On November 10, 1619, in the course of a real mystical crisis, Descartes caught a glimpse of a new civilisation in which men, in order to be able to tolerate themselves, would establish a science founded upon reason and common sense . It was to be a dependable science – free from those moral value judgements which in his conviction had been the cause of all their previous controversies.

The moral neutrality of science was thus proclaimed – and later also in that of the university, the economy, politics, and art. Inevitably this led to the expulsion (from real life at least) of philosophy, religion and poetry from humanity generally. One was led to believe that God, who possesses no objective reality, can have no place in the universe – the divine, after all, is merely a creature of the human spirit. The world therefore has no meaning in itself – it is we who now give it purpose, a purpose that is merely subjective and purely human in origin. Every value or existence of a transcendent order is therefore, of necessity, denied.

Frued, the great materialist, sees man as a machine – he is reduced to automatisms and responds to an alleged rigorous psychological determinism. In a sense and a little ironically, this revolutionary breaking from the line of development in organic pathological medicine led to a rediscovery in the importance of the psychic. Even before Frued, the ‘School of Nancy’, by its study of the phenomenon of suggestion, had driven a breach in the dogma of materialism. There are in fact illnesses which are not caused by a lesion but by an idea. The antinomy between the psychic and the physical cannot be eliminated, despite our best efforts to do so.

Mitchell,
Natural science should be free of subjective idealism, that idealism that refuses to see that an object in the world and our perception of it, thought of it, are necessarily connected so that they are not understood as two separate things, an object in the world and a mental fact. Natural science must operate on the principle that the world is free of spirit, it exists on its own, without the aid of our consciousness. This means that the power of positive thinking, the miraculous nature of prayer, the idea of a world spirit, the existence of mind in nature, Newton’s understanding of God as a kind of intelligent ether etc can all be discounted.

The understanding that there is no mind/spirit in nature comes from the creation narratives of Israel in which God and the creature are separate and the world is not the habitat of spirit. Pinker’s “thinking meat” comes close to Israel’s and the church’s most radical conceptions except that this meat is part of a community of meat that shares a common story about the world that allows them to operate in it without fear of the demonic. It is a pity that biologists usually make some reductive remark as this as though they are fighting against the dualism of spirit/matter. This is not the dualism that the church entertains (at its best). Rather in Paul, for example, the dualism between the flesh and the spirit is really between living in the lie or in the truth. It is not a denigration of the body over against “spirit”. The insistence on the resurrection of the body is an insistence that there is not life outside of the body.

Peter Sellick

I understand what you're getting at, Peter, although the objective stance is arguably itself a form of blind idealism--the naive assumption that reality is as it seems. I took you to be referring to idealism in its garden variety sense, rather than that science should not suppose its very regard constitutes reality--we've been there with Schroedinger's cat. In fact science strives to interrogate reality in the realist mode, this is the beef between analytic and continental philosophy--reality is not necessarily thingness in itself. I don't accuse science of idealism in this sense, I criticise it for its indifference to human discourses, even while it parasitises them to drive its manic agenda. Positivists might counter that science has provided for our prosperity, but it has also provided for our various ills: nuclear weapons, overpopulation, devastation of the planet etc., as well as our own organic estrangement, hence my comment that we are become "a hopeless race of misfits". In an indigenous sense we are now hothouse plants; pathetic hybrids divorced from material reality, complacently dependent on the cosy nest we've made for ourselves, not removed but remote from our elemental being. Nature will of course have the last word.
So Relda, above all I'm in "defence" of materialism as the only "reality" we have. The rest--religion or scientism--is pie in the sky. At best, they are both worthwhile intellectual pursuits, but their first allegiance should be to "this" world. Religion offers no hope in this world, and science doesn't condescend to care.
To deny Freud his reductionist, Coppernicanism, demands you substantiate the preferred narcissistic view.
Materialism is not a dogma, it is a proper regard for the here and now, everything else is luxury and vanity.

Mitchell

My Christian faith sees me work for the here, but not yet. There is no postponement of action or of delayed joy in life.

It involves a God/man relationship as real as any I live with in the flesh. It calls me beyond the wee me to the supra me to love and serve my neighbour.

All quite balanced really.

Mitchell,

The Enlightenment project wasn’t cast in a single slab. Its ‘hard component’ consisted of science (the exact one), technology, the economy and the modern rationale. We believe, whilst in awe and enchantment within our modernity, that which cannot be solved today can be solved tomorrow – alas, this ‘progress’ is a misnomer.

Mankind is as much a destroyer as a creator.

Materialism would have it that consciousness is merely an insignificant by-product of different mental processes. Removed here is the idea that the entirety is greater than the parts as this inevitably leads to the paradoxical (non-rational) conclusion that there must be an other entirety which is even greater than the entirety. Despite our rationale, the word "nature" no longer represents something unquestionably reasonable – evolutionary biology renders such a notion impossible. Perhaps there remains a residue in the ‘natural’ suggestion of ‘human rights’ – but rationale alone cannot in the long run guarantee that either rights or duties are defended.

Rationale, if left by itself, can be abused in many different ways. Ratzinger's conclusion is that rationale needs religion in order to not go astray. But, correspondingly, religion also proves to rely on rationale, without which it is prone to degenerate into unruly fanaticism. Perhaps, under the premise it is freed from dogmatism and coercive guilt, religion loses its ugly front.

Interestingly, Habermas feels that a certain relgious power must be renewed, perhaps in such a way that a human being must be treated as if they were the image God, even if there doesn't happen to be any God. "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" Yep, one could say, God has abandoned mankind, however the notion of God lives on - for it fills them with Geist.

In an era of inordinate capitalism, to gather devoted multitudes with sights set on something other than consumption and exploitation, Christianity, parallel to Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism) is perhaps the only effective counter-force to capitalism.

Boxgum: "All quite balanced really"? Well sorry, but it all sounds rather fantastic to me, as though you've latched onto the idea fervently but forgoten to check its teeth--an invasion of the memes (if you're going to mix a metaphor, you might as well go all the way!)? but I'm happy for you.
However, onto the Habermas theme.
Relda, no problem with your first four lines. The next bit I don't really get, except to say that it sounds like a cosy deal for Ratzinger, even though "rationalism", I presume you mean, has had no part to play in Catholicism hitherto--"rationale" of course has, and does. A Freudian slip?
Habermas has been trying to revive, and supplement, the Enlightenment all his life, notably against deconstruction. He's only now accommodating Ratzinger--the same way he sucked up to Derrida--in order to make his own agenda float, since religion is the other half of hegemony. I certainly agree on the evils of capitalism, but religion has worked hand in glove with mammon through the ages! and is still making a killing via televangelism and its various snake oil products. The radical teachings of Jesus are remote from the corporate religionism that has subsequently co-opted and commodified them.
There is no monolithic materialism, Relda, the term is open to revision--certainly religion has been!
And this: "Christianity, parallel to Marxism (or Marxism-Leninism)is perhaps the only effective counter-force to capitalism".
I won't even go there! unless you want to?

I'm working on a new materialism founded on ethics (I can see Pericles rolling his eyes), moreover an ethics derived from the same visceral stuff that religion's always exploited.
Religion has signally failed. I'll say it again: religion has signally failed! It's taken the bribes down through the ages and is morally bankrupt!
Materialism has to develop its own virtues--and it can do so without religion or existentialism.