Q: How can you believe in God when science clearly demonstrates that only material things are real?
Does the number “1” exist? Since a negative answer necessarily negates all mathematics, and therefore logic, and therefore the concept of argument itself, I shall proceed as if the answer is in the affirmative. If the number “1” can be said definitely to exist, of what material is it composed? The answer, of course, is none; it is not a physical item. It is neither matter, nor energy, nor space, nor time, nor force. It is a concept. It is a concept with a verifiable existence.
Congratulations, we have just destroyed the idea of materialistic reductionism.
That really only leaves two possibilities: idealistic monism, and dualism. Dualism is failed from the get-go: if my mind is of a fundamentally different substance than my hand, but it can cause my hand to raise, then why can it not cause the cup next to my hand to raise without using my hand as an intermediary?
Therefore, idealistic monism. The universe is a phenomenon of consciousness, and what we perceive as “material” is merely an epiphenomenon (precisely the opposite of the materialist-reductionist’s conjecture). And note that a universal consciousness would be a definition of God.
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