Tessa, while I agree with most of what you’ve written here, there were one or two things said with certainty, leaving no room for argument, which I think might be mistaken, and somewhat self limiting.
I agree scientists are probably some of the smartest people on the planet.
But the part religion has played, not only in their successes historically, but continues to play in our progress, or the lack of it, as humanity, even now, might be underestimated, with huge consequences.
Scientists, having learned so much about the physical world historically might have found it increasingly difficult justifying religious belief as anything more than superstition, hence the “Enlightenment”.
However, when we consider what we are actually saying there; we are saying that scientists gave up ratifying science with religion, when it became too difficult to continue doing so.
Picture a science lab of the enlightenment; science had already become a business, they had bosses and equivalents then too. When it came to a particular scientific result which overturned previous information implied by religious belief, a consciencious religious scientist would no doubt spend significant time working out how to ratify what they had discovered, with what they understood from religion.
A boss, finding out such a scientist was spending any time at all trying to ratify obviously immediately valuable results with religion, would see that as time wasted, and order the scientist to get their discovery to market as soon as possible, without any attempt to ratify with religion.
Einstein seems to have enjoyed quite a bit of luxury, with bosses giving him the freedom to spend the entire second half of his life unsuccessfully trying to overturn the results of quantum mechanics, based on deep religious conviction that “God doesn’t play with dice”.
Therefore I argue it was not science that ditched religion, it was actually business that ditched religion. The scientists just went along with it, and after a while, that mentality stuck, as the most profitable, since most scientists also had a need to most effectively put food on their table.
Historians, again being commercially driven, similarly chose not to focus on any possible relevance of religion, when events could be questioned on that basis.
The implications of that are huge if true, maybe even existential. Essentially, by that, we are denying the possibility that a higher intelligence exists, therefore eliminating any possibility that we might aspire to such intelligence ourselves.
What if that was actually our purpose?
If we lose sight of that, it seems logical to conclude we may be completely lost ourselves as a society, and even as a species.
And that might be the real reason we find ourselves faced with the existential problems we are facing.
Eliminating the possibility of religion might actually be eliminating our future.
