Berkeley supports concept empiricism, the philosophy that all legitimate concepts can be reduced to sense experience.  This theory can be boiled down to idealism or immaterialism – there are no mind-independent objects, objects that exist separate from thought.  Berkeley’s opponent supports concept rationalism, the philosophy that not all legitimate concepts can be reduced to sense experience, which is also realism, or materialism – there are some things which exist that do not depend upon thought.  In order for Berkeley to reject concept rationalism, he argues that the term matter, the mind-independent substance the materialist uses to defend its position, is meaningless.  Unless the materialist can define matter or come up with a reason for its existence separate from thought, Berkeley will win the argument by default since he employs the semantic attack to undermine his opponent.  Therefore, the defender of materialism must either discover an abstract idea separate from all sense experience, or explain how physical objects can, or must, be mind-independent.

     All of our mediate perceptions come from those things that are immediately perceived.  We have immediate sensory ideas – taste, touch, smell, sight, sound – that then lead us, through reason, to the perceiving of physical objects and composite ideas.  We combine the senses to form the object.  But the object is still in our minds.  We are immediately aware of our own existence.  I exist so long as I think.   Our thoughts are our immediate evidence to our own existence.  We not only think, we also feel.  By reflecting on our emotions and our thought, we develop a notion of habits and other minds.  In order for all of these things to exist, there must be a mind perceiving them.  But, since no human mind is capable of having an idea of everything all at once, we are left with the notion that there must be an omniscient God existing.  This God must perceive everything always.  We have the notion of God’s Supremeness by reflecting on the emotions and intellect and will of our own imperfect minds.  To summarize, God must exist.

     God is the creator of all things.  Everything that exists exists because of Him.  Berkeley’s religion states the following, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.”   Perhaps we should first look at the created part.  It does not say, “God imagined, thought up, or perceived the heavens and the earth,” it precisely says created.  This statement implies that God created some mind-independent object (matter, earth, heavens).  On the other hand, Berkeley specifically states that nothing is mind-independent – were God to stop thinking about the heavens and the earth, they would just flicker away into the nothingness they began as.  This of course, depends on whether or not God exists on some time continuum, but since that has little to do with the argument being proposed presently, we will avoid this tangent.

     God created animals and humans possessing minds; He also added in free will to the humans and some innate instincts to the animals.  By granting us free will, God does not necessarily have control over the direction of our actions, our volition.  Free will was a gift.  God chooses not to have complete control over our thoughts.  He will, however, take hold of our lives if we surrender our life to Him, but only then will He become the Shepherd.  The whole concept of the Trinity is in this relationship with God.  He leaves the decision up to us.  If God can choose to give us certain things, why couldn’t He also create vegetation, water, air, etc. as material things?  God also gave us sense receptors.  What use would sense perception be if there were nothing to perceive?  God cannot deceive us into believing in material objects – He gave us sense perception in order to perceive the things He created, why would He make us perceive the physical objects in this world if they were not really there? 

     The concept of free will does not hold over in Berkeley’s philosophy; if everything we perceive is founded in Him, He cannot employ evil thoughts and deeds into our minds.  Since God is a perfect being, He has no reason to deceive us.  By giving us the ability to perceive, He is allowing us to think that what we see is actually there.  Leaving all relativism aside, (the apple is sweet to me, and sour to you), objects have ideas innate to their beings (apples have a taste, a color, an odor).  Although the actual odor may vary from smeller to smeller (the apple smells good; the apple smells bad), neither smeller can deny the fact that there is an odor.  There is something in the object that makes it perceivable by humans.  This something has to be founded by God.  God gives the object some unquestionable features – that it does in fact have an odor, a feel, a size, a sound, etc. and although this innate idea is dependent upon what God decides, He has the power to create the material object and place it here on earth for us to perceive.  This perception exercises the free will.  Without sense perception and relativism, we could not have free will.  If all of our sense perceptions are relative, and there isn’t a true and immutable nature to an object, then how could our free will function to determine right from wrong?  The entire idea of Christianity can be murdered by the elimination of material objects.

     In Berkeley’s proof that something perceivable must be either an idea or a collection of ideas (immediately or mediately perceived), he says in order for a non-sensory material object to be a genuine concept, it must be either reflectable or imaginable and meaningful and non-contradictory.  Matter was reflected upon by God, and created by God.  All things without minds were created and released, so to speak, into the world God created.  God has no need to continue to think on these things, for they have already had designations of Matter applied to them, for instance, a rock has a texture, an odor, a taste, a color, and a sound if you apply force to it.  They exist, whether God thinks about them or not.  When God creates the minds of animals and humans, He instills in them sense perception, which allows the mind-possessing beings to draw conclusions from the mind-independent rock.  According to each mind and the imperfections it has been granted, the mind will interpret what is presented to it and form an opinion about the rock.  To an ant, the rock is a huge creviced boulder blocking its path to his home, which was just flattened by an unimaginably large foot that descended rapidly from the sky with only its shadow and distant rumbling to predict the aftermath.  To a human, the rock is a small smooth pebble in the middle of a grass filled yard, and he just stepped on a small pile of dirt.  Despite the obvious relativity of the two creature’s experiences, there is still a rock, and still dirt, and still the ant and the human.

     If Berkeley is right, and there are, in fact, no material objects, then all of us Christians are more or less without a cause.  If you pull out material objects, then you pull out the ability to reason, argue, and form opinions about objects.  How can you form an opinion and discuss a baby if the baby only exists in Someone’s mind, and you question the other’s perception?  By deleting this ability, you then lose the ability to reason over those object’s mediate perceptions – for example, that baby I was just speaking about?  What if the baby is the product of an unwed couple, and you the couple’s counselor?  How can you infer from their situation whether or not to pursue abortion, adoption, marriage, or single-parent families?  If there are no actual and definite characteristics about the baby to debate over, how can there be a standard of right and wrong?  How do we form a standard of right and wrong, even?

     This is problematic.  It appears there has to be some form of Matter in the universe in order for things to function the way Berkeley’s religion dictates.  My solution is that God did in fact originally conceive these material objects, with the “true and immutable natures” Descartes mentioned in the Meditations.  But once God had the plan all set up, the only way He could allow His people to have free reign was by removing Himself from the non-perceiving objects He created.  “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, ‘Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it.  Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air and over every living creature that moves on the ground…’”  An interesting note to make – man is told by God to subdue the earth.  In the NIV Study Bible footnotes, it says, “He [man] is commanded to ‘subdue,’ i.e. acquire a knowledge and mastery over his material environment, to bring its elements into the service of the race”  - over his material environment.  Excuse me, Berkeley?  Please look again at God’s mind.  I don’t think you understood it the first time you assumed you knew Him.  Material things have the possibility and the necessity of existence.  All it takes is a little bit of pondering and free will.