God Versus Nature: The Conflict Between Religion and Science in History

Science Versus Religion

Science is based on reason. Religion is based on faith.

Reason and faith are fundamentally incompatible, therefore science and religion must be incompatible.

Given this basic conflict, a close look at history reveals some puzzling facts:

• Science was born in a society that believed in many gods (Ancient Greece).
• Numerous scientific achievements were made in the very religious Islamic world.
• Modern science was born in a society dominated by Christianity (seventeenth-century Europe).

• Most scientists in history were religious.

  How are we to make sense of these facts? How are we to relate them to the broader trajectory of the science/religion relationship from Ancient Greece to the present?

That is the subject of this book.