Have Christians changed so much in the last 200 years?

You are right that most of the great discoveries and inventions that form our world today are the work of great Christian minds, from Copernicus (a Catholic priest) to Isaac Newton (a devout Anglican). All that's really changed is your idea of "Christians" which seems to include instead of 1/3 of the earth's population, just a small subset of evangelical Christians (fundamentalists or "born again" Christians, if you will) in the United States. Look at the Christian world as a whole, listen to the words of Pope Benedict (a great intellect and scholar) who leads more than half the world's Christians and hosts gatherings of great thinkers, look at the biographies of many of today's great scientists (as a scientist myself, I've had the privilege of meeting some). Christians are as much on the cutting edge as ever, but of course you wouldn't know it from the press.