The greatest myth in the history of science and religion holds that they have been in a state of constant conflict. No one bears more responsibility for promoting this notion than two nineteenth-century American polemicists: Andrew Dickson White and John William Draper. . . . Historians of science have known for years that White’s and Draper’s accounts are more propaganda than history. . . . Yet the message has rarely escaped the ivory tower. The secular public knows that organized religion has always opposed scientific progress. . . . The religious public knows that science has taken the
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