Some problems of definition:

Pain may have a direct physical cause or an indirect physical cause, or it may be emotional or psychological. Something eaten may cause a stomach ache, so may fear of bullying cause a child to feel one. Or it might be manufactured out of the child’s imagination to avoid going to school. Whichever of these could be said to be “real” is something of a problem since phobias can also be very “real” things to the person who suffers them. The more one tries to define something like this, the more difficult it becomes. Sometimes it becomes like trying to pick up water which quickly flows away between our fingers.

Materialism is rather like this. The physical world, which seems, at first glance, to be so real, tends to become very fuzzy round the edges, and then, on closer investigation, tends to disappear between the fingers of one’s mind.

Hobbes and the theory of Materialism

Pleasure and pain are real enough but they are only material sensations. It was these upon which Hobbes the seventeenth century English philosopher based his theory of human society. People, he taught, try to avoid pain and seek after pleasure. The first he called evil and the second good. With everyone seeking their own pleasure and avoiding pain or discomfort, he saw there were likely to be endless conflicts between a man and his neighbours. “A war of all against each” and “each against all” seemed inevitably to be the result with life becoming, “nasty, poor, brutish and short”. His solution was a powerful monarchy which was more like the rule of Cromwell and the Major Generals.

To argue that Materialism leads to some form of despotism may take longer than this article but that it tends this way should be apparent to every rational Christian. This is not to say that other ideas may lead to a form of tyranny but I would strongly argue that Biblical Christianity is one of the best bases for democracy and that an absence of such a system of thought may soon lead to anarchy then to tyranny.

The Bible rejects Materialism

The Bible teaches, “let each esteem other better than themselves”. (Phil. 2:3.) This is clearly at odds with Materialism whether Hobbesian or any of its later versions which claim a pseudo-scientific basis for their theories of society and of government. The Bible sees a corrupt society as being composed of people who are, “lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God”. (2Tim. 3:4.) Indeed living for pleasure is condemned by the Bible. (1Tim. 5:6, ) Our fallen nature is not able to discern what true pleasure really is and so, in the pursuit of perceived pleasure, we can become corrupt. (Jas. 5:5.)

For the Materialist the ambitions for possessions, power, status and money are legitimate ends for human living. The life and work of the Lord Jesus, of the Old Testament prophets and of the apostles, is all a condemnation of Materialism. It is a lie which is used by the devil to “blind the minds of those who believe not”. (2 Cor.4:4.) For a Christian to live in a materialistic way is a denial of the Gospel by which we are saved through the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Just one George Muller, one Hudson Taylor, or Adoniram Judson, is enough to give the lie to these teachings. The lives of Christians as lived in obedience to the Lord Jesus show the world’s lies to be empty, tawdry goods for sale in Vanity Fair. Even among the pagans the life of one like Socrates could show the attractions of material goods to be will o’ the wisps leading to a coarsening of the intellect, to insensitivity, and to condemnation by justice and by truth.

Materialism and Morals

Even materialistic societies themselves give medals and awards for bravery, for virtue and for public service. Men cannot avoid admiration for virtue even though, in practice and in their teachings they deny such things.

Materialism comes in various packages but all have the same basic assumption that only matter exists. This too is questionable but let us see what it puts in the place of the moral values taught in the Word of God. We cannot live without morals for that is the way we have been created, in the image of God. (Gen. 1:26.) Man cannot avoid being a moral being so to try to avoid recognizing his Creator, he constructs moral systems for himself which, on closer investigation are seen to have no real substance, no rational basis.

Darwinism, in spite of the doubts of Darwin himself concerning morality, was driven by the anti-God rhetoric of Huxley and made survival of the fittest a basis for living. This has led to all sorts of evil results. Reduced to its bare bones it suggests that one sees every other being as a competitor in the race of life and the best way of dealing with competitors is to stab them in the back before they do that to you.

Herbert Spencer applied these evolutionary principles to human society and was followed by others in business and in politics. In the world of commerce, Sumner of Harvard taught that the efficiency of an enterprise was honed by the predatory capitalist growth of big corporations intent on getting even bigger and more predatory. Every boardroom takeover was like a shoot out at the O.K. Corral and the surviving capitalist predator was bigger and hungrier as a result. In such a system there was no room for welfare, for unions, nor for health and social care. The weak go to the wall, which is where they belong. Only the strong survive.

More recent politicians have attempted to follow this teaching, usually with some modifications. None has been able to carry it out to a logical conclusion for to do so would be to go against our own nature where compassion and sympathy are also part of our emotional makeup unless we are thoroughly depraved.

Thinking of depravity we might find names like Attila the Hun spring to mind. In more recent times and with a completely materialistic and evolutionary scheme of thought one may give Hitler and Stalin as examples. Go far enough to the left or far enough to the right in politics and one inevitably comes to a one party state with all the panoply of tyranny at its beck and call.

In the nineteenth century lived two philosophers, both German in origin, Nietzsche and Marx. Nietzsche was anti-Christian and argued that “the will to power” was all that made sense in international and in most social relations. Of course others also added to the crack pot thinking that corrupted many of the German universities but this heady mixture of race, of evolution and of militarism was put to music, as it were. by Wagner. Hitler taught that the strong survived and determined that the German super race should survive at the expense of the Slavic peoples to the east of Europe and of those regarded as unfit among his own people. That included disabled, Gypsies and, of course, in particular, the Jews.

Meanwhile, further to the east, Stalin had built, on Lenin’s seizure of power, itself a parody of Marxist teaching, an equally grim superstate with that same organization of tyranny and despotism, a secret police, a system of prison camps and police spies where any criticism was to be ruthlessly stamped out. It is arguable which of the two monsters was more evil; the point is merely academic.

Just as Hobbes taught that religious dissidents were to be discouraged so materialism cannot stand criticism. As Hitler taught the Nazi judges, what is good for the leader and the party is to be the principle underlying all legal thinking. Materialism has no sense of humour and a massive sense of is own importance.

Science

Science, by its very nature is materialistic. It is the study of the material world. It tries to observe things, to explain the phenomena it observes and then to test the hypotheses given to explain what is observed. The problems here are several. First when an observer is present the situation becomes altered. Animals and birds behave in various ways but when bird or animal watchers arrive the situation is altered. Often this makes little difference but we can never be sure since we can never know what the phenomenon would have been like if we had not been present in some form or another.

Secondly science can only really prove what is not. People thought that smells caused disease. It seemed a fair observation. Then enough people began to find microscopic life and speculated whether minute living creatures might not cause infection, or be the infection. Pasteur finally came up with a germ theory and Joseph Lister applied these findings to surgery. The search for anti-biotics seemed to be the answer to all our problems until the misuse of these showed up some fallacies in the theory. No science can actually prove what is so the oft repeated assertion that “science has disproved God,” or the Bible, or religion, is a rather silly statement.

Science is also a human institution and subject to all the faults of such systems. It has a career structure and a jargon all of its own. Anyone offending the beliefs within which science works is likely to be shut out. He, or she, will not be able to publish their research findings and they will not be promoted to the positions their skills entitle them to. It often takes years to break down the prejudices of scientists before overwhelming evidence tells them that an idea is dead and should be buried. Ages after Lister showed the success of his antiseptic surgery leading surgeons were making such stupid remarks as, “quick, shut the door, one of Mr. Lister’s germs might get in!”

Of course we Christians make mistakes and we also make silly remarks. However seriously scientists may think of themselves they too are guilty of folly, they are human, all too human, to steal the words of Nietsche.

Technology

Related to science but driven by the capitalist urge to make ever increasing profits technology has a lot to answer for. It may be we should be much happier and better off with a simpler life style. Indeed the bible shows us just such a vision of the future when the Lord Jesus has returned and put this sad old world of ours to rights. “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree…” (Micah 4:3,4.) For the nations of the West, particularly in the nineteenth century and for much of the twentieth “progress” meant material and technological advances. This idea still lingers probably because we do not want to think that our lives, surrounded by gadgets and by a mass of things which we believe to be desirable, are in fact not as happy as we want to believe. Science and technology still hold out the vain hope that given time and resources they will be able to solve all the world’s problems.

The problem of human nature and its sin and wickedness is not one that technology will ever be able to solve and the pseudo-sciences of Psychology and Sociology are equally powerless because they are ignorant of the true situation and are like clumsy folk scrabbling about in the dark by the light of a feeble candle.

What is Matter

In fifth century (b.c.)Greece, Democritus argued that all matter is made up of particles which can no longer be divided. This theory remained until people started to investigate the complex make up of the atom itself and the awful energy which its destruction could unleash. Perhaps we can measure the flow of electrons but things like photons and neutrons have little of no mass and so it becomes difficult to define them as matter.

Thoughts and feelings are terribly powerful things which give rise to all sorts of human actions in the material world. People have studied the brain and find that emotions and thoughts give rise to wave actions which can be measured but the problem then becomes that of the chicken and the egg. Are thoughts the actual wave patterns or are the thoughts the reality which gives rise to what we can measure? Is thought merely electro- chemical activity in the brain or is this caused by the thought. If so what is thought? We know that thoughts are real and that they are there because we think them.

Spirits, Souls and Computers

We have other problems too, there is the behaviourist argument that we are programmed by our upbringing and our culture, also by our genes. It often seems deceptively simple to say these things then when one investigates more closely, one finds that the simple idea comes up with the conclusion that we are merely machines. We actually cannot live with that. Something tells us that we are more than machine, more than animal, that we are something almost godlike and yet terribly flawed and fallen.

The Bible teaches that we are “spirit, and soul and body” (1Thess 5:23.) The behaviourist professor may be all day long teaching his students that we are simply programmed and yet, on the way home, will buy flowers for his wife. As he reads his children a story and tucks them up in bed for the night he will feel a great surge of protective, loving devotion. Also when he takes his wife in his arms he will murmur, “I love you” while not believing that such an emotion can exist within what is basically a machine. The materialist cannot live with the conclusions his beliefs lead him to therefore they are inadequate and do not relate to the real reality which is out there and all around us.

The Materialist in tension

He is torn between what he pays lip service to and what he knows in his heart of hearts. He may deny that man has a soul, that he makes choices and that he has a will and responsibilities. Nevertheless our society has to operate on a moral basis and though we call them by other names they are the same absolutes which Christians have all along known as sins. Materialism might call shoplifting deviance, it might say it is anti-social or a crime, but we know it to be stealing which God says is a sin. When society, through the judge appointed by the state, locks up the thief in prison it is agreeing with us that stealing is a sin. When it expects men to honour their contracts and to obey legitimate authority then it agrees that the Bible is correct. Materialism has no basis for morals and therefore materialistic society which has some semblance of freedom actually switches over to a Christian viewpoint when it is expedient but in the lecture room it denies that this is possible.

When we say stealing is wrong, or lack of truth is wrong, we are told that that may be wrong for us and so our critic is saying that all these things are relative and not absolute. But when they touch him he is the first to use absolutist language. Listen to him after the thief has broken into his home or when he believes the politician or the business man has been sparing with the truth.

Modern and Post Modern man has a problem with language. To us God’s laws are true and right at all times for all people in all places. For the materialist they are socially produced and can be altered and re-written by society. Yet when we say “truth” we mean something which answers to objects or phenomena in the material world or the world of abstractions. We do not say truth and mean preference or expediency. If the material was all there was. In a world which came into being by chance over aeons of time by accident, then there could be no such words as “truth” or “right” or “wrong”, or “good and evil”. There could only be expedient, or liking or preference.

Time to fight back.

For the materialist what is, is what exists and what is, is right. It is the materialist who has the problem not the Christian nor the Jew who is consistent with his Judaism.

We have all the advantages of rationality and we have nothing to be ashamed of. In the past we were overawed by the assertions of science. The evolutionists did a very good P.R. job for themselves and many of the saints gave in and compromised. They came up with Theistic evolution or believed in Creation on Sunday and in evolution during the week. We are not mired in the swamps of wishful thinking. It is the materialist who inhabits the airy realm of cloud cuckoo land and we must burst the bubble of pretence that surrounds their fear of God and of the truth.

One of the Modern thinkers, Jean-Paul Sartre, the Existentialist, argued that for a true perspective on the universe we need a fixed cosmic reference point. We are the people who have that for we have the Words of the Creator of the Cosmos who has told us all we need to know to be able to speak true truth and to live in goodness and in righteousness. The perspective of the materialist, of whatever persuasion, is deeply flawed and it is as if he views things “through a glass darkly”. (1 Cor. 13:12.) Imagine trying to look at the world through the bottom of a glass bottle. That is how the materialist, whether he be a scientist or a poet sees the universe. His picture is all distorted and he thinks the distortions are the reality.

The Bible holds good under three tests which no other set of ideas can pass. It tells us the answers to the big questions such as Who am I ? Where do I come from? Who is God? What happens after we die? And so on. It also works in practice as anyone who has read it and applied it can confirm. Finally it is internally consistent. Frequently we hear people assert that “the Bible is full of contradictions”. There is a simple answer to that and it is, “then show me just one”. That is usually enough to silence the opponent and to put him to shame. Sometimes people do come up with perceived inconsistencies but on examination these are found to be mistaken as when people contrast law and grace, understanding neither.

Let us not weary in well doing. Let us take unto us the whole armour of God and use the “sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God”. We may have some difficult arguments but each one will make us stronger and more confident and we shall be able to put to silence all our enemies and to help our fellows to a clearer way of thinking.