> It's easy to imagine anything, so that doesn't really say much. You claimed that science exists because of religion, but did not show that religion is a requ

> It's easy to imagine anything, so that doesn't really say much. You claimed that science exists because of religion, but did not show that religion is a requirement (or even catalyst) for science. Organised science definitely requires a society (otherwise it would not be organised) and it so happens that historical societies tended to have some association with religion, but I would claim science arose from these societies despite religion, not because of it. If science was an outworking of religion, rather than the society a religion happens to cohabit, why do we not see more and more science coming from societies with more and more religion? > Atheists were science blockers in Plato's day. They were called sophists, and didn't believe in gods, but used the beliefs of the people and fancy rhetoric to get what they want. Most of Plato's dialogues are debates with sophists. Sorry, not sure what the link here is. Atheism is just not believing in gods, in the same way I don't believe we are living in a simulation. Even if the premise is true, as far as we can measure (so far!) there is no impact on us. Not believing in things that we can't experience or measure is the default for us in general. I would go so far as to say that religions themselves only exist because we were trying to explain the world we live in, and were unable to with the tools and ideas available to us throughout history. Over the course of history many people have observed the same phenomena and come up with a multitude of ideas as to what is going on. Many of those ideas go on to form the nexus of a religion, many hundreds or thousands of religions trying to make sense of the world. The ideas that hold up to interrogation, that are testable and can be observed repeatably, they become science. Science reduces the set of possible explanations to the ones that are feasible.