motive and outlook. [↩]
4. One may wonder why this uncontroversial idea even needs to be articulated. A hallmark of any normative ethical theory is that it yields the conclusion that all lives matter. Spirituality is not itself a normative ethical theory, but people who think of themselves as spiritual usually hold some ethical views, as does everybody else. [↩]
5. This purpose is supposed to be conceptually independent of socially determined or consciously chosen aims (such as one’s career or choice of causes to support), although those ends or objectives may coincide. [↩]
6. William Wordsworth, ‘Lines composed a few miles above Tintern Abbey’ (1798), 1.88 [↩]
7. Today, ‘materialism’ is often used interchangeably with ‘physicalism’, although the two words have long, complex and independent philosophical histories: see Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/physicalism/#Term [↩]
8. Theology is the study of religious beliefs, practice and experience. There is overlap between theology and philosophy, and theology can and does use philosophical methods of analysis and argument. [↩]
9. For a cogent and systematic rejoinder to this mindset, see Massimo Pigliucci, ‘The Problem with Scientism’, Blog of the APA, 25 January 2018, https://blog.apaonline.org/2018/01/25/the-problem-with-scientism/ [↩]
10. About 85 per cent of the world’s population identify with a religion: World Population Review, Religion by Country 2021, https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/religion-by-country. On the number of theists in two non-randomly chosen Western democracies, see also Pew Research Center, ‘Key Findings about Americans’ belief in God’, 25 April 2018, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/ and Natasha Moore, ‘We asked Australians if they believe in God or the supernatural. Here’s what they said’, ABC News, 4 April 2021, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-04-04/spiritual-supernatural-realities-australians-weig-in-this-easter/100046122 [↩]
11. British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins; British journalist and  social commentator Christopher Hitchens, now deceased; American philosopher Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, also American, who holds a PhD in cognitive neuroscience and a BA in philosophy. [↩]
12. As of 2005, American schools can no longer teach religious stories rather than scientific explanations of the origin and development of species. See Glenn Branch and Ann Reid, ‘Evolution Education in the US is Getting Better’, Scientific American, 12 September 2020, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/evolution-education-in-the-u-s-is-getting-better/ [↩]
13. See for example Jerry Coyne, ‘Yes, there is a war between science and religion’, The Conversation, 21 December 2018, https://theconversation.com/yes-there-is-a-war-between-science-and-religion-108002 [↩]
14. Some of the attitudes hindering efforts to fight covid-19 do seem to fall into this category, but most of the false beliefs underlying ‘vaccine hesitancy’ do not stem from a religious outlook. [↩]
15. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788), tr. Guyer, 1992, 5:161.33–6 [↩]