Science plays a critically important role in our lives. It not only influences the technology we use, it also affects our politics (global warming being but one example), our religion (”Is God just a fantasy?”), our philosophies (”Live today for tomorrow you may die”), even how we think of ourselves both as individuals and as components of the community of all existing things.

Science has done arguably a better job selling itself as a kind of humanistic religion than most religions have done selling themselves in recent decades. In the process, western society has transformed itself into materialistic cultures of doubters, naysayers and acquisitors. We believe nothing is credible unless it can be proven and nothing is of value unless it can be related somehow to money, its acquisition and its spending. While science has not taught this directly, the belief results from the prevailing beliefs and structures of science and their pervasive influence on our lives.

The whole phenomenon of science influencing our lives in ways never intended may harken to our understanding of the human brain. We have two words, brain and mind, which science treats as equivalents. Science can deal with the brain because it’s a sensible part of our physiology, the organ that controls all other organs and the mechanics of our bodies.

Science has no way to comprehend or to deal with the concept of mind. That which it doesn’t understand, science treats as false or non-existent. By treating “mind” and “brain” as equivalents, science remains within its comfort zone. This comfort zone I think of as a box which science has created for itself and defined its own parameters. To science, if it can be explained or studied (preferably proved or potentially proved in the case of theories), a concept is within its comfort zone, thus may be accepted as “real.”

The brain accepts input from the five senses, information that travels along nerves which have specialized for their respective purposes. From this input, according to science, the brain devises its concept of the world around it, even of itself. What we believe we “are” results from the input we receive from others. Thus if others think of us and treat us as stupid or talented, we believe we are stupid or talented. In effect, life and everything in it remains within our brain. We are who we believe we are in our brain and the world is what it is according to what our brain has created as a concept of “what is.”

Moreover, science positions itself as the ultimate authority on “what is,” as it dictates that what science can understand and define should be all that we believe is correct and real. Science, through multiple sources, inputs that message of “provable equals real” into our brains to the point where many believe that only those things which we can detect using our senses are real. Wealth becomes the proof of our success because with it we can demonstrate that our net worth and our possessions show our superiority. Or, in the case of those incapable of or unwilling to accumulate wealth, their level of inferiority or failure.

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