Materialism Has Collapsed and Disappeared
Materialism: The Superstition of an Age
Ancient Greek thinkers imagined that all bodies consisted of tiny particles called atoms. They maintained that these atoms shaped the universe and all living things, without intention or direction and without being subjected to any conscious intervention. According to this belief, matter was timeless and eternal, and nothing beyond matter could exist. Supernatural events that intervened in entities’ behavior and altered their structures was sheer superstition, unacceptable. All axioms and principles were based on the assumption that matter was an absolute reality.
Since matter was eternal, the universe must be eternal as well, and that idea served as the foundation of atheism. If the entire universe had existed for all time, then according to the perversion of materialist belief, it was impossible for matter and the universe to ever have been created.
According to materialists, the universe was eternal, and therefore, there was no purpose or special creation in it. Materialists imagined that all the balances, equilibrium, harmony and order in the universe were solely the results of chance. They claimed that everything came into being as the result of unconscious atoms assembling at random. And no matter how much complexity, balance and magnificent regularity exhibited by the external world, these were still the result of purposeless coincidences.
Materialist minds had held this preconception or idée fixe ever since the days of Ancient Greece. Since materialism rejected the concepts of “purpose” and “creation” to the universe, it also denied the existence of a Creator. To be strictly accurate, materialism was a philosphy which had been formulated to reject Allah. Many movements, ideologies and intellectual systems that rejected belief in Allah were, similarly, rooted in materialism. In other words, materialism was the most influential religion of atheism.
Stanley Sobottka, a professor of physics from Virginia University, describes the perversion of materialism in these terms:
In Ancient Greece, materialists held that religious adherents were illogically opposed to science. For that reason, materialists throughout history have sought to give the impression that belief in Allah and science are incompatible. In fact, however, science has increasingly showed evidence of His existence, and those discoveries worked against the materialist mindset that fought against belief in Allah.
This included Darwinism, of course. The struggle against Darwinism is basically an attack on its materialist origins.
Throughout the course of history, materialists claimed that entities consisted merely of assemblages of atoms, and that the human brain was nothing more than a network of neurons. They were unable to account for the human mind, and attempted to explain it as the electro-chemical interaction between its neurons.
Materialists had no qualms about describing themselves as animals or machines. They denied that they had the status of entities with consciousness and claimed that they had come into existence by chance. Yet this was a grave misconception and a lie fabricated in order to deny Allah.
In the words of the quantum particle physicist Stephen M. Barr, of the Bartol Research Institute at the University of Delaware, these people who believed in the absolute reality of matter were almost no different from the pagans of the past. Just like the ancient pagans, materialists describe humans as essentially sub-human. Pagans deified matter; materialists did the same thing by denying the soul and reducing everything to the level of matter. Pagans declared that events were determined by the orbits of the planets and the stars; materialists claimed that they were controlled by the ebb and flow of the hormones in their brains. Pagans prostrated themselves to worship in front of false animal deities; materialists claimed that they were no more than animals themselves.2
Amit Goswami, a professor of physics at the University of Oregon’s Institute for Theoretical Science, describes the fundamental logic with which materialists sought to indoctrinate people:
The fact is, however, that Allah created man. And man is not an entity devoid of purpose and responsibility. Contrary to what materialists claim, man is not an unthinking machine. Man is an entity with a responsibility to Allah and will be held to account for all his deeds in the Hereafter.
The materialist logic that seeks to divert people away from this fact has been evident at all times throughout history, ever since the days of Ancient Greece. Yet it was only in the 19th century that this belief spread and became established as a settled intellectual system. In the 19th century, the great majority of classical physicists thought that the fundamental components of matter were inanimate and indivisible atoms, just like tiny billiard balls, and that the perfect regularity and complexity in the universe were the result of the random motion and compounds of these atoms. In their view, everything on Earth, life included, came into being by accident through a series of blind, unconscious processes. Atoms established unreasoning unions and gave rise to the world we see with all its perfect features—and also to ourselves, with our minds and consciousness.
By setting out these claims, materialists sought to indoctrinate people with the idea that man was not made by a Creator and that apart from matter, nothing existed. The fact is, though, that man was obviously created with perfect systems and mechanisms, through an extraordinary mind and intelligence. There were no unconscious processes on Earth of the kind suggested by materialists, and no unthinking structures and systems arose as a consequence. Everything displays a complexity and sublimity that often exceeds the capacity of human minds to comprehend, and so perfect are these details that they exclude all possibility of chance. The Earth itself reveals proofs of creation.
Despite these facts, however, materialists insisted in their claims that unconscious atoms were the basis of all things. So what, according to materialists, were these atoms, the source of all else that exists?
In one respect, we now know that the atom is an almost complete void, and that is a proven fact. We can explain this as follows: If you imagine the atomic nucleus, comprised of neutrons and protons, as a pinhead just 1 millimeter (0.039 of an inch) in diameter, then an electron revolving around that nucleus does so at a distance of 100 meters (328 feet)!4
In this considerable volume between the nucleus and the electrons, the only thing that exists is empty space. This 100-meter void is literally “empty.” That is why in one sense, experts are justified in regarding the atom as an empty vacuum. In the words of the British physicist Sir Arthur Eddington, matter is mostly “ghostly empty space.” "5
To be more precise, it is 99.9999999% empty.
If you stop to think about it at all, you might realize that life on planet as we live it is really a surprise, considering just how empty the universe really is. In fact, the universe is more than 99 percent nothing! And considering that the universe is still expanding at an alarming rate, it’s getting to be more nothing than it ever was!
At the beginning of the 20th century, it was known that there was a giant empty space inside the atom, which was regarded as the smallest component of all things, and that this space contained a nucleus and electrons revolving around it. However, only the general lines of matter—the atom and its fundamental parts—were understood. So what was there in the atomic nucleus, in a space just 10-18 kilometer in size, or one millionth of a millionth of a millionth of a kilometer? That was something unknown to scientists.
In the 1960s, a most significant scientific discovery was made. It was realized that in the depths of the proton, there were particles known as quarks. These extraordinarily minute particles caused protons to have a positive electric charge, and neutrons to have no charge. Research eventually revealed the presence of a gloriously complex world in what comprised just 0.0000001 of the atom.
The more that materialists descended into the depths of the atom and the more extraordinary details they saw in matter’s smallest building block, the more they sought some solution by developing their theory in another direction. In order for the entire universe to form unconsciously and haphazardly, they had to explain how not just atoms but also the world inside the atom,—in other words, the motions of sub-atomic particles—had come into being. The idea that matter was the only thing that existed survived in the materialist mind, until the discovery of quantum physics.
Allah originates creation, then will regenerate it, then you will be returned to Him. (Surat ar-Rum, 11)
Quantum Physics: The Discovery That Scientifically Demolished Materialism
. . . there’s enough in the way the physical universe is constructed to indicate the presence of something called soul. Where I begin looking for this soul is in the nature of quantum mechanics, or quantum physics, which says that there may be spiritual underpinnings to the physical world.7—Fred Alan Wolf, the well-known particle physicist at University of California
According to Isaac Newton, light was a flow of a substance known as “corpuscles.” The basis of the traditional Newtonian physics—which was accepted until the discovery of quantum physics—was that light consisted entirely of a collection of particles. However, James Clerk Maxwell, a 19th-century physicist, suggested that light demonstrated wave action. Quantum theory reconciled this greatest debate in physics.
In 1905, Albert Einstein claimed that light possessed quanta, or small packets of energy. These energy packets were given the name photons. Although described as particles, photons could be observed to behave in the wave motion proposed by Maxwell in the 1860s. Therefore, light was a transitional phenomenon between wave and particle.8a state of affairs that displayed a major contradiction in terms of Newtonian physics.
Immediately after Einstein, Max Planck, a German physicist, investigated light and astonished the entire scientific world by determining that it was both a wave and a particle. According to this idea, which he proposed under the name of quantum theory, energy was disseminated in the form of interrupted and discrete packets, rather than being straight and constant.
In a quantum event, light exhibited both particle-like and wave-like properties. The particle known as the photon was accompanied by a wave in space. In other words, light moved like a wave through space, but behaved as an active particle when it encountered an obstacle. To express it another way, it adopted the form of energy until encountering an obstacle, at which time it assumed the form of particles, as if it were composed of tiny material bodies reminiscent of grains of sand.
After Planck, this theory was further expanded by scientists such as Albert Einstein, Niels Bohr, Louis de Broglie, Erwin Schrödinger, Werner Heisenberg, Paul Adrian Maurice Dirac and Wolfgang Pauli. Each was awarded the Nobel Prize for his discoveries.
About this new discovery regarding the nature of light, Amit Goswami says this:
Scientists now no longer believed that matter consists of inanimate, random particles. Quantum physics had no materialist significance, because there were non-material things at the essence of matter. While Einstein, Philipp Lenard and Arthur Holly Compton investigated the particle structure of light, Louis de Broglie began looking at its wave structure.
De Broglie’s discovery was an extraordinary one: In his research, he observed that sub-atomic particles also displayed wave-like properties. Particles such as the electron and proton also had wavelengths. In other words, inside the atom—which materialism described as absolute matter—there were non-material energy waves, contrary to materialist belief. Just like light, these minute particles inside the atom behaved like waves at times, and exhibited the properties of particles at others. Contrary to materialist expectations, the “absolute matter” in the atom could be detected at certain times, but disappeared at others.
This major discovery showed that what we imagine to be the real world were in fact shadows. Matter had completely departed from the realm of physics and was headed in the direction of metaphysics.10
Max Planck proposed “quantum theory” in the early 20th century, announcing that light had both wave-like and particle-like properties.
The physicist Richard Feynman described this interesting fact about sub-atomic particles and light:
To sum up, quantum physicists say that the objective world is an illusion.12Professor Hans-Peter Dürr, head of the Max Planck Institute of Physics, summarizes this fact:
All the most celebrated physicists of the 1920s, everyone from Paul Dirac to Niles Bohr, and from Albert Einstein to Werner Heisenberg, sought to explain these results from quantum experiments. Eventually, one group of physicists at the Fifth Solvay Conference on Physics held in Brussels in 1927—Bohr, Max Born, Paul Dirac, Werner Heisenberg and Wolfgang Pauli—reached an agreement known as the Copenhagen Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. It took this name from the place of work of the leader of the group, Bohr, who suggested that the physical reality proposed by quantum theory was the information we have regarding a system and the estimates we make on the basis of that information. In his view, these “guesses” made in our brains had nothing to do with the “outside” reality.
In short, our “internal world” had nothing to do with the “outside real” world that had been the main subject of interest of physicists from Aristotle to the present day. Physicists abandoned their old ideas regarding this view and agreed that quantum understanding represented only “our knowledge” of the physical system. 14 The material world we can perceive exists solely as information in our brains. In other words, we can never obtain direct experience of matter in the outside world.
Your Lord is Allah, Who created the heavens and the earth in six days and then settled Himself firmly on the Throne. He covers the day with the night, each pursuing the other urgently; and the Sun and Moon and stars are subservient to His command. Both creation and command belong to Him. Blessed be Allah, the Lord of all the worlds. (Surat al-A‘raf, 54)
According to quantum physics, the existence of matter is dependent on the existence of a “perceiver.” For example, when we are looking at the Moon, the possibility wave of the body we perceive as the Moon collapses and the wave no longer exists in space-time. According to quantum physics, the Moon is not in the sky so long as there is no observer!
Jeffrey M. Schwartz, a neuroscientist and professor of psychiatry from University of California, described this conclusion emerging from the Copenhagen Interpretation:
Amit Goswami expanded on this insight:
Suppose we ask, Is the moon there when we are not looking at it? To the extent that the moon is ultimately a quantum object (being composed entirely of quantum objects), we must say no—so says physicist David Mermin. . .
Zihin ve Beyin
Perhaps the most important, and the most insidious, assumption that we absorb in our childhoods is that of the material world of objects existing out there—independent of subjects, who are the observers. There is circumstantial evidence in favor of such an assumption. Whenever we look at the moon, for example, we find the moon where we expect it along its classically calculated trajectory. Naturally we project that the moon is always there in space-time, even when we are not looking. Quantum physics says no. When we are not looking, the moon’s possibility wave spreads, albeit by a minuscule amount. When we look, the wave collapses instantly; thus the wave could not be in space-time. It makes more sense to adapt an idealist metaphysic assumption: There is no object in space-time without a conscious subject looking at it.17
This, of course, applies to our perceptual world. The existence of the Moon is of course obvious in the outside world. But when we look at it, all we actually encounter is our own perception of the Moon.
Jeffrey M. Schwartz included these lines regarding the fact demonstrated by quantum physics in his book The Mind and the Brain:
Schwartz also summarized the views of various physicists on the subject:
Heisenberg said the concept of objective reality “has thus evaporated.“ Writing in 1958, he admitted that “the laws of nature which we formulate mathematically in quantum theory deal no longer with the particles themselves but with our knowledge of the elementary particles.” “It is wrong,” Bohr once said, “to think that the task of physics is to find out how nature is. Physics concerns what we can say about nature.” 19
Fred Alan Wolf, one of the guest physicists in the documentary film “What the Bleep Do We Know?” described this same fact:
Following the most fascinating and sensitive experiments that the human mind could devise over the course of 80 years, there are now no views opposed to quantum physics, which has been decisively and scientifically proven. No objections can even be suggested against the conclusions reached by the experiments performed. Quantum theory has been tested in hundreds of possible different ways devised by scientists.2121 It has earned the Nobel Prize for a number of scientists, and is continuing to do so.
Matter, the most fundamental concept of Newtonian physics and once regarded unconditionally as the absolute truth, has been eliminated. Materialists, supporters of the old belief that matter was the sole and definitive building block of existence, were really confused by the fact of “the lack of matter” suggested by quantum physics. They now have to explain all the laws of physics within the sphere of metaphysics.
The shock that this inflicted on materialists in the early 20th century was far greater than can be expressed in these lines. But the quantum physicists Bryce DeWitt and Neill Graham describe it:
No development of modern science has had a more profound impact on human thinking than the advent of quantum theory. Wrenched out of centuries-old thought patterns, physicists of a generation ago found themselves compelled to embrace a new metaphysics. The distress which this reorientation caused continues to the present day. Basically physicists have suffered a severe loss; their hold on reality.22
The Wave-Like Properties of the Electron and the Scientific Proof
The most significant experiment revealing this interesting nature of the sub-atomic particles was the double-slit experiment. This was conducted to see how light and electrons both behave like waves, and how they both manifest this surprising feature to the same extent.
In order to gain a better understanding of the subject, assume that this experiment was conducted with grains of sand rather than electrons.
Once a large number of grains have passed through the slits and hit the screen, we see that two clusters of points have appeared on the screen; one made up of grains passing through the first slit, and the other of those passing through the second. Events have transpired as we expected.
Now, imagine that we have conducted a similar experiment in a different way. Let us fill the experimental environment between the source and the screen with a pool of water, and use a vibrating object instead of the source of sand particles. This object sets the water in motion and continuously generates waves, spreading in all directions.
Unlike grains of sand, these waves are not localized in space. They are spread throughout the whole pool. As a result, the waves passing through both slits simultaneously spread out, encounter one another and interfere with each other.
When the crest of one wave combines with the trough of another, they neutralize each other. The wave effect disappears, leaving nothing. This interference is a basic characteristic of waves.
When the experiment was performed with electrons, instead of a cluster of particles striking the screen—as with the sand grains—the electrons were observed to interfere with one another. The expected result failed to occur if the electrons were regarded as particles only. Therefore, since the electrons displayed the wave-like feature of interfering with one another, they cannot be particles. Yet they cannot be waves either—because, just like particles, they struck the screen in discrete groups.
In this instance, the observations suggest that the electrons are localized particles when they leave the source and when they arrive at the screen, but that they act as waves everywhere in between. This is really very counterintuitive.23
This experimental evidence did away with materialism, according to which, every particle must possess an objective existence somewhere in space. Again according to materialism, an electron must follow a single course through a space and cannot move through both slits like a wave which is not localized. Yet materialists’ expectations did not correspond to experimental reality.
The wave we are referring to here is different from a physical wave that occurs in water. Electron waves do not exist in the three-dimensional space in our physical world.
Fred Alan Wolf
Fred Alan Wolf describes the wave concept in question:
According to Wolf, the definite scientific truth regarding electrons cannot possibly be comprehended in terms of known physical or mathematical concepts. In any case, however, we are never in direct contact with the realities in the outside world. It is impossible for us to step beyond our own perceptions.
The double-slit experiment can be repeated with all sub-atomic particles. The results will always be the same, because quantum mechanics rules the entire universe. True, when billions of atoms combine to give rise to any large object or a human being, the probability of this interference effect ever being observed decrease sharply. But this does not mean that the laws of quantum physics have ceased to apply. This process is now just not observable. Therefore, this fact applies to all of matter.
According to the Washington University mathematician Thomas McFarlane, the large objects we encounter in our daily lives are not objectively existing matter, either. According to him, “the appearance of an objectively existing world independent of observation is an illusion.”.25
What the double-slit experiment proved is that electrons cannot be understood in terms of known mathematical and physical concepts. In any case, however, we are never in direct contact with the external reality. It is impossible for us to step outside our perceptions and reach the external world.
What quantum mechanics has scientifically proven is that the objective world exists in a concentrated wave form. According to physicists, the main problem that misleads people is that the world observed through our perceptions is high in convincing detail, sharpness and clarity. Yet the outside world never actually reaches us. We can never see the external reality, the original of the material world existing “out there.”
Our daily lives present an image highly inconsistent with the external realities. Therefore, the question arises of which one—whether the physical reality or what appears to us so sharp and clear—should be regarded as valid.
Thomas J. McFarlane states that the answer can be found by drawing a comparison.
According to him, we can imagine modern-day scientists going back 3000 years in the past and meeting with people who imagine the Earth is flat. The scientists politely tell them that they are in error on the subject, and that the Earth is actually spherical.
These people then ask the scientists, “how could you have come by such an insane idea?” The scientists will be unable to provide a single piece of evidence to prove their thesis, under the conditions and state of knowledge of that time. They, on the other hand, are quite capable of explaining that the Earth is flat, on the basis of all their experiments and the evidence they’ve gathered. They use the concept of plane geometry to measure out land and chart road maps, and find nothing in this that conflicts with their daily experience. In the same way, when they look at a wide open expanse or the sea, they say that they can see no curvature and so claim that there is no evidence showing that the Earth is round. The idea that “The Earth is round” thus remains a delusion. The scientists return to their time machine and to the present day, without having proved anything.26
According to McFarlane, the reason why these time-travelers were unable to convince anyone the Earth is round is that we humans are so very small in comparison to the Earth. Since our experiment is confined to a geographically very small area, the Earth appears to be flat, even though it is not actually so. In other words, the flatness observed on Earth is not a true flatness at all, because the Earth is not flat. This is only an illusory flatness caused by the immense size of the Earth.In order to prove that the Earth is round, we need to go beyond our day-to-day limitations. For instance, we could fly around the world in a plane, or we could go up into space in a rocket. But when limited to our day-to-day experiences, we have no evidence that the flatness we perceive is an illusion. Similarly, we have no reason not to believe that the Earth is flat.
After citing this example, McFarlane goes on to say:
The Idea of Absolute Matter Has Disappeared Alongside Materialism
The conclusion revealed by quantum mechanics is that matter is not absolute and eternal, as materialists claim it to be. In the same way that matter is not timeless or eternal, the entities we see around us are not simply collections of atoms. According to quantum physics, matter has changed its nature in a way that materialists never dreamed of, and it has been scientifically proven that the basis of matter is simply a form of energy. In the face of the facts revealed by quantum physics, materialism has scientifically collapsed.
Paul Davies and John Gribbin summarize the way in which the new physics has entirely eliminated materialism:
Fred Alan Wolf describes how scientists have now abandoned materialism:
What is the result of the collapse of materialism? The stubborn opinion that matter is the only absolute reality is one of the greatest deceptions that prevents people from believing in Allah. Instead of regarding the external world as the composite of their perceptions, they behave as if they had direct experience with everything they perceive. They apply the lack of purpose that materialism ascribes to matter to themselves, imagining that there is no reason for their existence on—or departure from—the Earth. Since they are unable to see and believe in the proofs of the existence of Allah, they expect Him to appear to them as a corporeal entity (surely Allah is beyond that). They believe that entities were never created, for which reason they never want to accept the existence of a Creator.
Using materialism as a pretext, they try to seek to deny the absolute existence of Allah and His creation. The collapse of materialism has eliminated that pretext and revealed full proof of the existence of Allah.
Stephen M. Barr
Particle physicist Stephen M. Barr expresses this:
Believing that there can be direct experience of matter as it exists, is itself conjecture. There is no evidence of this in this world, of which we conceive through our perceptions. We can see and touch the world only through our perceptions. It is impossible for us ever to make direct contact with the actual material world outside. The universe is not timeless and eternal, but had a beginning and will have an end. There is no “aimlessness” at any point throughout the universe, as materialists claim. The entire universe and all the entities in it have been brought into being for a purpose.
One of the main reasons why many people are deceived is their conviction that matter is all that exists. With this perspective, they apply the supposed purposelessness in the creation of matter proposed by materialism to themselves and imagine that there is no reason behind their coming into the world. They are unable to see the proofs of Allah's existence and are completely taken in by the spell of materialism.The fact, however, is that the entire universe and every entity within it have been created with a purpose. Our Almighty Lord, Allah, is He Who creates everything that exists out of nothing and Who pervades all of existence.
All this points to a single conclusion: Creation rules at every point in the universe. The works created show the existence of a sublime power, a Creator. That Creator is Almighty Allah, Who enfolds all the worlds.
It is fruitless for materialists to struggle against this truth any longer, because modern physics has produced results that argue totally against them. In verses Allah has told us that:
We did not create heaven and Earth and everything in between them as a game. If We had desired to have some amusement, We would have derived it from Our Presence, but We did not do that. Rather We hurl the truth against falsehood and it cuts right through its brain and it vanishes clean away! Woe without end for you for what you portray! Everyone in the heavens and the Earth belongs to Him. Those in His presence do not consider themselves too great to worship Him and do not grow tired of it. (Surat al-Anbiya’, 16-19)
1- Stanley Sobottka, A Course in Consciousness, http://faculty.virginia.edu/consciousness/