As long as we’ve been keeping records, we’ve expected purpose in our existence. Some envisioned that we were designed as slaves for the gods, others that we were the pinnacle of creation, designed to rule over the physical world. Regardless of the ends, purpose was not in doubt. It seems intrinsic to our nature to search for teleological meaning.

On materialism, purpose can not exist for humanity. Materialism’s sole explanatory creative power is randomness and genetic selection. The origin of all biological life was incidental, and the only necessary immaterial ingredient between a prokaryote and a homosapien is time. For materialists, this is not under debate.

This stands in direct contradiction to the theistic belief that we were designed with a purpose. Materialists affirm that life appears designed, but they firmly hold that it is in fact, not. Their explanation? Illusion.

If origins, design and purpose seem irrelevant or abstract, how about free will? You may not feel like you’re qualified to theorize on the origin of life, but surely you know if you’re capable of choosing to do something or choosing not to. You have unique access to your own choice making capacities that no other human has, someone may force you to do something, but they can not force you to choose to do it.

Take a moment and consider it, are you free to choose? Give it a try, make a choice, nothing like gathering some data in order to make a conclusion. Was that choice free? Materialism says no. Ever since the first instant of this physical reality every choice you’ll make in your entire life was predetermined. If reality lacks any causal factors outside of physical events, which on materialism, it must, then every cause of every event must be strictly reducible to the laws of nature.

Our belief that we have freedom in our choices is so fundamental to being human that it underpins both our entire system of justice and most of our societal norms. If we really don’t have free will, our ideas of justice, morality, and responsibility all collapse. You’d be hard pressed to find many reasonable people who would suggest that it doesn’t feel like we have free will. It seems another aspect that is intrinsic to our nature.

Again, materialists affirm that it certainly appears like we have free will, but again, they deny that we actually do. Their explanation? Illusion.

Maybe we can live without actual freedom of the will. If it seems to us that our will is free and we all act like it is, maybe in a pragmatic sense, that’s enough. Theists, too, have difficulty with explanations of free will, it’s a complex topic.

What do you think?

You?

That’s right. On materialism the conception of self is, you guessed it: an illusion. There is no “you”, no “I”, no “self”, because after all, what would that be? Just as we’ve looked into space and not found God, we’ve now peered into your grey matter and not found you.

The thing with cohesive worldviews is they tend to make claims on all of reality. Materialist explanations of origins have inescapable, necessary consequences that run contradictory to our most basic intuitions. That in itself can not prove that materialism is false, but it does give warrant to be highly skeptical of it’s assertions.

In summary

Materialism asserts:

• Design and purpose in life are an illusion
• Your free will is an illusion
• Your sense of self is an illusion.

Theism asserts:

• You were designed with a purpose
• You have free will*
• You actually exist

On materialism, it seems, illusion is progressively becoming the theory of everything.