Dancing with Śiva

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Materialism

Materialism is the view that “nothing exists except matter and its movements and modifications.” In practice it is “devotion to material needs or desires to the neglect of spiritual matters; a way of life, opinion or tendency based entirely upon material interests” (Oxford Engligh Dictionary). There is a vast range of philosophies based on materialism, often embracing the philosophy of Western science, including determinism, or predetermination, the view that events occur by natural law and the results can be the only one’s possible. §

MATERIALIST BELIEFS
  1. I believe that all religious endeavor is a waste of time and energy, that there is no God, and all so-called paranormal or psychic phenomena are quackery and superstition.
  2. I believe that there is no such thing as the soul; death of the body is death of the mind, and there is no reincarnation or afterlife.
  3. I believe that the material universe, governed by natural laws and chance, is the ultimate and only reality and that all apparently nonmaterial substances, such as mind, are explicable as modifications of matter.
  4. I believe that science is the means of understanding all the secrets of the universe, for all phenomena are the result of material processes which are governed by predictable, natural laws.
  5. I believe that free will is an illusion; that each event, being a fortuitous combination of particles and forces, can only happen in one way and is thus predetermined (deterministic materialism).
  6. I believe that there is no objective “higher purpose” in life, no absolute basis for ethics or morality and no retribution for sin or reward for virtue. Seeking pleasure and avoiding pain are the only two goals rational men will pursue—what pleases me is good, what pains me is bad (hedonistic materialism).
  7. I believe that all novel qualities of existence can be derived from changing material conditions—that men’s mental and spiritual life, their ideas and aims, reflect their material conditions of existence (dialectical materialism).
  8. I believe that though not all things consist of matter or its modifications, whatever exists can be satisfactorily explained in natural terms (modified or naturalistic materialism).
  9. I believe that man, the highest and most complex of the evolutionary process prevailing throughout the universe, may continue to evolve into an even more perfect being or higher species (utopian materialism).