I hate to tell you this, but the polytheism that still survives in Asia and its equivalents elsewhere in the world was not much better. Monotheism is a failed idea with a sky-high body count, to be certain....and I say this as a Christian....but where Nazi Germany was not an atheist society, the Soviet Union and today's PRC damn well are and one of the world's largest societies currently represses religion and I would hardly call China a bedrock of science.

Ever since man began to write and erect cities, life has sucked for the vast majority. Religion has had an incidental nature to that various fact. It truly is still for a lot of people the heart of the heartless world and the soul of the soulless world.