Worldly religion finds itself challenged by real faith. Everywhere Jesus' servants go they upset things, disagree, cause trouble, stir things up, and make it hard for the members of the culture to keep the facade in place. The third city is Athens, and as I've said, another riot breaks out, except that it's an intellectual's riot. This riot does not get mobs from the marketplace, throw people in jail, beat them up and run them out of town. It is agreed that university degrees and promotions, offering opinions with grave-sounding words and large vocabularies make you important.
Guilt is covered by use of one's intellect.
The Christian faith declares that there is another king and that man-centered learning does not heal our spiritual disease. God uses institutions, obviously. He used the Roman government, of which Paul was a citizen. He used the synagogues, where Paul preached. This is not to say that the Lord of all cannot use human organization, human culture, human governments, and so on.