I actually am a bit of a Platonic idealist, so I'd strongly contest this claim. I have come to accept the reality of matter as an article of faith, but even so, we really don't have any clear idea of what it is, given the weirdness of modern physics. I'm also not above borrowing from Berkeley (and Kant) and pointing out that all we actually have direct access to is our own mental impressions, so it's technically the materialist who is positing the existence of something that it frankly doesn't seem possible to define except through mathematics.
Not borrowing from Berkeley or Kant but perhaps from - Hegel? I see him cited in your signature.
Look, the idealism of someone like Hegel - the theory that reality consists of mere immaterial ideas rather than real matter - won't prove terribly useful to you if someone hits you in the head with a baseball bat. It's a useless theory because it doesn't change the reality of the material dynamics that we are forced to live with 24 hours a day. For instance, that philosophical theory certainly didn't prevent an atomic bomb from falling on Hiroshima killing 200,000 people.
Look, I can't address everyone - every possible set of assumptions. The majority of Christians do believe that their material bodies are real, not imagined/delusioned, and that's the kind of audience I'm addressing here. This is not to deny that we sometimes imagine things. Dreams are the obvious example. But I concur with those who believe themselves to often awaken from their dreams to confront a real material world.
If you're some kind of Hegelian idealist, or a solipsist, perhaps my quarrel is not with you. For example, how can I disprove the solipsist, who claims I'm just a figment of his imagination? I cannot, and don't much care to try.
Can I disprove Hegel's idealism? Well, for one thing, who is having these ideas? Just God? Are we all God? Or, if I'm a figment of His imagination, how is it that I'm thinking with my own mind right now? Or maybe I am God, doing this thinking, as are you? This doesn't seem to be fruitful.
Look, if you accept that we are real - not just figments of God's imagination - there's a burden of proof on you to explain how reality "works" without physical dynamics, because physical substances are the
ground of individuation. Right? Examples.
(1) Retribution/wrath. Consider the cross. How did God manage to pour His wrath out on Christ ALONE? He physically targeted Christ's body - a specific geographical location. No one else suffered the cross, because Christ's body is what physically separated/individuated Christ from everyone else.
(2) Intercommunication. Same problem here. Both God and man have the ability to target a single individual with a message - physically!. If we are all some kind of immaterial nothingness, such individuated communication would seem logically impossible.
I beg to differ with you, therefore, when you claim that there is burden of proof on me to establish materialism. Ridiculous. The burden of proof is on anyone who wants to claim immaterialism in the face of all the material evidence confronting us 24 hours a day.
In short, you absolutely do have a burden of proof if you are going to posit the existence of a material God.
See above.
As a classical theist, I really have no idea how such a proposition would even work conceptually.
Oh. It's a big problem? Ordinary matter is something hard to conceive? But you find creation ex nihilo to be a perfectly straightforward claim? Let's conside that claim. Suppose you asked your wife or kid, "I need to fix something. Please grab me a hammer from the empty toolbox." Wouldn't they say you're off your rocker?
Creation ex nihilo violates the principle of identity. Suppose God sends me, Jal, back into nothingness. He then pulls 5 Jals out of that same nothingness. Which one of us five is the real Jal? Which one should pay for Jal's crimes?
A materialistic world view, such as mine, isn't susceptible to such logical contradictions and incoherence. Matter is the basis of individuation. As such, there will never - can never be - more than one Jal. I am numerically distinct from every other piece of matter in existence.
I would need rational reasons to believe that such an entity even could exist.
No sir. No proof is needed to establish the theory that material objects exist. The burden of proof is on those who claim that magical, immaterial substances dreamed up in Plato's fairytale land somehow exist in real life. Certainly there is no scriptural support for that gibberish.