Comparing conceptions of the world between materialism and Christianity causes me to ponder why anyone would want to adopt or even align with materialism.
Materialism has it that matter produces mind.
Christianity, that mind produced matter.
Materialism asserts that the end of all questions is dust: that’s effectively what everything comes from.
Christianity tells us that the end of all questions is a person with whom one may have a beneficial relationship, a relationship of love.
Materialism is that reality is finally material. Persons’ relationships, decisions and will have no significance.
Christianity is that reality is finally love: persons’ relationships, decisions and will have significance.
Some Christians think that materialist speculations tell us how the universe came about, and then graft God onto this scheme without any influence on the scheme (so the grafting has no effect or substantive point).
The Bible sets it the other way around: The creation account provides the scheme by which we can understand the material world as the product of love, for beneficial relationships. It goes on to explain why this seems to not properly obtain in our experience as we, in the first man and woman, rejected relationship with God for isolation from his love.
What do these two ways of conceiving the world produce?
Two different chains of descent, or "provenances" for we people: for the materialist we go back to pond scum, and by reference have no where to look for the basis of person hood and its significance; for the Christian, we go back to Adam, a person, who is directly from the will and action of God: its persons back to the start, and our personhood is not an 'emergent property' of material, but has genuine significance.
