Christianity and Physicalism
01 Introduction Physicalism and religions are thought to be incompatible. This is because, at first sight, physicalism is a worldview that only physical things exist whereas most, if not all, religions postulate non-physical entities, viz., spirits. So the latter include in their world what the former does not allow. To the extent that science presumes physicalism, it comes down on this view to science versus religion, more dramatically, reason versus faith. I think that this is a false dilemma. In fact, not only are they compatible, but they compensate each other. Where reason fails to illuminate, faith points towards where to look at. But faith can do so only by standing on the ground laid out by reason. In this essay, I will examine the metaphysical presumption of religion, particularly Christianity, and dispel the appearance of the tension between physicalism and Christianity. The outcome is the view that Christianity is a form of virtue ethics, spirituality is the ethos of i...