This is from Neil Postman's Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change:

The printing press gave the Western world prose, but it made poetry into an exotic and elitist form of communication. It gave us inductive science, but it reduced religious sensibility to a form of fanciful superstition.

What does he mean by "reduced religious sensibility to a form of fanciful superstition?" Was religion in a more enlightened form before print culture?

Previously it was culturally infallible, but “inductive science” made it unnecessary to explain the phenomena it used to and so the growth of science turned religion into “fanciful superstition”

Agreed, but I don't see why Postman would call that a Faustian bargain:

The first idea is that all technological change is a trade-off. I like to call it a Faustian bargain. Technology giveth and technology taketh away. This means that for every advantage a new technology offers, there is always a corresponding disadvantage.

Superstitious explanations being rendered unnecessary in favor of "inductive science" does not sound like a downside. Am I missing something?

Depends on who you talk to I imagine. You could argue society lost true faith, an incredible tradition of oral story telling, whimsy, etc

yeah what Chris is saying resonates with me a lot. There’s always a tradeoff, even if its subtle. Religious cultures did offer many benefits for many people. There’s excellent wisdom in ancient texts that were learned by the members of these religions. Religion offered community, education, answers to the question ‘what is the meaning of life?’, etc. Obv, even with that, there are tradeoffs (scientific ideas were often persecuted) and even just a decade or 2 ago in Boston (where I live now), priests were protected for sexually assaulting children (in the loose name of ‘religion’). Religion got ‘unbundled’, so to speak, and now many different institutions enjoy the responsibillity of satisfying these human needs

@ibdknox & @Srini K I see what you mean. I'm just wondering if Postman means something specific when he talks about what was lost in religion due to print. From what I've read of Postman (only Amusing Ourselves to Death, so far), he does talk about what's lost due to TV culture, from leisure to politics. And he does touch on religion too:

... I am aware of the deep concern among “established” Protestant religions about the tendency toward refashioning Protestant services so that they are more televisible. It is well understood at the National Council that the danger is not that religion has become the content of television shows but that television shows may become the content of religion.

So he mentions the "Faustian bargain" in

tv + religion

, but with

print + religion

, I'm left guessing. I wonder if he mentions that in some other work.

Religion was what held pre-modern societies together. A common belief in a foundational story. Inductive science, based on systematic doubt, cannot replace this function. So what is lost is social cohesion.

Kevin Simler has often elaborated on Konrad Hinsen's point. For example: https://meltingasphalt.com/here-be-sermons. I think this may get at a lot of the meaning of "religious sensibility".

Religion was what held pre-modern societies together. [...] Inductive science, based on systematic doubt, cannot replace this function.

Interesting... Science was needed to understand the truth about the world, but was never meant to replace religion. This suggests maybe religions need to adapt and stop assuming the function of science like they used to? Creating these science-compatible religions might stop their decline, assuming what's left after dropping fancyful superstition has enough value.

That’s what has been happening in mainstream Christianity and Islam, for example. Most of their adherents today consider their foundational stories legends rather than literal truths.

Was religion in a more enlightened form before print culture?

It’s complicated, but kind of, because religion is primarily about explaining the spiritual. Religion sometimes explains the material (though most frequently when the material is inexplicable), like the creation of the Earth, and stuff. It also occasionally focuses on the logical… But religion is primarily there to explain that which is immaterial — the connection between this and that. The connection between your soul and your body, between a mother and a child, between our past self and our future self, between love and creation, etc. Most of what religion tries to discuss can’t be easily reasoned about, or represented symbolically. It is mostly felt or experienced. Hence, religion can’t be put into print. Sure, stories can, traditions can, beliefs can. But the stories, traditions, and beliefs aren’t the religion. They’re merely pointers, trying to reference different aspects of the religion, which is not itself something that can be put into words. As an increasing amount of our thought was offloaded from feelings to textual analysis, we started thinking like readers. And readers think in a different way from non-readers. Just like speakers think in a different way from non-speakers (see monastic silence)

Reminds me of the rise of writing: https://fs.blog/2013/02/an-old-argument-against-writing