I’ve watched discussions within the ID community about ‘materialism’ and why it is 'bad, ‘unnecessarily liming’, ‘immoral’ and/or simply ‘false’.
I really suspect much of the beef against ‘materialism’ is not philosophically driven. Rather, starting with Philip Johnson (or before but definitely driven by Johnson), it seems that many have perceived it as anti-God or anti-Christian. To be sure, many atheists would agree and I suspect that reinforces the suspicion of guilt by association.
So we have attempts like Egnor’s to ‘disprove’ materialism. Or Johnson’s attempt to ‘defeat materialism by opening minds’. I think this is simply a case of mis-targeting.
I have no idea how one can prove or disprove materialism, either logically or empirically. It seems that it will remain one of the perpetual debates in philosophy – unless (I hope!) someone comes up with a Godel-like proof of unprovability and philosophers can move on to other questions. I also don’t see how ‘materialism’ rules our God. And finally, I don’t see how non-material explanations about ‘mind’ and ‘consciousness’ are really going to be fruitful. And yet, so much energy is spent ‘defeating materialism’ (yes, better described as physicalism). One wonders…