If materialism accounts for the power of reason it destroys itself!
I have no idea how this is possible! What do you mean? Materialism is the view that everything we experience has a material basis - ie can be reduced to the interactions of energy or matter, say. Given that logic lies outside of this, it seems the two do not touch each other. Alternatively, Lawrence Krauss suggests how ‘laws of nature’ may be spontaneously generated, which subordinates the law-like to the material.
Theology allows for the possibility of a Godless universe and decides that it is inadequate!
Decides on the basis of what we would like to be true, on the basis of massive anthropocentrism I think. It then provides an answer which can only be hoped for rather than trusted, because it is immune to evidence.
Theologians do not claim to explain the nature of Ultimate Reality, i.e. how God exists whereas materialists claim to explain everything. Some scientists are in hot pursuit of a TOE!
Well theologians tread a fine and tactical line of ignorance then, in saying that there is this Ultimate Reality stuff called God, but actually we don’t know about it. This on the basis of testaments that a certain important tomb was empty at a certain crucial time! Even if materialists claimed to know everything, they at least do not fall victim to this further arrogance of claiming that their opponents or indeed everyone cannot understand what they do. I would suggest that any such totality of explanation by science would be built up from the well-evidenced and would amount to substantiated claims of interrelation of physical things, rather than a top-down untestable metaphysics.
We can be certain of their objectivity because they are not arbitrary mental constructs but consistent features of our perceptions. The success of science is a convincing refutation of solipsism.
I don’t think we can be certain of the objectivity of these values simply because we might all share them; we might all be imagining them. Where is beauty then? Given the disagreement on what is ‘beauty’ or what is beautiful, it seems we don’t have this consensus anyway. In any case, you just said that we can only be certain of our minds, and now you say beauty is objective! If this thing is objective, then we ought to trust that loads of other things are objectively there, which puts your original point about a rational Source onto shaky ground. If lots of things certainly, independently exist, why should we look at ourselves, at our own minds and say “Right. My rationality has got to be the most important thing in this vast universe of things, so I must have been created by a Source of all reason!” Why should we matter like that? Why would a God be needed to provide for the truth of our perception, when you think objectivity can be established without God?
Also, science cannot refute the possibility that nothing objectively exists outside perception, it only gives us
reason to believe that some things do exist independently.
All interesting questions, but don’t let me stray off-topic
