What many materialists have trouble accepting is that many people have experiences that point beyond the materialist paradigm, to some kind of deeper meaning to life than is implied by materialism. Some of these people attempt to place their experiences in some kind of religious context and others don’t. Those who identify most strongly with materialism seem to think that all these people are deluded or simple minded, and that the experiences that led them beyond materialism are false (i.e. hallucinations) or incorrectly interpreted. This is the free will choice of materialists to believe but it is also within the free will of "believers" to accept that there is more to the universe than the materialist paradigm suggests.
If we are thoughtful we adopt a philosophy broad enough to encompass all we have experienced, and all that those we trust the accounts of, have experienced. That doesn’t make our own philosophy “true”- for only reality is true or real, not ideas about it, which are partial approximations- but it means that our current philosophy has yet to be negated by our own experience or those of people we trust. In other words, the null hypotheses has yet to be rejected, and so is maintained! This should hold true for all thinking materialists and spiritualists, alike.
Sharka Todd
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