From an email to a friend ...

The problem, though, even with more advanced and realistic science, is that it deals with being only in the weak sense. Being as extantness. It doesn't deal with being as existence with meaning. There is a difference between an extant object and an existing thing, in that an existing thing takes part in the World of meaning, which is what we experience both most immediately - wake up and your initial experience is that of World, then oneself as experiencing World. It takes an abstract 'step back' to experience the Universe of objects and oneself as a subject. Within the World of things, as well, there are different types of things, a human being has as its being being-with-in-the-world, which is not a relation, but is part of its being whether it is factually with others or not, a work of art has as its being workliness, something a 'mere thing' does not, a tool has as its being a usefulness. There is also the difference between a technological thing, something produced, and something brought forth by poiesis, i.e. brought forth of its own accord. This is a distinction we have forgotten in the technological age and it's one of the reasons people keep looking for an architect or producer for things that are not produced in any sense.
At the same time we experience World as mediated by understanding - which always includes pre-understanding via pre-judgement and assumption, that together constitute ideology. None of these are inherently bad things. We understand things as quickly as we do without extensive analysis from the ground up by taking in the 'whole' through assumptions and prejudgments, then subtracting those things that don't fit. As long as our assumptions and prejudgments are always prepared to be challenged and dumped whenever necessary we can think both quickly and accurately.
The 'fundamentalist' view, which can be religious or scientific, or based on any other world view, is really formed by a rigid ideology. That may be Jesuit, or Protestant, or neo-Darwinist. Unwillingness to dump invalid prejudgments and assumptions when they don't fit reality is the issue, not the prejudgments themselves. Many people believe an ideology is something we only have if we choose to, by adopting Marxism or something of that sort, while in fact we all have an ideology, the Marxist has simply made his more transparent. It comes from our hermeneutic method of understanding itself. We always understand the whole via each part, and we understand each part via the whole. Ideology is the set of assumptions and prejudgments that we use as 'ladders' to get from the whole to the part and back again if you like.