What if religion had never existed?

[DetlefK]

18. We wouldn't have science.

Religion is a sign of the natural curiosity of humans. They saw nature and wondered how it worked. Well, what does make things work? A person! So what does make nature work? A person!
All these gods and spirits and so forth are essentially just another form of people. And in religion we credit those unknown people for doing things we have no alternative explanation for.



I guess, one of the most important inventions of religion is the notion that there is an underlying order in the world. And if you start from that notion, finding out what kind of order it is is the next step.

Another important invention of religion is the notion that the human mind and spirit is a material part of the world. This world-view created notions like souls and prayers and magic. If you look at scholars up to including the Renaissance, it was taken for fact that the humand mind and the human soul are a part of the natural world, just like the ground you stand on and the stars above you.



Where would we be without those?
Where would we be without the opinion that there is an order in the world?
Where would we be without the opinion that the human is an integral part of the world and therefore capable of influencing the world?
What exactly the human mind is, that is still up for debate, but it was magical experiments that eventually evolved into science.

Do you know how the magician John Dee called the laws of nature that determine whether a machine works or not?
He called them "real artifical magic."