Comment by programjames

> Does that make their contributions ignorant

Yes

> or invalid?

no. I don't really understand what your point is. Are you trying to argue:

> They were Christian, thus you can be a scientific genius in your time and still Christian.

? You have to keep in mind, these people were scientific geniuses in a time where people had recently established that the Earth orbited the Sun. The first periodic table wasn't compiled until 1869, hundreds of years later. Given they had no alternative explanation, is it any wonder they were content with answers from religion? I'm not sure you realize this, but the whole separation of religion and science is a recent phenomenon. They used to be the same thing, just explanations for how the world worked. It was only when empirical evidence and scientific theories started explaining the world better than "the gods" that religion began claiming a separate sphere of influence.