Lack of faith in Science is not news. The failure of Materialism to either convict or convince the public has been true since its founding in 500BC, with perhaps its greatest success in the early 20th century, when post-millennialists believed that Science would usher in a 1000 years of peace and prosperity. The real news is that anyone today would remain so persuaded,  given the disastrous history of Comintern, National Socialism, central planning and eugenics.  However, the failure of Scientific Materialism's major rival is not so well documented, perhaps because the reductionist tendencies of modernism have labelled all such opposition "religious". For the major rival to Epicurus' Materialism in 500BC was not Christianity, nor even devotion to the Greek pantheon, the major rival was Gnostic dualism.

Now I should clarify that I am using Gnosticism in a more generic way than most, who usually have a narrow meaning of either a first century sect on the shores of the Dead Sea or a 20th century sect of most Episcopal bishops. Here's a typical Wikipedia definition or a Christian version from Peter Jones:

At the heart of Gnosticism lie two powerful notions: the elimination of the Creator God of biblical theism and the promotion of deep spiritual union with the god of paganism.

I am using a more generic definition:
  Gnosticism is dualistic realism that says reality is composed of the physical and the spiritual, but the spiritual is dominant
This definition has the following corollaries:

• Knowledge can/will explain all the paradoxes of Nature or Faith,
• Knowledge is something spiritual and possible for humans to possess.
• There is nothing important that is unknowable, and conversely the unknowable is not important.
• Since knowledge is the key to the spiritual realm, both defining and controlling it, then everything important comes down to knowledge. What is sin? A lack of knowledge. What is evil? A lack of knowledge. What is damnation? A lack of knowledge. Conversely, What is righteousness? Proper knowledge. What is good? Proper knowledge.What is salvation? Proper knowledge.
• Since we do not live in a perfect world, our knowledge is not perfect.
• Thus the plan of salvation is to spread, to proclaim, to teach  the secret knowledge, etc.

Therefore even in Plato's response to Epicurus, and certainly in Neo-Platonism, Gnostic tendencies are evident in the Demi-Urge that is responsible for creation, along with the many emanations that cascade down the hierarchy from God. Both Aristotle and Plato were astute enough to realize that Epicurean materialism excluded Mind and Reason, and therefore inconsistently excluded itself. But the addition of Mind back into Materialism was not simple, and required a certain amount of tension and equivocation. For example, Aristotle's insistence on organic descriptions of reality explained biology nicely but made gravity into a brotherly love between elements. Arguably the Materialist denial of biological purpose is as silly as the Aristotelean assertion of rock romance. Either one is an self-refuting monist like Epicurus, or a conflicted Rationalist like Aristotle, Not until Augustine am I aware of a way around this impasse.

So Augustine's autobiography, "Confessions", written some 900 years after Epicurus and Aristotle, is a perfect illustration of the progression of faith from monist reductionism to dualism. Augustine's parents sent him off to the best schools in Carthage where he showed promise as a teacher of philosophy: Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Plotinus, and the Stoics. But all this intellectualizing gave him no joy, and so he joined a Manichean sect named for its founder Mani (210-278AD) who had combined Persian Zoroastrianism with Jewish Gnosticism and Christianity in a compelling religion of intellectual redemption. Because it was a thoroughgoing dualism, which unlike Aristotle was able to separate rocks from rock doves. people from plucked pigeons, it permitted him to compartmentalize his thinking from his feeling, and justifying his irresponsible behavior of shacking up rather than marrying his girlfriend.

Here's how he wrote about it in his Confessions (V.10):

 "I still thought that it is not we who sin but some other nature that sins within us. It flattered my pride to think that I incurred no guilt and, when I did wrong, not to confess it... I preferred to excuse myself and blame this unknown thing which was in me but was not part of me. The truth, of course, was that it was all my own self, and my own impiety had divided me against myself. My sin was all the more incurable because I did not think myself a sinner".

So to recap, one could be an Epicurean physicist but without meaning, purpose, and the ability to take responsibility, "eat, drink and be merry for tomorrow we die" . Or one could be an Aristotelean biologist with marvellous explanations but lousy physics, glossy catalogs but without order forms. As Ernest Rutherford remarked "All science is either physics or stamp collecting" ( and then was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry),  By necessity, this turned generations of scientists into dualists, becoming Aristotelean for some tasks, Epicurean for others. Physicist Niels Bohr's 1930 Copenhagen Interpretation made this dualism a permanent property of reality, which was convenient since his father was a biologist. Dualism holds other attractions as well, as Augustine laments above, enabling one to shift the blame between guilt-free Materialism and responsible Rationalism as the need arises. What is wrong with that flexibility?

What is wrong is that people are always taking the easy way out, which is bad for science and bad for philosophy. Ethical problems go away if one is a Materialist, and so universities are crowded with relativist philosophers. "Embryonic stem cells, fetal body parts, vivisection? No problem, just find yourself a university ethicist." Scientific validation problems go away if one invokes dogmatic rationalism. "Global warming, DDT eradication, Martian water? No problem, just defund the bone-headed critics." So the very flexibility that permits both approaches, also promotes dogmatic sterility, polarization, and eventual breakdown of the scientific program. The training wheels that helped us through those rocky centuries of the Renaissance are now hindering our further progress into the velodrome of the 21st century.

The solution is to recombine the two sides of dualism without collapsing one into the other. This is impossible without a third pole, an overarching scheme, an external reference point. Augustine found that external reference point in the Christian doctrine of the Trinity, and made it central to his entire philosophy. Not only must the two sides of the duality be held in equal esteem, but the process, the coherence that unites them must also be given equal importance. Not more importance, or we are back to a Hegelian dialectic and a degeneration into reductionism again, but equal importance. That is, one should be able to view any two viewpoints through the prism of the third. 

Rather than pursue this abstract discussion, let's see how it works on a real example. A recent science article received a broad exposure in the popular press, discussing how a "feeling" or a "rational state" was found to change from a material cause.

Exhibit B: The science of distrust

Human brain parasite alters fear

Scientists say discovery could shed light on how fear is generated

By Charles Q. Choi

LiveScience

Updated: 5:34 p.m. CT April 2, 2007

Rats usually have an innate fear of cat urine. The fear extends to rodents that have never seen a feline and those generations removed from ever meeting a cat. After they get infected with the brain parasite Toxoplasma gondii, however, rats become attracted to cat pee, increasing the chance they'll become cat food.
    This much researchers knew. But a new study shows the parasite, which also infects more half the world's human population, seems to target a rat's fear of cat urine with almost surgical precision, leaving other kinds of fear alone.
   This discovery could shed light "on how fear is generated in the first place" and how people can potentially better manage phobias, researcher Ajai Vyas, a Stanford University neuroscientist, told LiveScience.
Hijacking the mind
   T. gondii is a parasitic germ whose primary hosts are cats. However, it can be found in most warm-blooded animals, including an estimated 50 million people in the United States. One study suggests the parasite has altered human behavior enough to shape entire cultures.
   In cats, the protozoan reproduces sexually, while it reproduces asexually in other animals.
   The germ seems to especially like infesting the brain — "parasites hijacking the mind," Vyas said.  Although the disease it causes in humans is rarely dangerous, it is the reason that pregnant women are sometimes told to avoid cat litter boxes (toxoplasmosis is risky for infants and others with compromised immune systems). Some scientists have suspected it might be linked to mental disorders such as schizophrenia and even neuroticism.
   In 2000, scientists revealed T. gondii could modify the brains of rats to make them attracted to cat urine instead of afraid of it. Researchers suspect the germ does so to make it easier for it to jump into cats to begin the sexual part of its life cycle.
   Vyas and his colleagues now show how specific this brain reprogramming is when it comes to rats, findings detailed online April 2 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Just cat pee
   Rats infected with the parasite became mildly attracted to bobcat pee. However, they remained as fearful of open spaces as normal rats. They reacted normally to sound cues that suggested mild electrical shocks were coming. Normally rats are somewhat reticent when it comes to eating food that smells unfamiliar. And the infected rats were, just like the normal rats, reticent when it came to food scented with the unfamiliar odor of coriander.
   "One would thus assume that if something messes up with fear to cat pee, it will also mess up a variety of related behaviors," Vyas said. "We do not see that. Toxoplasma affects fear to cat odors with almost surgical precision."
   In addition, "we show that parasites are a little more likely to be found in amygdala [a region of the brain] than in other brain areas," Vyas said. "This is important because the amygdala is involved in a variety of fear-related behaviors."
    Future investigations can explore how exactly the parasite modifies the brain in such a precise manner. Potential targets in the brain for research include the stress hormone corticosterone and the brain chemical dopamine. Scientists might also want to see whether infected rats become less afraid of pictures of cats or scents of different predators of rats.
   © 2007 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

If we interpret this science as a materialist, we would say "Of course, all emotions are caused by brain states." But then this doesn't explain how an organism, such as a T. gondii, creates such a specific, purposeful brain state in a foreign host. The usual materialist answer is "by accident", but then one has to question just how many neurons there are in the brain (trillions) and how many interconnections between neurons (egad!) and how many permutations of those connections are needed to represent a signal like the smell of cat pee (egad egads!) to realize that "accident" won't explain very much. The chances of a gagged and blindfolded Watson finding Livingstone in the jungles of the Congo by accident are greater.

But if we interpret this as an Aristotelean, we have equal problems. Of course T. gondii wants this to happen, but the rat doesn't want it to happen. Why does the "will" of a single-celled organism always win? Shouldn't a smart organism like cats or humans be able to overrule a protozoan? If not, then are we all held captive to the organisms in our environment, are we but pawns in an organic chess game? How can we tell? Neither is Aristotle very encouraging.

But what about dualism, could it be that there are spiritual forces, coherent emerging "mind" that is directing the biology of cats and rats? Could Gaia be preferring a certain level of rodent population that is ideal for this planet, and therefore encouraging T. gondii, through natural selection of course, to act as a rodent regulator? But what happens when animals, or people for that matter, can foresee the future, and act in ways to change their behavior? What is to keep rats from detecting T. gondii (as indeed, all mammals recognize sick relatives) and shunning those who are so infected? If rats can be taught to learn a maze, why can they not learn how to avoid parasites? And once the future is anticipated, all the recursive logic of time machines and feedback loops begins to wreak havoc on the simple-minded pantheism that Gaia represents, with completely indeterminate outcomes. One can invoke dualism, but it only makes prediction and control worse, not better.

So how can Augustine help? The Trinity suggests that there is a coherence between mind and  matter. Of course mental states change matter, mind and will are intimately involved in material changes. Likewise, material inputs like diseases and drugs have huge effects on mental states. Both are united, however, by being created good by God. Thus there is both a purpose and a balance, there is a preferred state and a non-preferred state. The bad condition we call sin, or "fallen creation", and it can be cured. Mental remedies (modified behavior)  or material remedies (anti-gondii drugs) can be applied. Processes can be monitored to see which are most effective, which is only possible if the coherent goal is recognized.

Is this just another way of saying that Rationalism and Materialism are complementary? No, because that would imply that there is no unifying meaning to the relationship. Just because men and women complement each other is not reason enough to establish a marriage,  cohabitation would do very nicely. Rather, it is the unifying goal of raising children that makes marriage a necessity. The RCC has it right, marriage is for children, not for silly satisfaction. Likewise, if mind and matter are merely complementary, then they never need to talk to each other, much less unite for a common goal, as in America's "separation of Church and State". But if America is to find a solution to euthanasia, embryo research, Alzheimer's, gay marriage, and abortion, it must unite Church and State behind a common goal.

So the point in calling it Trinitarian, is that there is no reductionist collapse of the system to one of the poles, (gondii is bad, fear is bad, infected cats are divine), but rather each plays off the other, each reinforces the other in a spiral of development, in a united purpose. When some biologists suggest that parasites are responsible for most of the "evolutionary pressure" that drives complexity (i.e. progressive evolution), they are recognizing this spiral as it intersects their materialist plane.

But only Augustine's Trinitarianism sees it as a heavenly staircase leading up to heaven, or down to hell.