“It would be misleading to think that all these factors influenced all scientists to the same degree. However, a major component of anyone’s theoretical outlook is his religious worldview (which could be atheism or agnosticism, as well as a traditional religion). Worldview had a far more significant influence on the origin of old-earth geology than has often been perceived or acknowledged. A person’s worldview not only affects the interpretation of the facts but even the observation of the facts. Another prominent historian of science rightly comments about scientists and non-scientists: ‘men often perceive what they expect, and overlook what they do not wish to
Scientific advancements such as heliocentricity and atomism disproved geocentricity and Aristotelian beliefs. The Catholic Church supported many of those views and anyone who opposed those beliefs were made instant targets of the pope and his follwers.4 Punishments were very severe, including house arrest, to discourage scientific advancement, but some refused to give in to church demands. Aristotelian belief was that the Earth was the center of everything, which tied well into the churches’ misunderstanding of several bible verses. This misunderstanding caused the church to strictly promote the idea of an Earth-centered universe.4 Many scientists were persecuted, but Galileo was the most notable. With him inventing the one of the first telescopes, he could see multiple areas of space never seen before such as Jupiter.
That it was the sun at the centre and everyone moved around it in a helio-centric motion. Now until these revolutionary scientists came along all people thought that the planets moved around the earth, this was called geo centric. The idea that we, Gods creation, were not the centre of the universe challenged Christians beliefs in the way that we weren’t special, at the centre, that we may not be his only creation perhaps. The work of these mathematicians and scientists were beginning to set the tone of Christian discomfort as the universe and our world was becoming more understood. Galileo Galilei gave his support towards Copernicus as well as adding his own findings to the new theory of a helio-centric universe.
At first the heliocentric model was not widely accepted because people always thought the Earth was at the center. The telescope helped people accept the way the universe actually is. In the early 1600’s, the telescope was invented. Although Galileo did not invent it, her did make it famouse. He built his own telescopes and was the first to use to view the heavens in 1610.
He developed the heicentric theory which stated that the sun was the centre of the universe thus questioning the belief of the majority and the Catholic Church that the earth was at the centre of the universe. Although he was publically mortified because his theory contradicted the Earth being Divine he soon received acclaim from his followers such as Galileo and was accepted all over the world. Copernicus who was considered to be mad had finally changed the face of science forever. This notion is also emexplified in the novel To kill a mocking bord by harper lee. The actions of the central character atticus finch shows that only a few have the courage to go against the widely accepted facts.
Newton also changed the way we, even today, look at physics. Because of Newton, we learned that the reason that the planets all stay in perfect rotation with one another and not just going around everywhere is because of gravity pulling on them (Kagan, Ozment, and Turner 272-351). What did both the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution have in common? They both went against the church. The Roman Catholic Church didn’t want people to use science to explain things in the universe because it went against what they believe God did.
The religion of Christianity promoted enlightened people to question the ideology of their God and lean more towards a scientific method in order to look at the world around them. The church used superstition, threats of eternal damnation, and promises of heaven, to control masses of ignorant people in Europe, since the time of the crusades. It represented a wealthy capitalist organization, like a huge cooperation, exploiting the spiritual needs common to many humans especially at that time period. A great example of how Christianity stifled social change is the idea that the earth was the center of the solar system. Astronomers such as Galileo knew that the sun was the center rather than the earth, but the church suppressed new ideas and new information from reaching the people.
The genesis story alone supplies more than enough theoretical fuel to keep an atheist's argument burning. There are people who whole-heartedly believe that the earth was created in 7 days and that science is a lie created by “God” in order to test our faiths, that carbon dating providing evidence of the earth having existed for millions of years is simply trickery devised by “God” to separate those who should be allowed access to heaven and those who are damned to hell for an eternity of suffering. There are people who are strongly against the theory of evolution and they claim “But Evolution is only a theory.” which is true, it's only a theory. If the fact that it is merely a scientific theory automatically discredits it for them then perhaps it also applies to the scientific theory of gravity and they might just float away. A survey was conducted in America,
There is a relatively strong connection to God in this book and many people during this time period believed in God. I bring this up because it was believed that God is the supreme creator of all things including the human race. It would therefore be horrendously inconceivable to challenge God and attempt to do something that would show that a mortal can have power equal to that of God. Next, regardless of how an individual comes into being it the duty of the creator to be there to nurture and care for the creature they have brought into the world. The world is a cruel place, even to those who are normal, but to someone who is different, as we see in the book, there
Intelligent design contradicts the idea of the common descents. Intelligent design suggests that many organise were created at the beginning of time by a creator (God) or a supernatural intervention. By this it means all living organism could survive automatically in its surroundings. William Paley, a scientist argued in his book that god did design life on earth but there are many people and scientist who believe that this was made up to keep the people believing in god. The scientific research information which is know doesn’t really have any strong evidence to back up either of these two theories, but there has been a lot more scientific research done on the common decent from which it has given us a broad rage of information about evolution.