Materialism Makes Us Comfortable

The modern materialist insists he is right because his explanations obviously work. In this case, “to work” entails (and more than just incidentally) sucking all the sense of meaning out of human life as such. But to say that something works is to assume a specific goal in accordance with which “working” may be judged. Materialism works, therefore, if one’s goals are unrelated to having a reason to live.

To state this differently: All efficacy, like all benefit, has an implied standard. The materialists’ standard of efficacy, if we may define this by their methods, results, and explicit statements in defense of their perspective, is comfortable non-existence.

Hence, it is highly amusing to see so many leading materialists jumping on bandwagons of “concern” (read panic) over this or that practical result of their so-called scientific approach and methodology, such as weapons technology, dangerous biomedical research, or the threat of artificial intelligence run amok. Their premise is comfortable non-existence, to be sure. But there is always, it seems, a lag period between a man’s adoption of a supposedly rational point of view and the subjective development of his emotional acceptance of that new certainty. Modern scientific materialism has been making the case for human life as an obsolete illusion for four centuries. Suddenly, of late, the materialists seem to be subject to second thoughts about their beloved efficacy, although they are not yet fully aware of what this suggests about their premises and conclusions, i.e., as though, in spite of their proudest declarations, discoveries, and theorems, they still cared about human life as something real, good, and somehow irreducible.


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