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The Reconciliation Of Science And Religion In Symbolo-Fideism, Shirley Brown Moon

Wayne State University Dissertations

From the publication in 1859 of On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, religion was in open warfare against science. By the end of the century the war was not going well for religion. Biology, anthropology, archeology, the "higher criticism" united in an attack on Christian premises, while "applied science" — technology-provided, the materialistic comforts which made Christian promises utopian and unnecessary. The reaction of some Protestant and Catholic leaders to this threat from science was a retreat into funda­mentalism. Others hastened to show that the recent discoveries were not really in conflict with religious truths at …