The Short Version
Huston Smith does treat scientism as the central intellectual antagonist in *Why Religion Matters*, and multiple peer-reviewed analyses confirm he frames it as the dominant ideological threat to contemporary spirituality. However, the claim slightly overstates his argument: Smith's own "tunnel" metaphor identifies four institutional walls — science, higher education, media, and law — as co-drivers of spiritual decline, and his definition of scientism is somewhat broader than the one given in the claim. The core assertion is accurate, but "primary cause" implies a singularity that Smith's multi-part framework does not fully support.