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In Western culture, religion and the sciences often have found themselves to be more and more at odds since the period of the Enlightenment. The change which that era brought to the Christian community could be illustrated as follows. The analogy is perhaps a bit overdrawn, but it does indicate how important the historical shifts were. During the earliest phase of Christian belief, Christianity had to compete with other religions as one fruit-bearing tree within a varied orchard. When the Christian religion became established and dominant in the Middle Ages it tended to cause other trees to wither and die because of its enormous and on occasion darkening size. During the Reformation a radical pruning took place which gave life not only to the Protestant branch but also a new vitality to the Roman Catholic branch. What the Enlightenment represented was the first pervasive suggestion that most fruit trees — perhaps even the orchard — were unnecessary. One could find individual precursors of such attempts as well as a number of people during the Enlightenment who found various religions satisfying. But at no time in the history of Christianity had a large segment of the intellectual culture been so fascinated with the idea that religion in most all of its forms might be useless.
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