Many Darwinists object to the sobriquet materialist they consider themselves physicalists. Responding to an article by Bernardo Kastrup, Consciousness Cannot Have Evolved, Darwinist Jerry Coyne explains:

Kastrup is dead wrong that materialism requires all entities to be measurable. [It is] is dead wrong that materialism requires all entities to be measurable. Heres a question: do you have a liver? The answer is based not on measurement, but on observation. I have never heard a definition of materialism that requires quantitative measurement, but it seems to be one [that is] confected to rule out consciousness as a material phenomenon, or the result of a material phenomenon. Unfortunately, [that] rules out a lot of material phenomena that cant be quantified as well, like love. (Ill let readers quibble about that one.)

Here, for instance, is the definition of physicalism (which is said to be the same as materialism) from [the] authoritativeStanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy(my emphasis):

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists dont deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance dont seem physical items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical.

That seems pretty accurate, especially with supervene on the physical at the end (for that is what consciousness is), and it says nothing about quantitative characterization.

The observation that materialism implies measurability derives from the Cartesian splitting of the world into res extense (extended stuff) and res cogitans (thinking stuff). Modern materialists are basically Cartesians who have jettisoned res cogitans. Everything, to materialists like Coyne, is extended stuff and the relationships between extended stuff. Everything is in some real sense measurable.

Obviously, this materialist view of reality leaves out much of reality (love, reason, mercy, truth, etc.) so skittish materialists like Coyne often call themselves physicalists, which means that they only accept as real things that can be observed and tested by physical science.

But with 20th-century science, even physicalism is untenable. For example, physics demonstrates the reality of singularities black holes and the Big Bang itself that are by definition not observable or testable by physical science. Singularities are undefined terms in Einsteins equations of general relativity terms in which the denominator goes to zero. They are quite real, but they are not physical in any sense they are undefined by the methods of mathematics and physical science. Now of course the consequences of singularities can be observed and defined the residual background radiation of the Big Bang, or the behavior of matter in the vicinity of a black hole are certainly observable. But the Big Bang singularity itself and the singularity at the core of each black hole are not natural they are not a part of the natural world, and they are not things that we can know by the methods of physical science. If we could know them, they wouldnt singularities they wouldnt be black holes or the Big Bang.

Some of the most important advances in modern science entail the recognition of the existence of very real things that are unknowable by natural science. The supernatural is very real, and the materialist/physicalist denial of this reality is a rejection of modern science.

Editors note: See also:

How Black Holes Figure in the Argument for Cosmic Intelligent Design

First Ever Black Hole Image Points to Cosmologys Big Message

Photo credit: Event Horizon Telescope [CC BY 4.0], via Wikimedia Commons.

Continued here:

Do Physicalists Believe in Black Holes? - Discovery Institute