Questions that lead away from stereotypes.- What is not in the Bible? - Asceticism and Science.- A Good Word about the Inquisition.- The Faith of Scientific Revolutionaries .

For a century and a half, secular schools have been growing cockroaches to plant them in the heads of students. One of the most well-fed cockroaches is the one that digs somewhere in the area of the left ear and with its whiskers irritates the neural circuit with the help of which a well-trained person repeats: "Science and Christian dogmatics are incompatible!! Science was born, overcoming the fierce resistance of church obscurantists! And only with the liberation of people from the shackles of medieval scholasticism was scientific thought born!"

This flow of words is so habitual (for it began its murmur in pre-revolutionary schools, thereby preparing the "great revolution") that there is no desire to believe in its seeming "harmony" with the help of "algebra" (that is, logic and history).

But even in these habitual clichés there is a grain of truth, which, if taken seriously, can free the mind from the spell of atheistic propaganda. This grain of truth is that science is indeed born as humanity emerges from the Middle Ages.

Well, now - questions.

The first is that if science is born in a certain era, does it mean that it has not always accompanied humanity? After all, man was always interested in the world around him. I always tried to get to know it. But the scientific way of knowing the world appeared not with the birth of man, but with the birth of science. This means that science is not just the desire to learn something about the world, but cognition with the help of certain methods. This means that there are several methods of human cognition of the world, and science is only one of them. This method is remarkably effective. But is it universal? Is it suitable for solving all the problems that arise when a person learns his place in the world?

The second question is: if science was born at a certain stage of the historical development of mankind, can it only be in conflict with the world that gave birth to it? Of course, at a certain moment the child makes an effort to get out of the mother's womb, and the mother makes an effort to push the child out of herself. But does this mean that the relationship between the child and his mother should be described only in terms of conflictology? If science was born at the exit from the world of the Middle Ages, it means that it was in this world that it was at least conceived and nurtured...

The third question is whether science is born at the moment when all mankind or only a certain part of it emerges from the Middle Ages? If only parts, then maybe the medieval history of this particular part was somehow specific? If science is born at the end of the Western world from its Middle Ages, does this not mean that there was something in the Western Middle Ages (as opposed to the Indian or Arab) that contributed to the birth of science?

The fourth question is: if science contradicts Christianity, then why did other cultures not lead to the birth of science? Why did Christianity, with its supposedly profound anti-science, create a culture in which the scientific revolution of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries took place?

The fifth question is – if the scientific revolution takes place at the end of European culture from the Middle Ages, then what exactly did it take place at? After all, it is not enough to say that something happened when leaving the prayer room. It is interesting to know what kind of room began outside the threshold of the prayer room. Was there a dance salon or a library, a bathroom or a laboratory? Where was the one who was leaving?

All these questions boil down to one thing: why were Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes Christians? Why not Buddhists? Not Muslims? Not Confucians?

Science is not where man is simply interested in nature. Science is not where a person even correctly records certain natural phenomena or expresses hypotheses that are then justified. A reindeer herder rides through the tundra and sings a song, composing it according to the principle "what I see, I sing about". Everything in this song can be true: the snow is really white, and the deer are really fast... But, despite all the truthfulness of this text, it cannot be called scientific. In science, it is customary to demonstrate not only the caught pike, but also the rod and bait with which the fish was caught.

Science is where clearly conscious, reflective methods of collecting and verifying information and judgments are proposed. In the study of nature, the first such methods were the method of experimentation and the method of mathematical modeling of physical processes. And both of these methods appear just at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries.

So why not earlier? Why not in another place, but in Europe? And – in which Europe? In Europe, still Christian, or in Europe, already secular, "unchristianized"?