Chapter 15 Religions and Science 1450-1750

I learned that in the early modern era of world history there was the birth of tow different cultural trends that would be very influential in the twenty-first century. The first major event was the spread of Christianity to Asians, Africans, and Native Americans who seemed to be returning a favor. The second major event even was an emergence of a modern scientific outlooks that challenged Western Christianity even as began to become global. During this time of new empires and new patterns of commerce, there was a connection between distant peoples from the novel of cultural transformations. Christianity was at first a tradition that was limited to Europe in 1500 but slowly become a world religion, being established in the Americans and the Philippines; then slowly spreading to Siberia, China, and Japan. At the same time, there was the rise of a cultural encounter that was between science and religion due to a new approach to knowledge that was taking shape among European thinkers of the Scientific Revolution. Science was a new way for people to think about life and became almost something of a new religion. Science quickly gained a worldwide acceptance that was far bigger then that of Christianity or any other religion. The cultural interactions during the early modern era, was not something small but very extreme and occurred in many ways. European political and economic expansion benefitted from the motivation from Christianity. Both Catholic Spain and the Portuguese viewed movement overseas as a continuation of a long crusading tradition. Columbus and Vasco de Gama's both hoped that the people of the land they discovered would convert to Christianity. Neither man felt like there was contradiction or hypocrisy though the blending of religious and material concerns. On page 726-727 we se a map that shows the globalization of Christianity, of growing Christian presence in Asia, Africa, and the America. Christianity, combined with older enters of that faith, all helped in giving the religion of Jesus a global dimension during the early modern era. Faith of different types was spread to other countries by colonial settlers and traders who hoped to replicate their beliefs in newly conquered homelands. This comes to show that colonial settlers and traders helped in spreading new beliefs and faiths to other countries.