Nature - From Magic to Physics

        The Roman Catholic Church had been, since the fall of Rome, a superpower in its own.  Nations were created and destroyed in its name and from the will of the Pope.  The power of the Church rested in the fact that people feared the Pope and his power to condemn kings to either Heaven or Hell.  With this immense power, the Church could tell people what they could or couldn’t do, a power that helped bring about a hiatus in the study of science. “The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution of theology, arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years.”  By using the power of the former Roman Empire, the Roman Church successfully stopped the study of science involving the natural world.  In doing this, the Church ensured the survival of their texts and beliefs, and also assured their status on the European Continent by keeping the faith of their followers.  If a well known scientist were to come out and say that the creation story in the bible was wrong, the Church would lose followers, along with their power.  It was therefore critical that all attempts to stop the pursuit of answers were stopped.

        The first reason the Church gave in it’s early years to stop science was that, because the end of the world was coming soon, we should focus our studies on bettering ourselves so that we can go to heaven instead of being involved in trivial matters of astronomy and physics.  “The general belief derived from the New Testament Scriptures was, that the end of the world was at hand; that the last judgment was approaching; that all existing physical nature was soon to be destroyed: hence, the greatest thinkers in the Church generally poured contempt upon all investigators into a science of Nature, and insisted that everything except the saving of souls was a folly.”1  Any studies not pertaining to the study of God were strictly forbidden and condemned by the church, but the papers of Plato and Aristotle still hung in the background.  People still looked at them, but many great minds spent their time studying scripture instead.  One group, the Pythagoreans, found ways around the Church’s ban that couldn’t be stopped by anyone due to the fact there was no evidence.  The Pythagoreans discussed and passed on their studies orally, which leaves to written document to condemn or implicate in case the Church should ever discover them.

        With the coming of the Protestant Reformation came the beginning of a new era of scientific study.  The Church, whose power was now greatly dwindled, could no longer stop the sudden surge of people gaining more interest in ancient Greek Philosophy.  The Church still enacted bans, but people found loopholes around them and used them to begin the study of science once again.  The Church still put bans on the studies of anything not pertaining to God, but people soon began asking the Church what was wrong with studying something God could have conceivably made.  “For, if there is no contradiction, we ought to admit that God could have made something that has always existed, for it would be clearly derogatory to the divine omnipotence, which exceeds every thought and power, to say that we creatures can conceive of something that God is unable to make.”  The Church couldn’t go ahead and state that God couldn’t have created a world like the one they were describing, to say such a thing would mean that God wasn’t all-powerful which would cause unrest among the Church’s followers.  Admitting it was wrong was the hardest thing the Church had to state during that time period, due to it still being weak from its division after its corruption got so bad that it split into two different factions.

        Religion, particularly the Roman Catholic Church, succeeded for over a thousand years in stopping scientific progress, something that had a lasting effect until the early 20th century.  Having to recant their beliefs was hard for many Catholics, having to come to terms with the fact that part of what you’ve always believed is a falsity.  Even today the Catholic Church still demands that it’s still right on many topics that have been proven wrong my modern scientists.  Gradually the church is letting up; no longer do they say that Noah lived to 800 years old, or that Moses parted the Red Sea.  Now more scientific explanations are sought to modernize the Church so that followers will stay loyal.  The Church might one day soon have to take back so much that religion will no longer have any meaning.