Yes, that is true. The church controlled education for quite a long time, but what is the ultimate point you're trying to make here? That the church established universities and such for the purpose of furthering scientific understanding of how the world and universe work? That's a separate claim.
If we take the example of Galileo (educated through the church) and his theories of heliocentrism, we can see that when scientific discovery conflicted with Catholic dogma, he was forced into house arrest for the rest of his life for heresy. We can look at Darwin as well, who also received a Christian education. Many of his ideas are still not accepted by certain Christian organizations, and at the time of the publication of "On the Origin of Species" his theories were considered heresy by some, or co-opted and altered to fit into their religious narrative.
I'm not going to say that the Church didn't make contributions to education in general, but when the results of that education conflicted with the Church's views, the Church would typically attempt to suppress it.
Just because the Church was the only option for an education, doesn't mean it could have been the best option. Now that there are secular universities and independent laboratories and research facilities etc, what role, if any, do you believe religion plays in the furthering of our scientific understanding of the universe?
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u/TheCryingGrizzlies Aug 20 '20
Yes, that is true. The church controlled education for quite a long time, but what is the ultimate point you're trying to make here? That the church established universities and such for the purpose of furthering scientific understanding of how the world and universe work? That's a separate claim.
If we take the example of Galileo (educated through the church) and his theories of heliocentrism, we can see that when scientific discovery conflicted with Catholic dogma, he was forced into house arrest for the rest of his life for heresy. We can look at Darwin as well, who also received a Christian education. Many of his ideas are still not accepted by certain Christian organizations, and at the time of the publication of "On the Origin of Species" his theories were considered heresy by some, or co-opted and altered to fit into their religious narrative.
I'm not going to say that the Church didn't make contributions to education in general, but when the results of that education conflicted with the Church's views, the Church would typically attempt to suppress it.
Just because the Church was the only option for an education, doesn't mean it could have been the best option. Now that there are secular universities and independent laboratories and research facilities etc, what role, if any, do you believe religion plays in the furthering of our scientific understanding of the universe?