Science and ReligionScience and religion have not always coexisted peacefully. There have been many issues where scientific discovery and religious faith have collided. Religion is based on ancient beliefs passed down from generation to generation. As humans discovered more and more of themselves, they discovered that many of the things religion told them could not be true. This caused an incredible crisis between the pious religious and the scientific world, especially in the Western world where Christianity dominated society and where these scientific discoveries were being made. At first it was difficult for people to believe in God and at the same time accept these new scientific discoveries that denied many things that religion had told them. The astronomer Kepler Many religious issues were addressed during the scientific revolution. One was the question of the earth as the center of the Universe, which Christian doctrine held to be true. Through the work of astronomers such as Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, much has been learned about our universe. One thing that was learned was that the Earth revolved around the Sun, along with all the other planets in our solar system. Furthermore, it was learned that the sun is only one star among hundreds of billions of other stars of different shapes and sizes. This discovery shocked the church. How could we be just a small part of something bigger? It was believed that God created the Universe to accommodate humanity and that everything in that Universe revolved around this. It has now become apparent that this is not true. During the 17th century the Catholic Church was quick to reject these discoveries. Galileo did not understand the conflict and pointed out that the Scriptures are very old and are intended for... middle of paper... science, and that they believe the Bible should be taken literally. On the other hand there are many people in the scientific community who read the Bible literally and announce that there could be no God because the facts of the Bible are so far from what scientific discovery has told us. The day will probably never come when science and religion are in complete agreement and there will be no conflict between the two sides. It is natural for men to question discovery, and when something tells you that the things you have believed are wrong, it is natural to reject those things. However, there has been notable progress in understanding between religion and science. Links to web pages about science and religion: http://salon.cma.univie.ac.at/~neum/sciandr.htmlhttp://homepages.tcp .co.uk/~carling/main_sci.htmlhttp://www .cco.caltech.edu/~newman/sci-faith.html