By Viviana Gomez-March 02, 2012
"Science without religion is lame,
religion without science is blind."
- Albert Einstein
In 1633, the Church condemnation of Galileo Galilei, was one of the most dramatic incidents in the long history of the relations between science and religion. Galileo had published a year before that the sun-centered system was the physical truth and was convicted of grave suspicion of heresy for "following the position of Copernicus, which is contrary to the true sense and authority of Holy Scripture.” Galileo was placed under house arrest for the rest of his life.
But beginning the 16th century, the Protestant Reformation, the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment began to erode the position of authority held by religion. A new willingness to confront religious authority and a new respect for reason and its accomplishments began to counter established ways of thinking based on revealed religious truth.
As a result, modern philosophy began to separate from theology, and new philosophers began constructing a universal, human rationality independent of faith. For the first time in human history, it had become possible to not simply ponder faith and its forms of expression, but to challenge it as a fundamental truth—and to even question the very existence of God.
The western culture can be facing a deep religion crisis and God might not be as popular as used to be, but it doesn’t mean that believers are a specie in danger of extinction. They not only survived, they are even more than the skeptics and growing in number.
