Myth-Busting in Science and Religion: An Introduction for Ignorant Intellectuals

"Science and religion" is one of those subjects where everyone knows a lot of things that just ain't so. This is because of the numerous urban legends about how the two fields have interacted historically and how they do so today. These false beliefs are ubiquitous in Western civilization, especially in academia, prompting many people to oversimplify the issues. This book corrects many of these urban legends and confusions involving premodern cosmology, the alleged persecution or even martyrdom of scientists for discoveries that challenged the religious status quo, the history and nature of biological evolution, the potential discovery of rational extraterrestrial life, and whether miracles would somehow conflict with the laws that science has discovered. As one might expect, reality turns out to be much more complex than the stories suggest.

Jim Slagle is an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Portland in Oregon. He is the author of The Epistemological Skyhook: Determinism, Naturalism, and Self-Defeat (2016) and The Evolutionary Argument against Naturalism: Context, Exposition, and Repercussions (2021).