It was quite simple for the early humans, if you were technologically more advanced than your enemies, you would do better in war and got more resources from it. This also led to more people living together with scientific breakthroughs that allowed farming, homes, and protection. This influx of people in small areas led to capitalism, think medieval, with the castles and dragons – well, maybe just other animals or people that would like to do the residence harm. The “king” of the castle needed money to pay the other people would protect the common folk and therefore – taxes were born. An example of scientific discovery might be the invention of chainmail armor. I don’t think the king or ruling body would really have cared if their men died in battle, but you can’t argue with the results of adding protection, so they could keep fighting. Therefore – the ruling body invested time and effort into creating more advanced and cunning armor. Not only to protect the soldiers, but also to gain more wealth.
His argument seemed most sincere when he spoke about “the gods” it reminded me of an early reading of Socrates and struck me as ironic, that with science came an empire, and with an empire, capitalism arose and with those three things circling about, religion remained a constant. Whether that be considered a good or bad thing, I think most humans like the idea that there is more than just a mad power grab by those ruling heads in charge of the whole show.