Occasionally a would-be materialist will mention the courage it takes to live without believing in anything supernatural. This is amusing because it is not even wrong, just impossible. Courage is supernatural.
If you were a true materialist, you would know that courage can not exist anywhere in the universe, and certainly not in yourself. If only because there is no self. There is this moving mass of protoplasm, wandering through the world, driven by its DNA to seek out and digest pieces of dead plant or animal matter, kind of like a slime mold but faster. Further the DNA will occasionally drive this lump of living matter to briefly unite with other lumps to create a new cluster of cells with a combination of their DNA, to repeat the whole process over again.
There can be no courage, no beauty and no hope in a creature propelled merely by the firing of its neurons as dictated by its genes and environment. It does not even have as purpose to survive and procreate - it just so happened that those cell clumps that were programmed to survive and reproduce gave rise to the current fauna, while those whose DNA failed to contain these programs fell by the wayside.
If we zoom in, all we see is atoms combining their electrons to a more stable configuration, then being torn apart by random movements and combining again. If we zoom out, we see a dirty speck of iron circling an average star, dwindling into the background light of a random galaxy on its way through time to inevitable destruction.
So no, if you are still alive, I don't think you have ever been a materialist. But I suppose roleplaying one can help attract shapely lumps of protoplasm of the appropriate gender.
1 comment:
Well said. You have pulled back the curtain.
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