emotional

(Yes, a catechism, materialist-style. It may look like a spoof, but in fact it's a serious appraisal of what I, and most other materialists, believe in. See if you conform to sound doctrine, y'all!)

THE MATERIALIST CATECHISM

QUESTION. What was in the beginning?
ANSWER. Matter.

QUESTION. What are you made of?
ANSWER. Changed Matter.

QUESTION. Why did Matter change?
ANSWER. Because it is inherent in Matter to change.

QUESTION. What is this change called?
ANSWER. It is called Evolution.

QUESTION. And is there anything apart from Matter?
ANSWER. No, none at all.

QUESTION. Is all substance material?
ANSWER. There is no non-substantial substance.

QUESTION. What is mind?
ANSWER. It is an emergent property of Matter.

QUESTION. Is there mind without Matter?
ANSWER. No, as there is no property without its basis.

QUESTION. What is the occult?
ANSWER. Either delusion, or unexplained material phenomena.

QUESTION. Is there only one Truth?
ANSWER. There is only one Truth, and that is Materialism.

QUESTION. What of the near-death experience?
ANSWER. It is no pointer to objective reality any more than drug-induced hallucinations are.

QUESTION. Is humanity special in any sense?
ANSWER. In the sense that it has a highly evolved brain.

QUESTION. And in no other sense?
ANSWER. No, for we are but another twig on the Tree of Life.

QUESTION. What is our purpose?
ANSWER. To be and to continue being.

QUESTION. What is "to be"?
ANSWER. To live and pass the time.

QUESTION. What is "to continue being"?
ANSWER. To pass the genes henceforwards.

QUESTION. Can the volcano be stopped from erupting?
ANSWER. Yes, if you can tap at the material source of its erupting.

QUESTION. Can it stopped by invocation?
ANSWER. No, for it has neither ear nor understanding of human invocations.

QUESTION. Does the volcano erupt to punish?
ANSWER. No, for the righteous and the wicked are engulfed thereby alike.

QUESTION. What is good and evil?
ANSWER. They are human concepts for leading us through life.

QUESTION. Are good and evil real?
ANSWER. Nature knows not of them, but to us they are real.

QUESTION. What is the arbiter of good and evil?
ANSWER. Experience, logic, through correction of errors.

QUESTION. If an apple falls off a tree and no-one sees or hears it, has it fallen?
ANSWER. It has.

QUESTION. If a man dies and feelings nothing, has the universe effectively ended?
ANSWER. For that man only; but the universe continues being.

QUESTION. Is there a way of telling the future?
ANSWER. Only in what is known of direct cause and effect.

QUESTION. What is magic?
ANSWER. It is what we term the fascinating unknown.

QUESTION. What is the fate of magic?
ANSWER. To be given a materialist explanation.

QUESTION. What is the key to knowledge of the universe?
ANSWER. The key is science.

QUESTION. Is any of the religions true?
ANSWER. Of the supernaturalist religions there is none true, not even one.

QUESTION. What are gods?
ANSWER. Gods are non-substantial beings created by humans for humans.

QUESTION. Why create gods?
ANSWER. To answer natural questions and to give hope.

QUESTION. Are gods real?
ANSWER. No, only Matter is real.

QUESTION. Is mankind good or evil?
ANSWER. Mankind has the free will to be good or evil.

QUESTION. Is the universe good or evil?
ANSWER. The universe is neither good nor evil, but indifferent.

QUESTION. Why is there suffering in the world?
ANSWER. The world is the product of no plan, and therefore not problem-free.

QUESTION. Will there ever be an end to suffering?
ANSWER. No, not as long as free-willed creatures inhabit the world.

QUESTION. Has natural law ever been broken?
ANSWER. No, but many people have told fictions.

QUESTION. Is it possible to break natural law?
ANSWER. No, no more than it is possible for two and two not to make four.

QUESTION. Is there a ruler over the universe?
ANSWER. No, the universe has no lord over it.

QUESTION. Who controls Matter?
ANSWER. The atoms move of their own inherent accord.

QUESTION. When did intelligence emerge?
ANSWER. It has evolved over time - not been present from the beginning.

Alludium Fozdex

Hoo Hah!

Looks like pretty sound doctrine to me!

I think I'll frame it and put it on my wall.
:notworthy

JGL53

Very good. Count me as a "believer" in philosophical materialism.

The only thing I would add is some Qs and As discussing, defining, and giving examples of 'matter', so religious jerks won't asked dumb ass questions like "So, you believe everything reduces to atoms, huh? Well, what about light and other forms of enery?".

HaysooChreesto!

Yeah. Me too. Nice.

Ab_Normal

My only quibble is:
This seems to attribute desire to matter, which I just can't hang with. I guess I'm a bad materialist.

emotional

Ah no. "Accord" isn't synonymous with "will". It's more like "drive". I don't believe the atoms have a will (though I did play with animism in the past, later to be rejected). They just move because they do.

The wonder of chemistry: you just add a single proton or electron to an atom, and its properties change immensely. We of this current day and age know so little of matter, it's simply staggering (and of course, religion hasn't helped much in furthering knowledge). My fave scientific subject at high school wasn't physics or biology, but chemistry.

Marduk

"QUESTION. If an apple falls off a tree and no-one sees or hears it, has it fallen?
ANSWER. It has. "

I thought it went "if a tree falls in the woods and there is no one there to hear it, does it make a sound?"

the_cave

Yeah, even if I were an atheist, I'd be bothered by the following:

Better make it "energy". (Does that mean materialists are really energists? )

I would be quite unsatisfied with:



and



"Just so" stories don't teach us anything, even when it's materialists telling them. A more honest answer, if one were a materialist, would be "We don't know (yet, and maybe we never will, but gee, I hope we do!)"



But this begs the question, what is an emergent property? I've heard it discussed plenty of times, but I've never heard a satisfactory answer. Does it not exist prior to its emergence? Why doesn't this violate conservation laws? If it's there to begin with, what it it before it "emerges"?



Only if you define the universe as "everything that doesn't have a highly-evolved mind", which I admit is the common definition.