Synopsis
My good friend, you are an Athenian, a citizen of a city which is the greatest and most famous in the world for its wisdom and power. Are you not ashamed that you give your attention to acquiring as much wealth, reputation and honour as possible, and give no attention or thought to Truth and wisdom, and the perfection of your soul?
(Socrates)
Following the rejection of the religious worldview, the perception of the world and life in the West has become implicitly based on what “science” says (and leaves unsaid). It is the almost irrefutable measure for determining what is true and what is not. However, the latter only studies the quantitative and measurable, leaving the rest out (which, by action or omission, is deemed non-existent or “unproven”), and (in spite of the discoveries of quantum physics), sets out from the premise that there is an exterior material world made up of objects which are independent of each other—and, what is more, independent of the subject that perceives them—which can be “objectively” investigated, that is, without giving a prominent place to the consciousness used to study them. A consciousness regarding whose nature science has, suddenly, nothing to say.
The scientistic mentality (the ideology which affirms that science has a monopoly on knowledge) contains, often unconsciously, many philosophical and metaphysical dogmas. At the same time, “science” does not constitute a unified entity: different sciences do not converge to make a unified image of man and the universe. The sciences—of varying levels of precision and reliability, and continually changing theories and speculations—discover many truths from their own standpoint, but they do not have the capacity to delineate a coherent and true worldview, given the multitude of factors that fall through their nets. The image presented to us, explicitly or implicitly, is that of a blind universe, exclusively material, where everything happens by accident and consciousness is a foreign guest; it is simply a philosophical extrapolation gleaned from a few pieces of scientific data corresponding to the kinds of questions asked about nature.
In the same way as “science”, “religion” cannot be spoken of as a unified entity. What exists are various religions that are manifested, adapting themselves to the diverse sensitivities and socio-cultural circumstances of human beings; their followers subsequently reflect or distort the message to varying degrees.