[strogonoff]

Laypeople like you is why natural sciences are distrusted: you mistake natural science for another religion that you blindly ask for answers to your existential questions. You fail to notice that science does not provide those answers, but you go ahead and imagine those answers because you are too lazy to study actual philosophy—you pretend that physics backs you up even as no physicist worth their salt would make such a claim.

Yes, some scientists believe in materialistic monism. Some scientists also believe in whatever version of God (perhaps this would be news to you, but it happens all the time and there’s no paradox at all between being a scientist and religious simultaneously). However, both of the above are philosophical or theological beliefs; they can inform what natural sciences does, but not the reverse.

Natural sciences create models and make predictions that if this, then that would likely follow. However, there is never a conclusion that if “this -> that” is demonstrated then a model is “true” in some sort of absolute objective sense—the model is merely a transient metaphor, another model will replace it, and no model can ever be “true” because the map is never the territory.