
A god of the gaps (god void) depiction of scientific materialism and or extreme materialism; showing the religious apologeticist weakling trying to patch up the gaping holes carved away by the juggernaut of scientific progress and discovery.

A god of the gaps (god void) depiction of scientific materialism and or extreme materialism; showing the religious apologeticist weakling trying to patch up the gaping holes carved away by the juggernaut of scientific progress and discovery.

In science, extreme materialism, or "gross materialism", refers to a materialism position that jettisons all supernatural and anthropomorphic beliefs, except that in belief in matter, as physics and chemistry define matter.

Overview
In 1875, Balfour Stewart and Peter Tait classified extreme materialism, seemingly, as a deism-spirit-soul theory free version of materialism, which adheres to the following position: [1]

“When a certain number of material particles consisting of phosphorus, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, and perhaps some other elements, are, in consequence of the operations of their mutual forces, in certain positions with respect to each other, and in certain states of motion, consciousness is the result, but whenever this relative state is brought to an end, there is also an end of consciousness and the sense of individual existence, while however the particles of phosphorus, carbon, etc., remain as truly as ever.”

Irish physicist John Tyndall, as the protagonist of this view in the Tyndall-Stewart-Tait debate (1874), supposedly, is a 19th century example archetype of the extreme materialist.

American philosopher Henry Finck, in his 1887 Romantic Love and Personal Beauty, section “Cosmic Attraction and Chemical Affinities”, classifies German physicist and extreme atheist Ludwig Buchner as a "gross materialist" as follows: [2]

“But the inclination to confound gravitation and other natural forces with Love is not to be found among ancient and mediaeval authors alone. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is the "gross materialist," Dr. Ludwig Buchner, who exclaims rapturously: "For it is love, in the form of attraction, which chains stone to stone, earth to earth, star to star, and which Cosmic Attraction and Chemical Affinities holds together the mighty edifice on which we stand, and on the surface of which, like parasites, we carry on our existence, barely noticeable in the infinite universe; and on which we shall continue to exist till that distant period when its component parts will again be resolved into that primal chaos from which it laboriously severed itself millions of years ago, and became a separate planet."

Buchner carries on this anthropopathic process a step farther, by including all the chemical affinities of atoms and molecules as manifestations of love: "Just as man and woman attract one another, so oxygen attracts hydrogen, and, in loving union with it, forms water, that mighty omnipresent element, without which no life nor thought would be possible." And again: "Potassium and phosphorus entertain such a violent passion for oxygen that even under water they burn-—i.e. unite themselves with the beloved object".”

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See also
● Extreme atheism
● Extreme mechanism | Stark classification

References
1. Stewart, Balfour and Tait, Peter G. (1875). The Unseen Universe: or Physical Speculations on a Future State (pgs. 48-49). Macmillan.
2.Finck, Henry. (1887). Romantic Love and Personal Beauty: Their Development, Causal Relations, Historic and National Peculiarities (section: Cosmic Attraction and Chemical Affinities, pgs 4-9). MacMillan.