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There exists a conflict between religion and science, particularly between scientific sociology and psychopathology on the one hand and religion on the other. This conflict is due to a confusion which exists between science and scientism. Science can explain the mechanics of a phenomenon but does not claim to give an ultimate explanation of the phenomenon itself. Scientism does make such claims. It attempts to give answers to metaphysical and theological questions. Just as theological and metaphysical answers to scientific questions cannot be considered seriously, so scientific answers will not explain theological and metaphysical questions. Scientism brings in its train a worship of the human mind which is a narcissistic phenomenon and does not lead to self-knowledge.
As a result of scientism the individual becomes lost as a person and becomes engulfed in a conflict for which there should be no place in the life and functioning of the contemporary scientific mind. Under the influence of scientism the mind becomes lame because 'Men become things, living beings become mechanisms, thinking in universals replaces the encounter with individuals. Men are made into the objects of calculation and management, of research and test, into means instead of ends. The I-Thou relation, the person-to-person encounter is lost. God himself becomes a moral ideal or a philosophical concept or a being whose existence or non-existence can be argued for. But a God who is an object is not God at all.'
Freud is cited as an example of one who attempted to remain a biologist, a logical positivist, a devotee of scientism, whereas in fact he made the greatest contribution towards the rejection of disindividualized scientism for the method of psycho-analysis is the method of the ever-deepening study and recognition of man as a person, not man merely as a statistical datum.