believe for thousands of years that the world was flat, or that the sun revolved around the earth, because the hypothesis was never tested. The Bible implies that God created the earth as a central focal point for all his activities; Ptolemy agreed that the earth was the center of the cosmos; and that was enough for the medieval scientist.Over the course of time, however, scientists began to make their own experiments, sometimes as offshoots of astrology or alchemy. And often their results surprised and disturbed them. The Counterbalance Foundation notes that Almost all the great pioneers and founders of the new science were religious men who wanted a science that would harmonize with their faith. All three founders of the new heliocentric cosmology, Nicholas Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Isaac Newton, saw their new vision of the universe as an offshoot of their theology. Newton, in particular, was a religious fanatic whose whole life work can be seen as a search for God. Even the infamous Galileo was a committed Catholic who wanted nothing more than for the Pope to endorse his vision of the heavens (Counterbalance, Faith and Reason). Unfortunately, it simply was not possible. The Church insisted on a certain agenda, and the scientific evidence these men produced contradicted that. From that time on, there were two different books, the book of faith, and the book of science. This idea was articulated by Enlightenment rationalists such as Kant and Rousseau, and became firmly entrenched in the furor over Darwins theory of evolution in the nineteenth century. As the Counterbalance Foundation points out, In the wake of [Darwins] book, some Christian believers and theologians began to see science as a threat to their faith. On the other hand, some scientists also began to see religion as a threat to scientific freedom (Counterbalance, Faith and Reason).On the other hand, reason has often been applied to religion, with somewhat vague resu...
