Few issues are as prone to confusion as the association between spirituality and logic. The current conflict between creationist theory and the theory of evolution obscures the fact that Christianity has historically played a much more constructive part in the development of science than is generally accepted. Evidently though, many of the supposed instances of faith pushing up scientific advancement have turned out to be incorrect. For example, the Catholic Church has never told us that the World is spherical and, in the Medieval Period, no one has ever believed otherwise. Popes have not attempted to prohibit the number zero, protest human experimentation, or flashes of lightning, and fortunately, nobody has had their life stolen from them for having scientific beliefs. However, a significant amount of instances of church interference are, to this day, commonly cited as being religious hindrances to the pursuit of adding to the body of scientific knowledge.
It is correct that Galileo was arrested and persecuted for thoroughly maintaining his belief that the World orbits around the sun, rather than seeing is as merely a theory, as the Catholic Church has ordered. Today, scholars have verified that indeed, his execution was as much a matter of the pope’s larger-than-life ego and desire to crush all opposing trains of thought that contradicted his own. In actuality, this single incident fails to outweigh all the assistance the that the Christian religion has provided to scientific exploration throughout the ages.
This assistance was evident in a variety of ways and processes throughout history – one being the case of monetary support. Prior to the events that transpired during the course of the French Revolution, the Christian Religion was the largest supporter of science investigation. Beginning in the Medieval Era, missionaries, nuns and priests were compensated to research at colleges. The Bishop also insisted that science and mathematics ought to be a necessary feature of the curriculum. Following a series of intensive deliberations and discussions, it was agreed upon that Greek and Middle eastern scientific theory were important resources for the preservation of the faith. By the late 1700s, the Jesuit order has taken the worldwide title as the best research group in Europe, producing thousands of articles and disseminating new findings around the globe. The Catholic church had commissioned the renovation of hundreds of churches in order to incorporate star observatories to get a clearer grasp of the date and time. Christianity has, for the most part, side form a few isolated instances throughout history, been highly supportive of scientific research as a whole, and has generally been known to fund countless facets of research in the pursuit of maintaining faith as their interior motive.
Given that the Church has not been an enemy to science, it is less surprising to find that the era which was most dominated by Christian faith, the Middle Ages, was a time of innovation and progress. Contrary to popular belief, this period of history has seen much encouragement between science and religion rather than deterrence and criticism. Inventions like the mechanical clock, glasses, printing and accountancy all burst onto the scene in the late medieval period. In the field of physics, scholars have now found medieval theories about accelerated motion, the rotation of the earth and inertia embedded in the works of Copernicus and Galileo. Even the so-called “dark ages” from 500AD to 1000AD were actually a time of advance after the trough that followed the fall of Rome. Agricultural productivity soared with the use of heavy ploughs, horse collars, crop rotation and watermills, leading to a rapid increase in population.
Since the Christian faith was not a main adversary of the pursuit of scientific knowledge, it is significantly less shocking to note that the period mostly controlled by Christian religion, the Medieval Period, was a period of invention and development. Advancements such as mechanical clocks, goggles, publishing, and accounting have all come to light in the later middle ages. In the world of physics, researchers have recently uncovered ancient, pre-modern ideas about rapid acceleration, the orbit of our planet, and kinetic equilibrium preserved in the writings of Copernicus and Galileo. Many believe the medieval period to be a period of artistic and scientific censorship, a period in which the church dominated and controlled all expression and unconventional beliefs – however, in many cases, it was quite the opposite.
The Happy Hammock 