All these questions boil down to one thing: why were Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Descartes Christians? Why not Buddhists? Not Muslims? Not Confucians? "One may ask why the discovery of Copernicus was not anticipated by the ancient Greeks. The ready-made answer that Copernicus was a genius is in fact a common evasion of the question, all the more so because among the ancient Greeks there was no shortage of geniuses in astronomy" (S. Jaki)2.

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 exists 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.

Science must be distinguished from proto-science, from natural philosophy. The set of pre-scientific knowledge was more or less the same in different ancient civilizations (give or take two discoveries). But why did it "explode" in Europe?

Of course, it is possible to describe the history of science in a triumphalist way – from India to China, from Egypt to Greece and the Arabs, and then to Europe. But what about the agony that fills the gap between them? Why did science, except in Europe, turn out to be a frail child who died soon after childbirth?

Why didn't the Chinese use their discoveries? "In the very spiritual lining of Eastern culture, something important was missing, something thanks to which the West was able to give birth to technology."3

So why the West? Why not earlier? Why not in another place, but in Europe? And - in what Europe? In Europe, still Christian, or in Europe, already secular, unchristianized?

In order to understand what was happening in Europe in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, we must turn to much more ancient times.

We know that the culture of the Middle Ages was Christian. Which means that it was based on the Bible. But the Bible is based on the message that the only significant connection (religion) is the connection between the soul and God. The God of the Bible is super-mundane, that is, supra-cosmic. He is not part of the cosmos and not the personification of its elements. He is not the Sun, but the Creator of the Sun. He is not the Moon, but the Creator of the Moon.

The biblical prophets warn against idolatry, that is, against worshipping what is created, that which is not God. A pagan in every natural process presupposes the soul and action of a certain god. In order to wean people from animism ("everything is full of gods"), the Bible decides to sacrifice aesthetics to religion. Do not admire the world, do not get carried away by it. First understand that the world and God are not one and the same and that your first love must be for the Creator. Not a single landscape sketch, not a single portrait is on the pages of the Bible. Her world was created by engineers rather than artists: there are instructions on how to build Noah's Ark. But there is no description of it. There are instructions on how to build the Temple of Solomon, but there are no impressionist notes on how it "looked". There is a description of how the world was built in six days, but there is no description of the charms of this world...

There are no astral myths in the Bible, which are so organic in the world of pagan religions. There are no stories about where the Sun goes at night, whose face is on the Moon, about who spilled milk on the Milky Way and about who gave birth to the bear cub in the Big Dipper... Thus, "when Christianity is equated with the wildest myths, I do not laugh, and I do not swear, and I do not lose my temper, I politely remark that identity cannot be considered complete."4

Here is the text from the first page of the Bible: "And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of heaven [to illuminate the earth, and] to separate the day from the night, and for signs, and times, and days, and years; and let them be lamps in the firmament of heaven, to shine on the earth. And so it was. And God created two great lights: a greater light to rule the day, and a lesser light to rule the night, and the stars; And God hath set them in the firmament of heaven, to shine upon the earth, and to rule day and night, and to separate light from darkness. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the fourth day" (Gen. 1:14-19).

What is it about? – Well, what a question: of course, this is a biblical myth about the creation of the Sun, the Moon and the stars. And that's not "of course". This is not a myth, but a polemic against a myth. In Egypt and Babylon, Phoenicia and Canaan, the Sun and the Moon are the greatest gods. And from the point of view of the biblical author, their religious status is so insignificant that they do not even need to be called by their names. Thus, "two luminaries". Two cheat sheets for people so that they know when to go to what work and when to celebrate the One God who created these light bulbs. The fact that the words "Sun" and "Moon" are not used in this text means that this is a profane text. What myths spoke about in poetic language, the Bible refuses to talk about at all, defiantly switching to engineering terminology: "And the architect also built in two lighting systems – one main ("at the beginning of the day"), and the other emergency (at the beginning of the night)." All! After that, there is no longer the slightest desire to worship light bulbs. Luminaries are for people, and not man is for luminaries.

And nothing more can be learned about the stars from the Bible. This will allow Galileo to remind the inquisitors that the Bible does not even list the "seven luminaries" by name, and therefore "the Bible teaches us how to ascend to heaven, and not how heaven works"5.