Response to:
The video argues against Ben Shapiro's claim in a debate that Judeo-Christian values are the root of democracy and scientific reasoning. Rebecca Watson seems to be saying that neither democracy nor scientific progress owes anything to Judaism or Christianity. In fact, American democracy was explicitly created as a non-theistic state and the seeds of science were planted by Greek and Arabic scholars long before Christianity asserted itself.
I mostly agree, especially about democracy. However, there were two "Judeo-Christian" values that helped scientific reasoning to survive _despite_ religious fantastical thinking and myth-making:
1) The vigorous Jewish tradition of Talmudic debate where Jews young and old were expected to reason and challenge each other about meaning and application of doctrine. This even played out in the New Testament story of young Jesus in the temple. That tradition possibly contributes to why so many great scientists were Jewish because of the cultural esteem for scholarship and critical thinking. I am not sure the concept of peer review and adversarial defense of proofs would be as strong without that tradition.
2) Christian devotion to understanding God's works. The same "fanaticism" that made monks argue about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin also led to (as one commentor pointed out) aristocratic patrons and the church to support scholars and monks exploring how stars and planetary orbits work or how peas inherit their characteristics (genetics). These pursuits often generated ridiculous astrological, alchemical, numeralogical, and cryptozoological ideas but also gathered essential data and a few not-so-crackpot theories of astronomy, chemistry, math and biology.
To be clear: It may be merely a happy accident or side effect of religion that reasoned debate and pseudo-scientific exploration helped keep the flame of Enlightenment alive during the Dark Ages but we can be grateful for that, nonetheless.
