Words and music by Greg and Brett
The philosophy of materialism holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter, and is considered a form of physicalism. Fundamentally, all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions; therefore, matter is the only substance. As a theory, materialism belongs to the class of monist ontology. As such, it is different from ontological theories based on dualism or pluralism. For singular explanations of the phenomenal reality, materialism would be in contrast to idealism.
The Process of Belief is an album by the punk rock band Bad Religion, released in 2002. It marks the band's first album released on Epitaph Records since 1993's Recipe for Hate (although that label released the All Ages compilation) and to feature original guitarist Brett Gurewitz since 1994's Stranger Than Fiction. It was also the first Bad Religion album to feature new drummer Brooks Wackerman, replacing Bobby Schayer who suffered a severe shoulder injury which left him unable to drum professionally.
David Bragger
The director of several promo videos for Bad Religion songs.
Some parts by Greg from the book "is God, good, bad or irrelevant?"
I am convinced that, in time, as we abolisch the myth that truth is something larger than our naturalistic investigations, fewer and fewer people will find it necessary to subscribe to the supernaturalistic.
I interviewed the Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins about this topic and he put it this way: Things "out there" that haven't been discovered yet are "waiting to be drawn into embrace of naturalism. "
There is no metaphysical reality to God. God is an epiphenomenon of the human brain.
Evolution still hasn't caught on universally, particularly in the USA where children are taught ancient creation stories instead of modern evolution stories. I predict it will be another 100 years, if education isn't totally corrupted, before Americans understand and accept Darwinism.
In any event, children grow up and become university professors and join psychology departments. Then they write books with theses like "god exists in our neurons" or some other nonsense, completely mudding the issue of metaphysics.
If God is no more than neurons in action, God doesn't exists! It is the burden of the theist to demonstrate that God exists outside the neurons.
Attempting to show that the universe is elaborately designed doesn't discount evolution to any degree and it certainly doesn't suggest to me that there is a God. It just means some very elaborate things can materialize given enough time.
The focus on ultimate meaning is a story told to us as we develop that ultimate meaning is more important than proximate meaning.
I feel fine not having any need for ultimate explanations. It might be the key to my happiness, in fact!
As long as Christian theology has no satisfying answer to human suffering, it is at a terrible disadvantage. That is why so amny intellectuals have moved away from it as a belief system, and even the religious intelligentsia offer an uncomfortable explanation of suffering. "God's ways are mysterious." It simply isn't a satisfying intellectual explanation.
Atrocities are a part of human cicilization and are the result of ignorance about human nature. Until naturalistic investigation, there was no way to understand human nature. But that will change in the coming centuries. Human behavior will be better understood and, hopefully, suffering will be minimized.
Naturalism depends on science, which in turn is anti-authoritarian because any momentary new discovery will overturn the entire theoretical structure. But it has to be repeatable. Do an experiment. Repeat it. It has powers of convincing and it makes you feel good! Especially when it solves difficult puzzles about the world. Knowledge is the cure for the disgruntled.
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