Science was once a child of the church.

[The Valkyrie]

No, you listed 17 scientific minds that also happened to be religious. That's not the same thing; what you're doing here is the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. After this, therefore because of this: "They were religious before they were scientists, therefore the fact that they were scientists is because they were religious." Well, they were also longtime poopers, probably before they were even religious; does that mean that poop produced seventeen branches of science?


Just replace "science" with "business acumen" in the above argument.

No, no, no; how are you going to separate a mans philosophy from his work? Come come now, the church birthed Charles Bell - the first to map the brain
Robert Boyle- founded modern chemistry
John Dalton - Atomic Theory
John Fleming - Electronics
Issac Newton-- Laws of Grtavity

All Christian, many ministers, some theologians. You cannot change these birth certificates and remove their religion or the churches influence over them.

But, in their day, how far would they have gone if they hadn't professed a religion in the first place, particularly the dominant religion of their culture?