Jon said:
Compare the importance of science and religion in the world today to 1500. Which one dominant? Why do you think this is so?
I'm no history expert...so take some of this with a grain of salt. I will refer to western (European) society since that is the history I am most familiar with:
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1500:
Renaissance was well under way. This was significant for several reasons but probably the most relavent point for this thread:
-people were beginning to 'revolt' against the intellectual sterility of the middle ages. Just a few hundred years prior to this there were very few schools (for lack of a better term), literacy was nil except among the monks, etc. Books and literature were lost (in a period called the 'dark ages').
The Renaissance was also characterized by (among other things) building libraries, recovering and copying manuscripts of lost authors, etc. A zeal for study was evident. The environment was ripe for fresh ideas.
Enter Copernicus: The prevailing universe model was geocentric (earth-centered). The idea of a heliocentric solar system (sun-centered) was not new, but renaissance sensibilities made it more palatable. He was followed by the likes of Brahe, Kepler, Galileo, and Isaac Newton (within the space of 150 years).
The Church (at least what is now the Roman Catholic Church) was influential and declared the works of Copernicus and Galileo forbidden (by the Holy Office...decendant from the Office of the Inquisition). The Church had bought into the older geocentric model as part of religious doctrine..(they probably didn't think that the institution could survive a reconstruction of the universal model).
And a split between the Church and the intellectual (secular) was forming (or widening I suppose). In 1535 The King Henry VIII renounces the Pope and forms the Church of England. Queen Mary reinstates the Catholic Church just 20 years later...dissenters were punished (some killed).
Bottom line? The 'authority' of the Church was beginning to crumble and the fields of science and secular thought were on the rise. Not to mention people like Calvin and Martin Luthor and Church reformation.
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Present:
Well...thats a big and complicated one...but I'll describe part of it.
In the years that followed 1500's, the 'age of reason' and 'elightenment' came into being. The intellectual authority of the RC Church continued to diminish and it was split into several new 'Churches'. Atheism was born during this time (I think). Science and secular philosophy reigned supreme and led us into the modern age. Now we have postmodernism, and post-postmodernism, etc...but that's another story.
We still are feeling the 'fallout' of the unfortunate division between the secular and the spiritual. Today even the moral authority of the Churches seem to be eroding (at least from a societal viewpoint). Science and the secular have become the prevailing authority for society (notwithstanding postmodernism, etc).
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Sorry for the long-winded response...but you are asking a BIG question there.