Middle ages.
1/ Socrates started his apology on how difficult it is to persuade the brainwashed.
Today we live in a parallel brainwashed universe where the Byzantine Empire never existed and, even more, most confuse middle-ages with its fundamental contradiction, Rennaissance.

2/ When were the largest & most glorious western churches built? After the 12th century. After the middle ages. “Great churches” means “more books”. Not “less books”.

3/ Cumulative statistics of economic activity. Church construction set out the competition for secular construction.

4/ I can’t find a single period of history were intellectual growth (renaissance) was not associated with strong reflections on the divine. Here we don’t see just two different styles of art. We see two different levels of dedication. Two different levels of perfectionism.

5/ Psychological studies on perfectionism may partially explain the reason.
↑ Religiosity (all types)→ ↑ Perfectionism
↑ Intrinsic Religiosity → ↑ Adaptive Perfectionism
↑ Extrinsic Religiosity → ↑ Maladaptive Perfectionism.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-011-9104-3

I pinpointed one dimension, perfectionism, to imply it’s opposite, laziness. The work of scientific realists (e.g. Dawkins’ “mind virus” in biology) is mostly a work of intellectual laziness. Not just wrong, but ugly. No soul & no erudition.

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