It is incorrect to use a single period in time, medieval ages, to draw a conclusion about history in general. It is also incorrect to apply lessons of Europe to the world as a whole (or people in general).
Agreed. Just wanted to offer what little insight I have.
Science is not a "set of beliefs". Science is a methodology for establishing theories (a theory being a testable hypothesis which has, so far, passed all known tests). Accepting a theory is not taken as an act of faith so much as it is an act of acknowledging that some scientists have more or less rigorously executed the tests.
I have to disagree here. I would say science is a set of beliefs really, to most people at least. Even to most scientists, I imagine. Here's why:
I like to think that not all facts are created equal. For example, "1+1=2" is a very solid fact. It doesn't require analysis of real-world data or cross-checking. It will remain as valid in two thousand years as it does today. It's a very strong fact.
Coulomb's Law, on the other hand, is a somewhat weaker fact. Coulomb discovered after obtaining experimental data that the force between two opposite charges drops off with respect to the square of their distance. It's been cross-checked many, many times, except for one nasty little problem. That squared term... how do we know that it's 2, and not 2.0000000001? The more experiments we perform, the more certain we are that it is, in fact, 2. But our conclusions are driven by the data, and we don't know what the data will be until we collect it. If one of those decimal places ever turns out to be a 5, it would be major news, and we'd be forced to rewrite the 'fact'.
An even weaker fact is the known age of the a particular species. The more old bones we dig up, the more we are obliged to change our estimate. Unlike with Coulomb's Law, we're completely at the mercy of the data, since you can't even perform an experiment to obtain more data... you just sort of stumble upon it. I would consider things like these to be even weaker facts.
It would stand to reason that you don't have to believe in a mathematical fact... it's a fact because we made math, defined all the applicable quantities, and can prove mathematical facts beyond all doubt. But scientific facts are open to criticism and revision as more data gets collected. You can't fault someone for saying "I don't believe that the Big Bang created the universe." That's a scientific theory. It can be wrong. It's not the same as not believing that 1+1=2.
Moreover, most people are not scientists. When the rest of us read the news about the latest discoveries that came out of the LHC experiments, we just nod and accept it. Few of us even have access to all of the scientific journals or are educated/funded enough to follow the procedures and repeat various scientific experiments. When we hear something from what we think is a reputable source of scientific publications, we believe it. Sure, other scientists might have stronger reasons to call those publications 'fact', but the rest of us just take it on faith.