Materialists

A materialist is a person who believes that the universe and all its constituents can be explained through rational means, such as experimation and the gathering of results based on observation. Materialists in general reject supernatural explanations of natural phenomena, preferring instead to formulate a theory via collections of observations.

The religious Right and materialists are often at odds over topics which conflict with, or attempt to openly denounce, the beliefs and explanations from those subscribing to supernatural explanations. A modern example is the Evolution controversy, where many Conservatives and their supporters deny the validity of the theory of Evolution on the grounds that it violates scriptural explanations. Another example is the Young Earth Creationist movement, which denies the traditional geological age of the Earth (billions of years), suggesting that the earth is closer to thousands of years old, which coincides with ideas put forth in Scripture.

There are active research projects devoted to proving these "alternative" viewpoints to the scientific community (who are mostly, if not exclusively, materialists), despite constant pressures from the latter in labelling it as "pseudoscience".