The temptation of materialism

I don't want to shut up about it any longer:

Materialism really, really makes sense to me as a historically-situated 21st century Western European! (i.e. http://pinker.wjh.harvard.edu/articles/media/2004_09_27_newsweek.html )

And so what is God made of then? My own synapse connections of course!

I sometimes wish I was living in pre-modern times. No wonder a lot of my scientist friends don't believe in God if that's the paradigm of the time... Why do I have to live in a time and place in which the notion of God is so freaking strange, and not at all universally accepted?

Francis Bacon once said that "a little science estranges a man from God. A lot of science brings him (sic!) back." I guess I don't have a lot of science.

So now, if I promise to read lots and lots of Christina Rosetti, can this ridiculously crude materialism depart from my consciousness please? Do I even want it to go away?

I take some comfort in the observation that this is probably the numero uno lamest attempt at approaching God that I know of. And yet I hold Blaise Pascal to be amongst the greatest and most incredibly moving mystics that ever lived.

So yay for the kind of intellectual honesty that is both aware of its limitations and culturally reflexive. For now I'll just doubt my doubt.