What is materialism? And what negative impacts can materialism have on spirituality?

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Materialism is the observation that if you see some particular phenomenon or event, there is a material cause behind the event. It’s your attitude towards this observation that determines what it does to your propensity to spirituality.

My own spirituality has been greatly enhanced by my embracing of materialism. How is this? Doesn’t spirituality embrace the concept of a spiritual reality, a realm in which events can have non-material causes?

Yes it does. The resolution here is in realizing that God is above causation. Meaning if I want to look for God’s hand, I don’t have to rationalize it at all if I don’t want to, though it’s sometimes fun to wonder exactly how in the holy heck God did that. Things can have physical and divine causes.

If you think about it, multiple sources of causation shouldn’t even be remotely controversial. Let’s say you just went to make yourself dinner. Your belly is now full. What is the cause of your belly being full? The fact that you made yourself dinner or the fact that you wanted to make yourself dinner? One is a material cause, the other isn’t. But both contribute to the end state. Divine will can orchestrate physical events without violating physical causality.

Better still, I don’t have to live in perpetual conflict with a scientific understanding of the world. It does put me somewhat at odds with Abrahamic theology, but I can live with that.