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Materialism and Fall of Religion
It is common for religious and spiritually minded individuals to decry the corrosive rise of Materialism. For example the late Billy Graham explained,
Materialism has become the god of too many of us. It is that state in which material possessions are elevated to the central place in life and receive the attention due to God alone. The Bible teaches that preoccupation with material possessions is an idolatry…and it poisons every other phase of our life, including our family life…We are reaping what we have sown for several generations. America is at least in part suffering the consequences of our selfish preoccupation with material things, especially since World War II, to the neglect of moral and spiritual values. — Sermon on The Economics of the Apocalypse
Materialism has many faces: from a philosophical view Materialism represents a reduction of humanity and all things to the chance operation of matter following mindless physical laws. From the point of view of social relations, it involves valuing material objects or wealth over human values such as mercy, kindness and love. The rise of Materialism is often linked and blamed on the growing authority of rational scientific thought. Yet a more careful study shows such a materialist view is not a ‘given’ consequence of rational scientific thought. Although science is based on objective and testable material…
