Wednesday, November 12, 2014

The Ghost in the Darkness


                Thoughts on the existence of the immaterial world...









Is there more than meets the eye? In other words, is there more to reality than the physical universe? in philosophy physicalism is the worldview of being that asserts that "everything is physical." there is nothing over and above the physical world. Despite the fact that I have been burned badly by fundamentalist evangelicalism, I reject the physicalist notion that doubts the existence of the immaterial world on many levels, the first being that this view repudiates outright the historic Christian notion of the existence of God and the immaterial soul. Another issue that precludes me from believing in the physicalist worldview is that there is often chaos in a world that is supposed to be governed inextricably by the natural laws of physics. If every living organism is ultimately a biological machine, why then do human beings act erratically? If human beings are ultimately biological machines that operate by strict mechanistic determinism, how do we account for the innate ethical notions of right and wrong? If we are just biological machines that operate by pure mechanistic determinism, how do we account for ascetic notions of love and beauty? The problem with the biological determinism and strict physicalism is the problem of what I call “the ghost in the darkness,” that is, there seems to be a spiritual dimension in a world that allegedly has no spirits or souls. For me, I believe the God of historic Christianity does exist and, in Him, we live and move and have our very being (Acts 17:28).

  

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