What if religion had never existed?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

65. Actual experiments done to determine if something is real

(the Scientific Method) at best goes back 250-300 years. It is, essentially a product of the Enlightenment which was a moving away from blind religious faith to actual reasoning, looking for cause and effect, and going from there.

Very rarely did magic rituals result from something that worked, but more often because they were convinced something might work.

As for "logical thought in religion", the "logic" was based on blind assumptions (people get the Plague because Jews poisoned the wells, but killing Jews did not result in the Plague going away, just to give one example). The strength of religious faith and belief simply overwhelmed anything else. Even among modern, educated people there's a lot of holdover of that kind of magical thinking. We see it all the time when someone posts something about a friend or relative being sick, having been in a terrible accident, whatever, and a request is made for prayers. Or someone's recovery is credited to prayers and faith, rather than the work of doctors and medical science. The anti-vaxxers, the religious groups that don't do things like blood transfusion, based on completely erroneous belief, all of those are still with us, and not confined to places where people have never been in touch with modern science.

It is certainly possible to have strong religious faith and understanding of science, but religion has often been the enemy of science and logic.