Science and Religion: An Incompatible Pair?

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.