This makes me think of a concept for a story: It’s the end of a dark age and science is becoming popular again. They’re in a constant battle between the religious forces but at least they have unity and political power of some kind for the first in known human history. However, they keep coming up with solutions to problems that seem to line up perfectly with the strange little details of religious superstition in a way that just doesn’t make any sense. Things exactly like “it takes 8 minutes for the sun god to hear you.” As the battle between the religious forces begins to get worse and worse, they realize the obvious conclusion: there used to be scientists that discovered all this before, but they all “died out.” In fact, this cycle has happened many many times over