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Out in November, New Book Debunks Myths of Science Versus Religion

Unbelievable: Debunking science and faith myths with Historian Mike Keas

Praising science as way to implicitly, or explicitly, club religion over the head is a familiar feature of our culture. It’s not new, either. Mike Keas examines the phenomenon in a forthcoming book, out in November, Unbelievable: Seven Myths About the History and Future of Science and Religion. Rob Crowther chatted with Dr. Keas, a Discovery Institute Senior Fellow, at the recent Insiders Briefing down in Tacoma, a yearly event sponsored by the Center for Science & Culture.

This way of pitting science against religion, through eagerly disseminated myths about history, is a subject that has cried out for documentation and analysis. You often get the sense that people who do it care a lot less about science per se than they do about sticking it to Christians and Christianity, in particular. It’s interesting that praising X in order to shame Y and people who feel favorably about Y, where X is considered less a good in itself than it is a weapon to wield against the hated Y, is a strategy you’ll see played out in many arenas of contemporary life.

It is a commonplace in politics, especially – and you could probably supply a neat illustration of it yourself from news today if you were to give it a moment’s thought. So I would say that the topic of Unbelievable is the political manipulation of science in a campaign against faith.

Mike Keas is an adjunct professor of history and philosophy at Biola University. I’ve read his book and can you tell it’s excellent. He debunks the relevant myths with verve, and with expert scholarship. He’s also a charming talker, as you’ll see in the brief video conversation above. As Rob Crowther points out, you can already pre-order the book on Amazon and I urge you to do that.