"I recently listened to a talk by a famous biologist. He spoke about... scientific materialism and religious transcendentalism. He said, "...they are incompatible and mutually exclusive." This seems to be a widely accepted view... I do not share it. I do not know what the word "materialism" means. ...I judge matter to be an imprecise and ...old-fashioned concept ...[M]atter is the way particles behave when a large number of them are lumped together. When we examine matter in the finest detail in experiments of particle physics, we see it behaving as an active agent... Its actions are... unpredictable. It makes what appear to be arbitrary choices between alternative possibilities. Between matter... and mind... there seems to be only a difference of degree... We stand... midway between the unpredictability of matter and the unpredictability of God. This view... may not be true, but it is... logically consistent and compatible with... experiments of modern physics. Therefore... scientific materialism and religious transcendentalism are neither incompatible nor mutually exclusive. We have learned that matter... does not limit God's freedom to make it do what he pleases."
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Freeman Dyson, Infinite in All Directions: Gifford Lectures given at Aberdeen, Scotland April-November 1985 (1988) pp. 7-8 (paperback, 1989).
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Materialism
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Materialism
57 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Materialism →
Related Quotes
"It is difficult to renounce the feeling of ownership; it is likewise difficult to overcome babbling."
"Is it possible that dialectics and materialism are only limitations? The development of consciousness brings us into …"
"Self-perfectment is the most difficult achievement. People inject into this process so many inconsistencies that the …"
"If we ask ourselves whether the concepts of materialism and idealism are understood correctly, we shall discover that…"
"Materialism is not a new doctrine. Apart from the schools of antiquity, no one is unaware of the materialistic attitu…"
"Materialism in its literal sense is long since dead. But its place has been taken by other philosophies which represe…"
"Materialism and Spirituality: There are today three major human trends: First of all, a trend towards a spiritual and…"
"Most materialists, even though they may have wanted to do away with all spiritual entities, ended up positing an orde…"
"There are writers, who maintain, that the human frame is wholly corporeal, and that there is no good reason for disti…"
"Greed is a sin against God, just as all mortal sins, in as much as man condemns things eternal for the sake of tempor…"