If all that you see, do, measure and discover is the will of a deity, then ideas can never be proven wrong, you have no predictive power, and you are at a loss to understand the principles behind most of the fundamental interconnections of nature.
Knowledge of the natural world and how it works should be counted as fundamental to informed governance. You can't have a functioning democracy, if the electorate is under-informed or, worse, mis-informed.
No one wants to die, and no one wants to die poor. These are the two fundamental truths that transcend culture, they transcend politics, they transcend economic cycles.