Selling the Lie About the Harmony Between Religion and Science

Karl Giberson is completely full of shit -- but chances are you knew that already, if you're familiar with his work.

He writes: "I have on my desk a delightful little book titled Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion.Myth is employed here in the popular sense and the title essay explains that the harsh treatment of Galileo by the Inquisition -- torture, imprisonment -- has no basis in fact. It is a made-up story -- a myth."

I never heard stories about Galileo being tortured and thrown into a dungeon until I heard apologists refuting them. Of course, the apologists' refutation is misleading, as is their assertion of what the story used to be. Galileo was threatened with torture, and he was imprisoned -- in two of his houses, which certainly were much more comfortable than dungeons, much as today's minimum-security prisons for Wall Street criminals and other perpetrators of Ponzi schemes are more comfortable than maximum-security prisons, but he was still confined. And he was only not tortured because he signed documents saying that he didn't believe what he did believe about science. That's definitely a serious conflict between science and religion.

I have an interesting little book on my desk: Sources of the Jesus Tradition: Separating History from Myth.

That sort of thing is obviously not for everybody.

"To take root in deeply religious America," prattles Giberson, "evolution needs to be a better myth."

No. Replacing bullshit with better bullshit only benefits purveyors of bullshit. Like Giberson and the author of that little book on his desk. And most of the other people who write about religion for HP. Giberson is pushing their tired myth about the harmony and scinece, not, as, they claim, for the sake of science, but for the sake of religion and their phony-baloney jobs.