It is a favoured dogma of mainstream western academic philosophy that all the laws of the universe reduce to the laws of physics. In a sense this is a dogma designed to promote a research culture intent on finding material causes for any apparently non-material phenomena. Some time ago I had a conversation with an old friend, a professional academic and ardent neo-Marxist, on my post graduate thesis on a non-material model of the phenomenon of mind - not a fashionable approach. He was impressed by my 'hard science' approach but asserted that other arguments for a non-material mind existed. Ethics, moral values, aesthetics and the appreciation of beauty are not easily explained in materialist terms or cannot readily be understood as reducing to the material. This narrative points to the fact that there is less than complete consensus regarding a material reality, especially as this came from a quasi-Marxist and academic source. That the physical is the most fundamental of realities is a dogmatic stance even if the everyday world around us, when superficially observed, consists of physical objects to a large degree.
On another occasion I dialogued with a final year physics undergraduate who was astonished at the interpretations of the physical sciences by sections of the academic philosophy community. There is confusion between the laws that describe the behaviour of physical things and the things themselves. This category mistake involves the vague concept that the nature of matter is more or less identical with its surface, unexamined, appearance. I remarked that the General Relativity model of matter as that which causes space-time to curve or that which is curved space time involves a very strange conception of what matter is compared to our ordinary everyday 'layman's' concept. The possibility that the laws of General Relativity can be mapped onto the laws of Quantum Physics has never been actualised, partly because of the enormous mathematical task involved, but no one really knows if this is possible. It is often asserted that it must be possible. My physicist friend was also dubious about the more modest idea that the laws of chemistry, certainly a 'physical' science, could be mapped onto the laws of physics. Most chemistry describes the interaction between atoms and its laws are specific to this layer of reality. The category mistake is again that it is certain physical aspects of the atom, and not the laws pertaining to this level of reality, that influences chemical processes.
The laws that describe those aspects of reality that can be described as 'physical' or 'material' are many and varied and there is certainly no one neat set of laws that apply to a narrowly defined 'physical' reality. The non-material may exist and that which is non-material but correlates with, but does not reduce to, the material very likely exists. In any case the 'material' is an elastic, ad hoc, concept and there may be no easy distinction between the material and that which correlates with the material.
The plural term 'knowledges' is often used in academic circles. That all valid knowledge can be traced to either the physical, or to laws describing the behaviour of the physical, is a dubious dogma. The sum total of human knowledge is many faceted, complex and often contradictory while still being valid. Knowledge is rarely as unambiguous as Newtonian Physics.
The worlds of the academic and the layman are similar but not identical. Most of us negotiate our shared world using information that is less than academically rigorous. Of course this is so. Much knowledge is recorded in books and such like, only some of which would come up to academic standards. All knowledge begins with human experience. Some of this gets recorded and some with scientific rigour. Any individual will form a personal 'picture' of reality based on her experience of reality, some of this involving second hand experience, the reported or recorded experience of others, and sometimes the rigorous analysis of this. A Cambridge scientist once did a study which established that 65% of people had religious experiences.
Another such study revealed that many people were reluctant to speak of such experiences out of fear of being thought insane. R. D. Laing, the radical psychiatrist, remarked that an experience might be deemed validly mystical or invalidly insane and that the distinction is not always obvious. One factor here might be the backdrop of common knowledge, the culture, in which the experience occurred. Carl Jung stated that no one recovers from mental illness without developing a religious dimension to his life. Jung himself claimed that he did not believe in God, he 'knew'. Dorothy Rowe, a psychiatrist and an atheist like most psychiatrists, recognises that the development of this religious dimension is a vital element in recovery. When one thinks of it the immediately experienced world around us is a virtual reality created by our senses. The virtual reality resembles the actual reality. Similarly even if atheism is technically correct the religious dimension of life is normal and has a valid virtual existence which is quite different to it being a delusion.
A sports fan might be an ardent Chelsea FC supporter but the fact that he might know little or nothing about the Boston Red Sox would in no way compromise his sports fanaticism. His interest is in Chelsea. I have never read anything by Richard Dawkins but I have seen him on TV and on-line and read newspaper articles about him. More importantly I have first hand experience of this form of philosophy at university. To demand that an atheistic Dawkins fan should read popular works by physicists such as Fritjof Capra, Gary Zukov or Paul Davies, advocates of the view that modern science tends to validate religious conceptions of reality, would be unreasonable unless such an individual was compiling a study on the popular perception of the relationship between science and religion.
The totality of human knowledge is vast but it in no way overwhelmingly validates atheism. God may be 'awesome' and while the grandeur of Maxwell's equations may dazzle a scientist with the training necessary to appreciate them, this will not bring him solace or comfort in adversity. The atheist who regards those who require this comfort as being weak may, and I stress may, be unchallenged by misfortune, or brutalised by adversity. And, of course, it is not just the mentally ill or formally mentally ill who make reference to this aspect of 'this' world in their lives. A clear majority of people do. That the religious dimension of 'this world' has an unquestionable virtual reality in no way disproves the possibility of it having an actual, tangible reality. Either way, to rely on and relate to this aspect of reality is normal, usual.
The 'sin' of many atheists is not that they may have come to the belief that God does not exist. Give me an honest atheist rather than a religious bigot any day of the week. But many atheists insist on the rationality of their belief in absolute terms and the utter irrationality of theism. A UCC science professor some time ago published an article in The Examiner asserting that science in no way contradicted religion. There was a huge response. 87% of communications were from people who were critical of his views; very few of these offered anything other than ridicule at the suggestion that religion could be anything other than 'bunk'. This in a country where 96% of people have formal, mainstream religious affiliations.
If one were to insist that nothing exists other than surface appearances then atheism might seem a far more plausible belief than theism. But once we delve deeper into the 'real world' around us by rigorous investigation a vast range of knowledges becomes available and these in no way unequivocally validate atheism. A vast amount of evidence for either viewpoint is available, which is not to suggest that either belief is a matter of whim. Belief in God and belief in His non-existence are both beliefs. Of course much religious belief involves unexamined superstition but much atheism involves a superficial analysis of 'this world' and an allied lack of recognition that a personal store of knowledge is only a tiny part of the totality of human knowledge and experience.
One might believe that God does not exist but one cannot know.

Brendan Burke MA(Phil)
Cork Unitarian Church 21st May 2009