> this argument basically requires one to assume that (a) society was progressing towards the denying of these religious beliefs No. I've never said that and I

> this argument basically requires one to assume that (a) society was progressing towards the denying of these religious beliefs No. I've never said that and I don't believe in that. My thesis it: there were the thinkers around 2500 years ago, on some very distant places, that came to the basis that is the actual basis of the modern science, fruits of which we all enjoy. The actual basis of the science is simple: to investigate the world, one must simply posit that the scientific explanation for any observation is not any other-worldy miracle. As soon as one bases his explanation on that, anything is possible, and automatically is out of the science. Moreover, the sciences which have to posit that aren't only physics or biology. Even history has to posit that: the basic premise of historic examination of any historic even is that there were no deities doing miracles, but the stories claiming miracles invented by humans. So one can either do history scientifically, or simply be religious, but he can't get the points in science from doing later. His work will then, correctly, be dismissed. Note, we started the discussion here by talking about Herodotus, the father of history. Not the father of religion. For a historian doing history, every religious story involving miracles is just a myth, no matter which religion tells it. Every (non theological) university book can't be made otherwise. And the same approach was of course true for the physicists doing physics: Newton could believe in deities as much a he wanted, he didn't explain the movements of planets with angels flipping wings but by demonstrating the calculations based on the rules of gravitation.