What do you think of when you hear the words Christianity and science thrown at you? If you are like the majority of the population you instantly form images of conflict or even outright feuds. As will be discussed further on in this paper, this common misconception has only surfaced within the past century. If the time is taken to look back at Christianity’s history it is easily seen that Christianity has worked hand in hand with science to help promote its growth, not its stifle. The Christian monasteries maintained libraries, copied ancient manuscripts, employed astronomers and preserved the knowledge accumulated through the centuries of western civilization. In fact, in the past clergymen were often the only learned men in their society, and who else would be able to further technological development? However, Christianity had been helping science along before the time of clergymen. It appears it has stimulated scientific growth since the birth of the religion itself.

During Christianity’s Childhood Years

Before the birth of Christianity there existed many polytheistic religions that were widely practiced. These pagan religion

This is the point where religion and science truly came at odds with each other. Christianity was not at odds with science beforehand, and unfortunately has had trouble mending the relationship since, but this is only one true feud when their history together has been quite pleasant. It is sad that this feud had to occur, but it does not mean that Christianity and science have always hated each other, nor does it mean that they always will.

The life on the inside of the monasteries was affected by technology as well as the outside. A huge innovation that came about from Christianity was the clock. The clock was used by clergymen to regulate the six, sometimes seven, times a day that they needed to prey. This invention lead to further inventions of gears to make the clock work more efficient and created the tinkerers of the world who did not want to stop at just the clock. These tinkerers “became obsessed with a desire to mimic the heavens” (Carroll/Shiflett, p.67). Luckily, from their obsessions many future inventions sprang forth in this world.

Even at this point it is easy to see that science and Christianity had not qualms with each other and this has been a vast majority of Christianity’s existence already. It is not even until many centuries later, and the next major feud, that we finally see the true rip in their relationship.

Possibly the most prominent figure regarding the conflicts between Christianity and science would be Galileo. This is one of the first conflicts that the church had with science and it also appears to have been misconstrued.

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