Materialists deny the reality of anything existing that does not have mass (matter) or that cannot be expressed or applied as an energy. Thus the exhibited energy of mind, presently only partly measured by brain activity, is believed, in the materialist faith, to result from complicated chemical, electro-chemical, or electro-magnetic processes. There is no soul beyond energy and matter. There cannot be any purpose that invisibly guides history, as history is only the result of interactions of masses of men and masses of material things. There cannot be free will, as human thoughts and wishes can only operate within the material conditions and limitations of life. Materialism vigorously opposes religious philosophies, institutions, and influences.
Recent influential materialist philosophies have included C Lloyd Morgan's theory of emergent evolution, Karl Marx's dialectical materialism, and J. B. Watson's behaviourism.
Materialism is an unscientific philosophy that cannot face the anomalies in modern cosmology, topology, high-energy physics, and psychology, for these show that an explicable universe is not possible from Euclidean, heratonian and other single-order, uni-dimensional perspectives. Dialectical materialism, with its a priori dogmatism, has held back scientific development in Russia, for example. The materialistic conception of the causes of mental illness leads to surgical destruction of parts of the brain as an attempted cure. Its solution to the ethical problem of evil is behaviourism, an Orwellian-kind of Big Brother State which conditions its citizens' acts and attitudes. In the final analysis, materialism is negated by the non-material existence of the argument with which it defends itself.
In principle and in fact, materialism radically excludes the presence and action of God, who is spirit, in the world and above all in man. Fundamentally this is because it does not accept God's existence, being a system that is essentially and systematically atheistic. This is the striking phenomenon of our time: atheism, to which the Second Vatican Council devoted some significant pages. Even though it is not possible to speak of atheism in a univocal way or to limit it exclusively to the philosophy of materialism, since there exist numerous forms of atheism and the word is perhaps often used in a wrong sense, nevertheless it is certain that a true and proper materialism, understood as a theory which explains reality and accepted as the key-principle of personal and social action, is characteristically atheistic. The order of values and the aims of action which it describes are strictly bound to a reading of the whole of reality as "matter." Though it sometimes also speaks of the "spirit" and of "questions of the spirit," as for example in the fields of culture or morality, it does so only insofar as it considers certain facts as derived from matter (epiphenomena), since according to this system matter is the one and only form of being. It follows, according to this interpretation, that religion can only be understood as a kind of "idealistic illusion," to be fought with the most suitable means and methods according to circumstances of time and place, in order to eliminate it from society and from man's very heart. (Papal Encyclical, Dominum et Vivificantem, 18 May 1986).
An error of modernism identify by the belief that: No other forces are to be recognized except those which reside in matter, and all the rectitude and excellence of morality ought to be placed in the accumulation and increase of riches by every possible means, and the gratification of pleasure. (Papal Encyclical, Quanto Conficiamur, 10 August 1863).