Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith - Paperback

by Allan Chapman (Author)

In 'Slaying the Dragons', professor and member of the Faculty of History at Wadham College, Oxford, Allan Chapman examines the claims of the 'New Atheists that: religion really belongs to an earlier phase of human development, and that nowadays science has taken its place as the yardstick of authority. But are science and religion friends or foes? There are a great many scientists of the highest intellectual distinction - ranging from cosmology to medical research, who make no bones about their faith and cannot understand what the 'New Atheists' are getting so worked up about.

Chapman explores whether anything has changed in the nature of scientific discovery to allow for the modern atheistic interpretations of science that did not exist in the past. He also examines whether or not modern discoveries in biology, brain science, cosmology and physics seriously undermine religious belief.

In this study, Allan Chapman examines popular misunderstandings about key events in the history of science-faith relations. He covers the major episodes such as Galileo's trial, the Wilberforce-Huxley debate and the Scopes trial of 1925, but also looks further back through the medieval period to the Classical age, revealing how these events have acquired mythical and misleading status.

Asking if religious modern scientists just the fools that new atheists paint them to be, or are the latter just so blind in their dogmatic brain-washing that they cannot see the bigger world beyond their test-tubes, 'Slaying the Dragons' exposes the atheists' worn-out tale which itself goes back centuries, and which they are trying to spice up with big helpings of rhetoric and ridicule.

Author Biography

Dr Allan Chapman is a historian of science at Oxford University, with special interests in the history of astronomy and of medicine and the relationship between science and Christianity. As well as University teaching, he lectures widely, has written a dozen books and numerous academic articles, and written and presented two TV series, Gods in the Sky and Great Scientists, besides taking part in many other history of science TVdocumentaries and in The Sky at Night with Sir Patrick Moore. He has received honorary doctorates and awards from the Universities of Central Lancashire, Salford, and Lancaster, and in 2015 was presented with the Jackson-Gwilt Medal by the Royal Astronomical Society. Among his books are Slaying the Dragons. Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith (Lion Hudson, 2013), Stargazers: Copernicus, Galileo, the Telescope, and the Church. The Astronomical Renaissance, 1500-1700 (Lion, 2014), and Physicians, Plagues, and Progress. The History of Western Medicine from Antiquity to Antibiotics (Lion, 2016). He is also the author of thescientific biographies England's Leonardo. Robert Hooke and the Seventeenth-Century Scientific Revolution (Institute of Physics, 2005), Mary Somerville and the World of Science (Canopus, 2004; Springer, 2015), and The Victorian Amateur Astronomer. Independent Astronomical Research in Britain, 1820-1920 (Wiley-Praxis, 1998; revised edn. Gracewing, 2017)