Christianity was splintering through the Protestant Reformation. People began to realize the Catholic Church was corrupt because of things like indulgences. Indulgences were bought in order to buy someone's way into heaven which was basically doing nothing but giving money to the church. Another example of corruption in the church was buying a son a job in the church or an office. This was a bad thing because a lot of times, the job should've gone to someone who actually knew something about the job but instead in was going to rich people's kids. People were also starting to become more literate meaning they could start to read and interpret the Bible on their own rather than just accepting whatever the church told them.
Christianity was also spreading to the Americas and into Africa through missionaries. Christianity was very adaptable as people could often take what they wanted from the religion and give it their own cultural twist. Examples of this are found in the Andean people who changed the special foods being eaten into their traditional guinea pig. Also in the Day of the Dead and also in practices of voodoo.
China on the other hand did not take up Christianity for a few reasons. One, they already had strong traditions and they were not willing to change those values. Second, they were literally just as militarily strong or even stronger so they weren't as vulnerable as people such as the Native Americans.
When the scientific revolution happened it was because people stopped trusting in the church. From the scientific revolution came the scientific method which meant actually creating a hypothesis and doing the physical testing. Experimentation began from these questions and predictions. Copernicus was the first to actually figure out that the sun didn't revolve around the earth, but the other way around. As he was afraid of the backlash from people who couldn't handle the fact that God would put us on Earth but not make us the center of the universe, he didn't propose his finding till right before he died. Soon after him, came Galileo who created a telescope and actually could prove Copernicus's finding and he proposed it. This unfortunately ruined his life as people still didn't want to believe him.
Then came the Enlightenment which was in some way like a light bulb switched on and for others it was like a relief from the burden of ignorance. Basically enlightenment thinkers were starting to think that humans could be better.
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