ABSTRACT
Political feuds, however, are hardy plants, very difficult to weed out of a controversy once they have got into it. This particular controversy was already distorted by animosities drawn from an older warfare, that which has been conceived as raging between science and religion in the nineteenth century, centrally over the theory of evolution. There is, of course, a well-known set of cases where they seem to do it, namely, where religion is invoked against science on a point of empirical fact. The literal acceptance of archaic Biblical ideas on cosmology is an obvious case. Like 'creationist science' they offend against the laws of their country of origin even before attempting to conquer a wider territory. Bad religion is being answered by bad science. Against religion, faith in science or in reason is often invoked, and these go far beyond the existing successes.
