One way to ascertain that the materialistic worldview falls short is that it fails to describe the world we experience. In the materialistic view, the universe is reduced to particles of matter and the forces between them. Nothing else. The problem with this picture is its wholescale disconnect with our everyday experience. Stephen L. Talbott writes in The New Atlantis:
Equations governing movements tell us little about what it is that moves and nothing at all about what the movement itself is expressing. Qualityless particles do not inform us about the world we experience as the significant context of our lives. So something fundamental is missing in our usual scientific understanding of what this world is. [Emphasis added.]
Our Experience of the World
We experience a meta-universe of meaning that completely supersedes the nanoscopic universe of atoms and subatomic particles. The quasi-scientific abstraction that glibly asserts our being “nothing more” than particle interactions is as wrong as it is right. It’s right in that we are made up of various elements found in the periodic table, but it’s wrong in every way that matters to our experience of the world. Talbott continues:
We learn at a young age to take for granted the materialistic claim that mindless and meaningless particles moving in the void are all we have. But the fact is that we do not “have” such particles at all. What we have are mountains and seas, deserts and forests.
Intelligent perception distinguishes between meaning and non-meaning, and not just by superimposing imagined meaning on what’s being observed. Reality lacks meaning unless it’s perceived by an intelligent mind that appreciates and responds to the things that are made. Our experience of reality is filled with myriads of things that furnish the stage of our existence, upholding us physically, offering us adventure and limitless opportunities for expressing our creativity.
The Moment We Awake
We find ourselves in a world where constituent particles and the forces between them remain largely imperceptible. Macroscopic manifestations of collections of particles, however, impact our senses throughout each day, from the moment we wake up. The Earth we stand on, the air that envelopes us, and the food we eat all form a fabric of reality that sustains our lives. The flourishing ecosystem of Earth, composed of countless forms of life, adds to the richness of our existence and perception of the meaning of reality.
Beyond these physical essentials for life, we find meaning in relationships with others — family, friends, and an awareness of the broader culture in which we live. Communication with others builds and deepens relationships, not by violating the laws of nature, but by expressing and perceiving meaningful information. As Talbott reminds us,
In reality, virtually all human activities — our ways of walking, our gestures, our conscious choices of all sorts — are meaningful expressions of who we are, and are therefore, we might say, forms of speech. Here, too, the same truth holds: the expression of meaning never requires a violation of physical law.
Taking this line of thought a step further, however, leads us to ask how could “the expression of meaning” ever arise in a universe that is merely an outworking of natural law? The very existence of meaning pushes us to acknowledge the continual influence of immaterial mind upon the mindless particles comprising this material world. Meaning wins out over mindlessness.
Our ability to mean something with our words coexists with the physical substrate of our lives with apparent freedom and ease, and without a clash of any sort.
A Compelling Rhetorical Question
The 19th-century Scottish author George MacDonald offers a compelling rhetorical question in support of this seamless interweaving of mindful thought and the physical world:
I may move my arm as I please: shall God be unable so to move his?
Contrasting the human experience of meaning with what might be described as the desiccated outlook of materialism, Talbott draws attention to the bankruptcy of the materialistic worldview.
How do we account for the qualitative richness, the infinite qualitative differences, of the experienced world? Mere aggregations of qualityless particles tell us nothing of what it means….
Attempts to defend the materialistic worldview typically employ denial — asserting that meaning is an illusion. However, even this assertion assumes what it claims to deny. Material objects do not suffer illusions, and if humans are merely matter, neither would we. Illusions are basically beliefs that lack correspondence with reality. Non-living arrangements of matter, even AI systems, don’t believe anything.
To claim that human perception of meaning is an illusion is a belief that is disconnected from the reality of our experience. Meaning is real and the material world is real. It’s not one or the other. Particle interactions can be explained and even predicted (within the probabilistic framework of quantum mechanics), but it’s worth noting that the mathematical equations that describe these interactions have no reality of their own. Like other aspects of our meaningful existence, equations are language-like tools developed by humans to predict the properties of the material world. They are useful to us, but they do not diminish us.
The Framework of Design
In the theistic framework of design, God held the universe in his mind, created it according to his will, and perceived it in its fulness. In doing so, he imbued creation with meaning. As humans made in his image, we are enabled to participate in perceiving meaning in the things that are made.
And God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good.
Genesis 1:31 (ESV)