Materialism

Materialism is the philosophical belief that matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and that all phenomena are a result of material interactions. It excludes the possibility of anything supernatural. 

One of the world's leaders in evolutionary biology and Harvard Professor Richard Lewontin admitted that scientists are committed to the philosophy of materialism: 

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment.... a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanation, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute for we cannot allow a Divine foot in the door. *

Berkeley Philosophy Professor John Searle said: 

"There is a sense in which materialism is the religion of our time.... Like more traditional religions, it is accepted without question and provides the framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed and answered." **

*Cited in Goetz and Taliaferro, Naturalism, 9.
**Searle, John, Mind: A Brief Introduction, p. 48