How Did Religion Change During The Scientific Revolution

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The ideas of the universe and humanity’s place in it drastically changed during the Scientific Revolution. In the beginning, Europeans believed Ptolemy, who said man was the center of the universe, and then further justified this idea through the Christian belief that man was made by God, so he must be at the center of His world. However, later on, Copernicus challenged this view, stating that it was the sun, not man, that was at the center of this universe, and that man had to excel on his own and prove his place in such a system. As this new idea frightened the church, it also caused many men to either disprove science, justify their own religion through science, or branch off and create a whole new theories without using religious justifications. Eventually, a biblically justified system of reason was no longer standard, but instead logic and reason were used to define and justify the universe and …show more content…

By using his eyes, Galileo confirmed the heliocentric theory and created his own in reply: the Copernican theory. His theory stated that the sun was at the center of the universe, with the earth and other planets rotating around it in elliptical paths and at uniform speeds. Copernicus had used Bacon’s implications that “seeing is believing.” He also theorized that the other planets were made of substances similar to those found on earth. These two ideas even furthered the notion that humans were not special to God because they inhabited an earth that looked like all the other planets. Therefore not only was man not in the center of God’s world, but the planet He had put them on wasn’t either, further justifying the theory that man had to prove his place in this system and had to earn his right to work in it because God had not given him the most pivotal position in His solar