On Fri, 16 Apr 2021 08:19:55 +0100, #Paul wrote:

Commander Kinsey wrote:
You have to wonder how far we would be today if religion
had not impeded science.

You've pre-loaded the statement; since it is reasonable to believe
that at least in some cases religion has impeded science, is is only
natural to make the follow-on assumption that science would have been
further advanced. Well, unless the impediment was somehow such that it
slowed science so as to avoid some sort of science based global
catastrophe; perhaps a nuclear war at a time when people were less
averse to mass slaughter and less aware of the global consequences.

A more neutral question might be somthing along the lines of:

"You have to wonder whether religion has, overall, been a help
or hindrance to scientific advance."

A bit of both, in my opinion, and which is more dominant depends
a lot on how widely - or how far back - you cast your viewpoint.

Why are you concentrating on disasters? I just mean that advances like satnav might have happened 20 years earlier, and by now we could have been on mars.