Not everything the church has done is bad, let's not go down that path... In that vein of thought, Copernicus originally set out to prove that the Sun revolved around the Earth and we all know how that turned out. The church didn't exactly appreciate his findings and it led to several fiercely fought battles over the next two centuries, culminating with Galileo being forced to decry his own findings and later, his imprisonment.
The church may have funded science in some forms during the dark ages but often times if the discoveries didn't agree with their teachings, the knowledge was squashed and the person called a heretic. After all, during that time, the church was really the only establishment that had the kind of power and money to fund the arts or science. Some of the results were good but many, many were bad.
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