Chapter 16 Part 1

This chapter talks about religion and science. An interesting quote that I read on the first page is "that life is so complex that it must have been created by some higher power." Also, there has always been a big rivalry between those who believe in religion and those who believe in science because they obviously contradict each other. Christianity came from both America and the Philippines and it was hardly practiced more towards the Middle East. The ones who mainly wanted to expand the idea of Christianity were the Europeans because they were the people who practiced the religion the most. The people who lived in the Middle East who practiced Islam also tried their hardest to expand their religion as far as they could. Christianity first spread to Spain and England and then towards Russia and Central Asia. It also spread vaguely in African countries such as Egypt and Ethiopia. When the Ottomans took control of Vienna it spread Islam into more of Central Europe, whose majority practiced Christianity. The Protestant Reformation was also a big part of the chapter in which Martin Luther which used his Ninety-five Theses to demand the churches to reform themselves. Something interesting that I found within these religions is that they put men in much higher positions than women. Men were the ones that were put into power in all these religions. Men were the priests, the popes, even the Christ figure was a male. Although a lot of women practiced these religions, women were never seen as having any sort of power. On another note, there was a lot of violence in France between the Christians, the majority, and the Protestants (Huguenots), the minority. Since they were two different religions that did not exactly get on good terms, there was a lot of conflict between the two, which the Christians mainly took control of. Christianity also took its control in Spanish America. Spanish America was mainly Aztec and Incan, but with the Spanish taking over, they also took over their religion, causing all the people that lived there to convert to Christianity. Meanwhile in China, they practiced completely different religions, such as Daoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. There was conflict between the Jesuits and the Chinese. They were civil with each other, but it was hard for the Jesuits to respect the religions they were practicing because it was so different from the religion they practiced. There were a lot of different religions in the world at this time. A lot of them were civil with each other and a lot of them weren't because they all believed their religion to be the superior one and the one that was true. Back then, all people had to rely on was their religion and their beliefs. The most interesting thing, in my opinion, is that practically all the religions that are mentioned in this book are all around today and fully intact. Religion is a powerful idea that many people believe in because it is their reason for everything.