Reviews by Hubie Goode: Karl Marx, Materialism and Green

Karl Marx, Materialism and Green

The Question Of Ultimate Reality would seem to have one of two results when asked accordingly. 1) God and what he holds in existing. 2) Matter and what results from its motion. Number two here was promoted by Karl Marx.

Marx was guided by wrong ideas about the universe that are from over 100 years ago. The main tenant of his materialistic imaginings have lead to the idea of physical matter as having an erratic evolution of something that can only be described as “cosmic gobbeldy goop”. Supposedly, this goop transforms itself from one convoluted existence to another, randomly, from time to time... over time. Its internal interplay finally materializes a “magic” distribution of sub nuclear particles with precisely the right proportions in order to produce what we see and hear and experience. This is, of course, not a scientifically proven fact, just a leap of faith fraught with serious flaws.

For instance, we as living beings feel that all we see and are is a useful end for us. We perceive this “magic” that produced everything as functioning toward a useful end, namely human life. Logically then, since a natural process produced a magical distribution, which then produced us, our existence was indeed inevitable; because the occurrence of the magical distribution over infinite time was a certainty.

To make things a little more easy to understand, if time is infinite, then everything that we see and are MUST eventually happen. The magic logic word here is of course, “IF”. But what is the origin of this infinite time? What is the source of this matter that can infinitely change and morph its shape over time? Anything is possible for an uncritical mind, but this kind of view point is surprisingly naive.

The consensus of scientists is that the universe, and therefore space and time, had a beginning. But if time had a beginning, then how can infinite time exist? To believe this is to ignore the findings of an international jury of scientists who have declared otherwise. Believing in infinite time is not only the act of believing something without evidence but it is also not believing the concept that DOES have evidence. Observable evidence, since that is what true science is all about.

Infinite time appeals to some people because it opens a door to not having to believe in an almighty God who created it and all that it involves. But the evidence that our world and space time had a beginning teaches that the notion of infinite time is false. The beginning of space time means that time had a beginning.

When we considered the existence of mankind, we talked about how mankind’s body was “written” into the genes that comprise DNA. However, mankind is more than just his DNA and more than what is written into the DNA. For example, let’s talk about pleasure and pain. How can non living matter change and contort itself into a living being that feels pleasure and pain? What is pleasure? What is pain? What is the source and why do they exist? What is the concept of horror or paradise to an unliving matter except in the personal interpretation of the worst pain and the best pleasure? What property of physical matter could produce these things? Pleasure and pain are things PEOPLE experience, they have meaning only in terms of consciousness and not matter.

Physical matter exists in a form that precludes private experience. The laws that govern chemicals here on Earth, are the same that apply to planets around distant stars. The forces that connect the two span billions of light years between them. As I have said before, the entire periodic table is delivered to Earth by distant star light. Einstein’s theory teaches that the mass of these distant stars contributes to the forces creating cyclones and tornadoes here on Earth. The theory identifies gravity as the mechanism by which they do and gives us a mathematical tool to describe it.

The exercise of conscience is an individual matter which a materialistic concept of reality does not explain. How can private experiences materialize in a universe in which every part of the universe knows about every other part? Isn’t that why Star Trek’s “Borg threat” is so dangerous? They are all connected and threaten our individuality? If you and I materialize from a universal system where each part is connected to every other part as a point of physical matter and its motion interacting, each with every other part, why are my thoughts known only to me? Are we not Borg? No, we are men, we are Devo. The materialistic point of view fails to explain why certain common experiences are absolutely private. And thank God for that. You wouldn’t want to see what most people are thinking.

Ever ask a blind man what the color green is? The experience is clear to all of us who can see green grass. If I ask you to imagine the color green you can do exactly as I have said without any sitcom conventions. But a blind person has no clue, if he was born blind. He has no experience of green when he sees green grass. He only knows what it feels like, smells like and so on. Go ahead an try to tell someone what green is without something that IS green being a part of the description.

Believe it or not, green is experienced by something outside of physical reality. Were this not so, the mental experience of “green” would reside within space and time and thus be describable by physical descriptives. However, it is impossible to experience green without a direct approach. It must be directly accessed.

Let’s talk about life itself. Materialism cannot account for life. We know, for instance that a sperm and an egg creates a new living system that then develops into a third human being. But where does this new life come from? If it resides in space time somewhere, was it dispersed at sometime in the past? What property preserved it until it was brought together by sperm and egg? In order to answer these types of questions, one needs to endow matter with a supernatural quality.

Or was this new life created at the moment of conception? If we accept this then we have to say that mixing nucleic acids will result in self awareness. But physical matter is dead, isn’t it? My clock on the wall only tells me the time because I read the placement of its hands.

So what do we have here? Are there billions of life forms floating around in space who only materialize when sperm meets egg or perhaps when chemicals are mixed? I sure don’t remember floating around space for billions of years until Lloyd and Ruby had fun one hot August night, and then suddenly I was here. And I didn’t crawl out of a beaker or test tube of mixed chemicals.

Let’s go back to green for a moment. Take a person who has never experienced green. One obvious explanation for his or her failing to undergo the mental experience of green is that green resides in a realm outside the physical world of space and time, and that optical defects in the body disable signals into the brain that would give the mind access to that realm. This also implies, of course, that our very minds may also reside in that other realm.

If that is so, then the grey matter of our brains can be seen as a sort of antenna that interlocks with another realm into our space and time continuum. This would explain why a blind person can experience life but not green. Grey matter begins development almost instantly after conception. Thus this channel is now open from the time of conception.

The notion of channeling life from another realm into the space time of our world is, in concept, not unlike bringing music into the room with a radio. The kitchen is our world, the music is life, and the radio station is the other realm.

Why use this illustration? Isn’t this the same thing new agers say all the time? I am only endeavoring to show how the materialistic view is very limiting. It denies us other options for dealing with the questions of consciousness and life. Materialism forces us to examine things in the world in terms of matter and its motion. It explains the living in the terms of the dead, and extols the dead as if it were living. These are old ideas that have run their course and have been discounted by science itself.

Theism removes this confine and allows us to explain things in terms of the living, and the highly organized world in terms of intelligence and design. It allows us to introduce other realms in much the same way as a shadow can be explained in terms of an airplane passing overhead. There are a myriad of physical situations that find their explanations in terms of the invisible. A hydrogen bomb explosion is the destruction of matter too small to be seen. Theism asserts that our world and all that lies within it owes it’s existence to an eternal intelligence, whose designs are displayed in nature, and whose decisions are recorded in history. Whether or not you accept that eternal intelligence hails from the Bible or not is your own decision, and it has to be yours alone. Therefore since both materialism and Jesus offer you an experience of faith, wouldn’t it benefit you to have faith in life instead of death?

more on this next time