“Could we still say the whole thing was nothing but a mass of electrons, created out of nothing, meaning nothing, whirling on to a destiny of nothingness?” (Page 54, Big Book)
Some people say there is no spirit, only matter, and that essentially we’re conditioned by physical processes (evolution, genetics, biochemistry, neurochemistry) and that free will is an illusion: we’re just matter.
But who is saying that? If it is matter saying this, then it has no value as a proposition. The statement is being made by nothing higher than a bowl of electrified porridge. The argument cuts off the branch it is sitting on. Matter can have no claim to truth, knowing, understanding, reason, morality, love, or any qualities whatsoever beyond blind mechanical chains of cause and effect. The proposition has no more validity than if it were made by a potato or a Playstation.
What one is left with is the intuition—even in despair—that there is or should be more to life than ‘this’.