If it weren’t for those darn Christians and their science-hating ways, we might have had King Arthur on the freakin’ moon! How cool would that have been?
The sort of claims that were once part of the homiletic repertoire of, say, Arthur C. Clarke or Carl Sagan – that the tradition of Greek science to which the rise of Christianity supposedly put an end was progressing inexorably toward modern physics, modern technology, and space travel – are sheer fantasy. To quote David C. Lindberg, “It is agreed by most historians of ancient science that creative Greek science was on the wane, perhaps as early as 200 B.C., certainly by A.D. 200. Science had never been pursued by very many people; it now attracts even fewer.
Lindberg also notes, there is no historical warrant for the belief “that the advent of Christianity did anything to diminish the support given to scientific activity or the number of people involved in it.”
-David Bently Hart, Atheist Delusions: The Christian Revolution and its Fashionable Enemies, p.67