The short answer to your question is that the concept of a supreme divinity that fixed universal laws of how the world would always operate after he or she set it in motion paved the way for both the scientific method and rationality.
(The former being empiricism and the latter being...mostly pure math I guess, which often turns out surprisingly useful)
If you're a pagan, and it's all up to where you happen to be and the mercurial whims of local spirits to decide whether or not your kid's gonna die of hypothermia in a bad winter, there's little incentive to "figure out the way the whole world works" while you're trying to scrape calories out of the frozen dirt.
The short answer to your question is that the concept of a supreme divinity that fixed universal laws of how the world would always operate after he or she set it in motion paved the way for both the scientific method and rationality.
(The former being empiricism and the latter being...mostly pure math I guess, which often turns out surprisingly useful)
If you're a pagan, and it's all up to where you happen to be and the mercurial whims of local spirits to decide whether or not your kid's gonna die of hypothermia in a bad winter, there's little incentive to "figure out the way the whole world works" while you're trying to scrape calories out of the frozen dirt.
(I'm agnostic, for the record.)