Materialism

Materialism is an ontological position which holds, due to an absence of any evidence, that there is no immaterial or spiritual realm. Only things which are detectable in some form by the senses and sense experience- for instance forks, matter, radiation, heat, neutrinos, mayonnaise, galaxies, and so forth. It assumed by the position of empiricism, and therefore science, and is contrasted with substance dualism and immaterialism. Arguments for materialism commonly employ ontological principles such as Occam's Razor- as an immaterial realm is wholly superfluous to our understanding of the world, we have no reason to believe it exists.