We seem to be witnessing the emergence of separate, competing views of reality in the Western world.
One of the great features of Western culture was the rapprochement between religion and science, lubricated by material plenty brought about by the framework of personal morality and discipline provided by religion, and the framework of scientific reasoning that allowed the extremely successful understanding of nature and its subsequent exploitation for the comfort of ordinary citizens.
Now one feature of that material plenty is the inexpensive and widespread control of vast amounts of information; this has made it possible for an entire subculture to trick itself into believing it can manufacture its own reality, a reality that would be seen as madness and quickly marginalized in the world of 100 years ago. The world of Alister Crowley and Helena Blavatsky, of the Thule Society and similar deluded modes of thought, is now capable of projecting itself across far larger populations than ever before by the means of modern information technology, a creation of science, of the system of reasoning that is the West’s greatest accomplishment.
the inexpensive and widespread control of vast amounts of information; this has made it possible for an entire subculture to trick itself into believing it can manufacture its own reality
Spot on and great stuff.
It's worth mentioning that morality and scientific reasoning are both the fruit of religion. First, science depends on the realistic understanding of the inspired-but-fallible human nature of the scientist himself. That comes to us in a unified chorus from the Greeks, the Jews, and Christianity. For starters, because even brilliant men can be mistaken or corrupt, observations must be observable by another observer!
The scientific method also embodies the Judeo-Christian view that the universe is an orderly place created by a benevolent God with laws that man can discover through disciplined observation. It was developed through the teaching of St. Albert the Great in the 13th century at the University of Paris. His students included St. Thomas Aquinas.
Christianity discovered the scientific method itself because of an accurate assessment of the nature of the observer (man) and the thing observed (the universe). Notice that the subculture tricked into "believing it can manufacture its own reality" is an explicitly anti-Christian one. Without an accurate philosophy, you can't get to the scientific truth.