Chapter Sixteen: Religion and Science

Chapter Sixteen addressed the topics of the expansion of Christianity, as well as other religions and branches, and Science’s role during the same time. Even today there is a line that some people wish not to cross in bringing Science and Religion together in comparison, and back then the Church was more against it, also having to deal with different sects branching off.

Christianity had been established well in America and in the Philippines. Throughout the rest of the world, it was practiced by some, or adapted into by others. Islam however was the dominating religion at the time everywhere else. Not only did these religions spread fast, but Science was also beginning to spread along as well to a religion as some.

Christianity, though having started in the Middle East, was the dominant religion of Europe, and only so there. At the time Christianity was internally dived by the Roman Catholic Church and the Easter Orthodox church. On the outside they on showed a front to Islam and its rapid spread. However, in the early sixteenth century the Protestant Reformation changed the unity the Protestant’s had left with the Roman Catholic Christianity. This reformation was started by Martin Luther and his posting of, what he called, his Ninety-five Theses. He argued that one did not need God and all of these priests, but one simply needed faith alone to get by and reach the gates of heaven. They simply needed the bible and their own interpretations of it. For many common people, these new ideas were amazing and much relatable. These new ideas served as a way to express their opposition to the social order of the church. Many women were also interested and attracted to Protestantism, even though just as the Catholic Church, it did not offer women a greater role. It did allow women education and literacy, as it gave way for people to read and interpret the bible for themselves, but it also heavily emphasized women as mothers and wives under their husband’s supervision. This was not the only new found religious ideas floating around, there were many others that continued to branch off one another. Eventually this led to the Thirty Year’s War, which was a Catholic and Protestant struggle, later ending with the Peace of Westphalia.

While some Europeans were set on spreading Christianity to the rural ends of the Earth and everywhere as they went along there were many other Europeans who were wanting and beginning to understand science and the things that were very much against what the church had been teaching at the time. All of these repeating questioning and exploring led to the Scientific Revolution. Men would no longer need to base everything solely on the scriptures or ideas and prophecies of ancient philosophers. Instead they could now begin to make close observations, create general formulas and explore and delve into mathematics. All of these ideas and practices were against everything the church taught and wanted, but that did not stop the Europeans. Along hand with the Scientific Revolution led to what is known as the Industrial Revolution.