Materialism consists in reducing reality to the material

There are a ton of qualitative differences between me and a rock.

I have the capacity to think.

Materialism completely denies metaphysics. I deny metaphysics. You haven't touched on that.

In the materialist world, thinking is just a bunch of particles going through some material medium, which is not different from whatever particles shape a rock, and interact with random forces

Denying metaphysics is like a child trying to deny that maths exist

Uhh, what's wrong with that, and how does it devalue anything?

It contradicts what you said

Math exists, yes. Hypothetical things exist.

Ah, the part about metaphysics

Math is a language. It describes material reality.

And metaphysics is what deals with reality beyond simple, fallible observations of quantizable things

Physics are boring, always the same, and in the end merely describe our quantization of things we observe

They do not answer da deep questions about reality

I'm not like making up the idea of materialism as just one dude on the internet. I can tell you that I've spoken to other materialists, and they believe in things like math, the mind, and natural law. There's a whole group of us Calvinist Jews, and we even believe in moral deontology. I don't think materialism means what you are saying here.

It's just that we reject things like the "divine spark."

Materialism, as the name implies, reduces things to "matter"

When I say "things" I mean reality

Or the buddhist doctrine that experience is fundamental to reality.

It is the myth of the cavern and the shadows

Sure, matter is important in reality, of course

But there are, of course, things that are not matter. Why would anyone ever beleive that there is only matter?

Just like, why would anyone ever believe that there are only the shadows of the cavern?

It doesn't reduce things, no. Hypothetical things exist in the sense that we can describe reality using language.

Material is the proximate cause of all things.

I'm not talking about hypothetical things. This has nothing to do with hypothetical things

It is silly, and filled with pride, and arbitrary, to want to reduce things to the material

But the motivation is clear: the material is somehow familiar, people are used to it, and it is comfortable to reduce reality to it

Because it is easy, and convenient, to not to have to deal with things that can't be quantized

Things that have no length, or similar properties of the material

Ehh, it's like the great created clockwork. How is that prideful? I'm looking at God's creation the way Robert Boyle did. You are looking at creation and assuming a fundamental substance exists aside from the plane material, and it's totally ad hoc. This is basically Chemistry vs Alchemy.

I can deal with non-physical things while believing in materialism.

I'm just not making the nonsensical, arbitrary assumption that the only things that exist are those that have length or whatever

Matter is not some fundamental thing that is in the basis of reality

Do you believe in a human soul that transcends death?

Is it different from animals?

Of course I do, because death is just the movement of some particles and chemicals or whatever, there is nothing from the material point of view that fundamentally changes

In other words: if thereisn't life of the soul after the events known as death, there was no life to begin with

It's kind of like when I crack a CD in half. The CD will never work again.

So, I have a soul that will exist after I die?

Because "working" just means that some process that tries to spin it and read data will work