State of the World Around the Scientific Revolution

[Ptolemaic-Aristotelia means that everything revolves around the earth and not the sun]

Ptolemaic-Aristotelian is the model of the universe that people originally used. As we all know, that is wrong. People at the time did not know that and the Bible said that the universe is Ptolemaic-Aristotelia, so they had no reason to think otherwise.

So, scientists found reasons to doubt that. Copernicus was the first to suggest a sun centric model but that was rejected by the populist. Then Kepler added more evidence. Galileo used his telescope and saw that some planets had phases, and that Jupiter had moons which disproved arguments that everything orbited the Earth. The first argument being that if the earth moved it would leave the moon behind, but that was disproved by the fact that Jupiter had moons. The fact that the planets have phases means that they have to revolve around the sun. This is really the only time that religion and science fought do to earth centric models appearing in the Bible.

Most people believe that religion and science are opposing forces, but evidence says otherwise. Religion and science had a strong relationship. The Christian religion believes the world is made up of "measure, number, and weight."1 They also believed that God made an orderly world. That means that if something happened once it can happen again. An orderly world is the only type of world that science can exist in, so religion and science did not fight. Science did not contradict religion so there is no fighting.

There were other intellectual movements affecting our view of religion at this time as well. The Enlightenment, as a movement, believed that reason was what made humans better than any other species on earth. A dog won't be a good detective because they don't have reason. When they say reason, they mean science. In fact, they undervalue reason. The Enlightenment also held a deal of skepticism to tradition, which often included religion.

Notes

1. Wisdom 11:20 (NCB).