An Atheist Critique of Materialism: Marxist and Non-Marxist Determinism.

one of the weaknesses
of materialism is that its critics are all crazy if you take a minute right now to search within youtube for critique of materialism or perhaps materialism is wrong you're going to find out right lunatics some christian some hindu some muslim who are attacking materialism for reasons that only make sense from within their religious standpoint like for you and i right now if we meet a muslim who convinces us that materialism is wrong that would not convince us to go out and get circumcised and start praying to the muslim version of god there's just no meaningful connection there there's no meaningful connection between an islamic critique of materialism and the moral authority of the koran of this particular book so those criticisms of materialism they're misguided even from the religious standpoint and from a kind of secular atheist standpoint they're just complete lunacy they're just pointless the question is also raised by marxists and those who in a serious thoroughgoing way want to criticize what went wrong with communism in the last 100 150 years because materialism took on a greatly expanded significance in the marxist and communist worldview really what this video is doing is criticizing that over expansion of materials now what was it at its core before it expanded this ain't something new that just came out of nowhere materialism was a dogma in ancient greece and i mean dogma in a pretty value-neutral sense i've been to athens greece never been to ancient greece i've been to athens in the in the modern 21st century world you know you can climb up on the top of a hill and get a view going all the way down to the ocean at the perez you can see the clouds you can see the whole rain cycle you can see at a distance the way the clouds ascend and descend and the rain falls you can see thunder and lightning at a distance where you know you yourself are dry there was an awareness although not scientific of the rain cycle and there were people including socrates who were willing to question why do we attribute thunder and lightning to a god like zeus why do we presume this is outside of the world of merely material reality but on the other hand they didn't have telescopes they didn't have scientific experimental equipment they hadn't discovered electricity or the laws of magnetism or anything else you were pretty much just left in a dogmatic position as a materialist of asserting i may not understand what exactly lightning is and this is not the only phenomenon in nature where you really don't know what it is but nevertheless from my position of united ignorance i am going to assert that it's material this is not something transcendental this is not something divine this is not something magical this isn't an exception to the rules of material reality that we have devised in describing wood stone steel and water but if you think about it it's actually quite difficult to justify that lightning really is the same sort of thing as wood steel and water it's actually quite difficult to justify your claim that the moon or the sun is made of the same worldly material that you and i experience here on earth as would in the middle now today in the 21st century it is we have a robust scientific tradition to try to prove that we know what the sun is made out of and what the moon is made out of and what what the moon is made of is not so different from what the earth is made out of the greatest philosophical minds in ancient india when the buddha was alive for example they really couldn't say anything more than claiming that the moon was a god not not that it was controlled by god but that it was a god and a lot of people apparently the majority of people in athens they really had no explanation for lightning and just said well that's that's what zeus does sometimes they attributed this to the action or or activity of the god so materialism started off as a dogma and in this case the dogma was good the dogma was useful it's a dogma sympathize with and support as our scientific understanding has expanded more and more that core ancient notion of materialism has become less and less dogmatic has seemed more and more reasonable or self-evident okay so what does materialism explain we started off by saying hey even if we can't understand the sun and the moon and lightning we think or we want to believe we're committed to this belief that one way or another it's all it's material it's merely material once you get into a doctrine like marxism you're dealing with the assertion that all kinds of cultural political changes result from material conditions this is the problem is materialism expanding to have explanatory power over things that can't really explain people perceiving materialism and insisting dogmatically the materialism has a cause and effect relationship with things that are material but aren't explained by materials okay so this is where i have to clarify that there's a difference between a precondition and a cause and effect relationship right suppose you met someone who converted to islam and you asked them hey how did you get interested in islam in the first place how did you first sit down and read the quran suppose they tell you well i needed a pair of glasses and a lamp then i got the glasses and i got the lamp and sat down and read the quran is not an explanation all right it is an absolutely necessary material precondition for this person that they need to have glasses and a lamp in order to read something right it's a necessary precondition that we have atoms and molecules and rain and farmers and a whole complex economy for the french revolution to happen and then for the french revolution to kind of collapse in failure and for napoleon to take over and the dictatorship in napoleon history goes on you can't create a coherent or meaningful explanation of what happened in the french revolution and napoleon's rise to power by looking at material conditions not even in the marxist sense of expanding materialism to include the relationships between social classes the relationships between different economic abstractions that they insist are material they don't accept that those are ideological or political concepts right um the person you were asking about converting to islam even if they gave you a less a less ridiculous answer than indicating that the glasses or the lamp explain why they they can produce them and let's be clear the glasses and the lamp tell you how they converted to islam that's how they read the quran right they are material preconditions it is true it's even in a surreal sense scientifically true it's a scientifically valid statement that they used this lamp and this pair of glasses it's true but it's profoundly irrelevant right we might come closer to a easy to imagine scenario if you ask someone how did they first read the koran and then decide to convert to this religion and they gave you the answer that they were in jail they were in prison now marxist would have a field date with this right oh you can read so many marxist and left-wing analyses of the material conditions that put people in prison and then how they're alienated from you know this and that and then this leads to them adopting the false ideology false consciousness of the islamic faith this may be an honest answer that they say they were in prison but again really this is just telling us something about how they converted to islam it's not a cause and effect relationship okay in terms of the seemingly respectable scientific doctrine of determinism a doctrine i completely disagree with and made other videos criticizing you can never deal with the laws of physics and chemistry with so much thoroughness that it's going to explain why this person converted to islam leaving no remainder for the realm of human imagination innovation revery dreams and decision making right ultimately with all of the material conditions haven't been accounted for people make decisions and people people may make decisions for reasons that make no sense at all they make wildly irrational decisions we can never explain those decisions through material conditions and it's in this sense that materialism in the marxist sense the the marxist meaning and use of materialism overlaps with or even is identical to the scientific determinist physicist's view of materialism in the 21st century and the fundamental problem is the same it's the expansion of the doctrine materialism beyond the limits of what it can properly uh describe explain or pertain to so if i ask you why do you drink coffee and you give me a really interesting answer that you know what you made a friend when you were traveling once and this friend of yours owns a farm in yemen a coffee plantation in yemen then you start to get interested in the different conditions that are needed to grow coffee and how to make coffee without relying on pesticides and you got really interested in you know the rainfall and the soil conditions and the transportation and before you knew it you were making a trip once every six months back and forth to yemen to meet your friend and i know you like snorkeling in yemen there are some other things you do there on vacation and every time you bring back this big bag of coffee fascinating answer fascinating and there is a sense in terms of materialism which you really have given a scientifically valid answer not of why you drink coffee but of how you drink coffee if if you didn't have these material conditions how would you drink coffee how can you drink coffee without the rainfall and the sunshine and the soil conditions and the transportation back and forth to yemen how how it's impossible right how are you going to read the quran and then make the decision to convert to a new religion without the lamp in your reading glasses or without being locked in prison in one particular person's case right how are you going to do it okay but none of this explains your decision and that's what i'm asking about and most of the time whether it's in our personal lives our professional lives our romantic lives or our political lives what we're dealing with is human decisions human decisions that always and inexorably fall outside of that materialist worldview okay you can never explain napoleon's rise to power materially right you can never explain hitler's rise to power materially never no matter how honest authentic and even scientifically verifiable your examination of these different factors might be what i want to know about is how and why you made the decision with all the side effects of a caffeine addiction in your life knowing about advantages and disadvantages to your health the way it changes your mood and so on what i don't know is why do you make the decision to drink coffee rather than not at all why did you decide to drink this rather than to refuse when did you when did you first get a customer coffee did you ever try quitting and you know did you have withdrawal symptoms when you quit these are the questions i'm i'm asking right so there is a kind of category mistake a categorical error a type of fallacious reasoning that materialism in all its forms conditions people to accept right now true skepticism and nihilism are actually incompatible with materialism the position of a true skeptic is to climb up that same hill in athens and look down at that view to the ocean by the perez and see the clouds and see the lightning and say you know what that is i don't i don't know i can't tell you that lightning is made out of the same stuff as wood and steel i can't tell you that the clouds are made out of droplets of water that clouds are the same substance as the water in the ocean that's kind of mind-boggling we have no evidence this is ancient athens we're not able to go up in a crane and take a sample of the clouds or something we're not able to fly up there and everything is to say no no there are some things i know and there are some things i just don't know the madness of materialism whether it's in its marxist form or in its supposedly respectable scientific form that leads people to reject the belief in free will and believe in determinism and construct these bizarre fantasies about the big bang the big bang theory and the creation of the universe and how every detail of your private life today can be traced back to a cause and effect chain going back to the creation of the universe you know fundamentally you don't have that detachment that strength that true skepticism requires and that true nihilism requires to take a step back and say hey there are some things here i just don't know the sphere of human motivations human innovation human imagination and decision making right that thing that happens when you're presented with two options you say you know what i don't like either one of these options i'm gonna sit down and come up with one that's completely new i'm gonna come up with option three that thing that happens when someone maybe someone like napoleon maybe someone like adolf hitler just has a dream has a dream there's no more valid than any religious leaders dream and they just go out and start giving lectures and see who wants to dream along with them and they start to change history whether you view materialism in a marxist sense or in a more respectable scientific sense you can never never ever explain these phenomena these political phenomena these phenomena that involve human passions human desires human emotions human innovation human imagination and ultimately human decision making you can never explain them through materialism