In reply to Postmanpat:
> No, it was much more than that. The Christian God, unlike ancient Gods, was rational and consistent;
> "perfect". It followed that the universe was rational and consistent. Humans were God's supreme
> creation and therefore could hope to understand the universe through rational observation and analysis.
Yes, they argued that. But you have to distinguish between the rationalisations that people come up with, and the actual true motivations of their actions. The idea of pursuing rational observation and analysis had a much more basic justification -- it works. That would have been apparent to them, and that's why they pursued it.
And *then* they matched it with their theology "... so of course this is exactly what we expect given ...". There is a long history of Christian philosophers and theologians coming up with post-hoc rationalisations of why what scientists have found is exactly what "we expected" them to find all along and why it is *exactly* in line with a Christian god.
Now, if it had turned out that rational observation and analysis didn't actually get anywhere, then the philosophers would have been saying: "... why, that is of course exactly what we expect given a Christian God ...".
> This philosophy was probably unique to Christianity and hence modern science was born.
But the Ancient Greeks had the same idea, that the universe was rational and ordered. Indeed the Greeks had that idea much more purely, they considered that because the universe was rational and ordered, rational thought would lead them to understand it. Modern science had a very different emphasis, namely, we *can't* understand this just by thinking, actually we have to do lots of experiments and find out empirically what the universe is like, letting empirical reality, rather than rational thought, guide us.