Slaying the Dragons : Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith

Are science and faith the common enemies we are led to believe? This important study examines popular misunderstandings about key events in the history of science-faith relations. Lively and often surprising, it covers the major episodes such as Galileo's trial, the Wilberforce-Huxley debate and the Scopes trial of 1925, but also looks further back through the medieval period to the Classical age, revealing how these events have acquired mythical and misleading status.

Are science and faith, particularly Christianity, inevitably in conflict, as the New Atheists proclaim? Have they not always been so? Weren't early scientists hounded for their discoveries until Darwin burst on the scene and sent faith packing? Not if you look at the facts, says Dr Allan Chapman, who teaches the History of Science at the University of Oxford. History shows us that Galileo was not the victim of Church persecution - nor did Huxley 'win' the debate with Wilberforce. Drawing on contemporary sources, Dr Chapman proves that the history of science and of faith always have been closely intertwined. From the leading scientists of medieval times, many in Holy Orders, to the seventeenth-century Popes who maintained an astronomical observatory in the Vatican, to the Christian people of science today, science and faith have grown up together.

A lively corrective to popular misunderstandings about key events in the history of science-faith relations