> Almost all Scientific and engineering breakthroughs in that period happened in Scotland, Netherlands, England, and Germany. Again I'm not sure that's accurat

> Almost all Scientific and engineering breakthroughs in that period happened in Scotland, Netherlands, England, and Germany. Again I'm not sure that's accurate, was Britain really that much ahead before the second half of the 18th century? Copernicus, Galileo, Pascal, Torricelli, Lavoisier, Volta all had a Catholic background. Even the steam turbine was (according to some) invented in Italy by Giovanni Branca in 1645, however since there was no easily accessible coal in Italy the industrial revolution could not have started regardless of their religion. While in general I don't want to fully dismiss the whole concept of 'protestant work ethic', the success of England, the Netherlands (the low countries were already the most prosperous region in Europe before the reformation even started) and later Prussia can be better explained by their political, legal & economic systems, their geographic location and (in the case of England) access to natural resources rather than their religion. While I would concede that protestantism had a generally non negative effect on work ethic. Positive attitude towards intellectualism is not something unique to protestants. The tradition of what we consider to 'modern intellectualism' was born in renaissance Italy. It was continuously developed by catholic philosophers, scientists and organizations (e.g. the Jesuits) over the upcoming centuries. While dogmatism and negative attitude towards scientific progress was widespread in catholic countries, the Puritans(again) (and most hardline protestants) were generally anti-intellectual. However one thing protestants were ahead in was literacy, while generally it was not necessarily promoted due to their positive attitude towards intellectualism (it's not like devout protestants really need to read anything besides the bible and business ledgers) it overall still likely had a significant positive effect. > In fact, such a situation, with an entire country of deeply religious people all agreeing to restrict the power of religion, is so extraordinary that you can't simply dismiss it The political elite of the US during the War of Independence was remarkably irreligious (at least compared to the previous and future generations). Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, John Adams etc. were all either outright critical of organized religion or basically just ignored it. Americans generally became more religious in the first half of the 19th century (as a result of the "Second Great Awakening").