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FOR evidence of religion鈥檚 centuries-old hostility toward science, Galileo is the go-to guy. His belief in a Copernican universe led to his imprisonment and torture at the hands of the church, or so the story often goes. But is it true? In his contribution to Galileo Goes to Jail, explains that while Galileo was interrogated, forced to recant and sentenced to house arrest, he was never (with the unlikely but possible exception of three undocumented days) jailed or subjected to torture.

This is just one of 25 myths about science and religion tackled in the scholarly and well-researched collection put together by Ronald Numbers. In nearly every case the myths are not so much busted as deflated. Each story is littered with grey areas and is always more complicated than it seems.

For instance, there鈥檚 the myth that Darwin underwent a deathbed conversion back to Christianity. traces this to a 1915 article in the Baptist magazine Watchman-Examiner by Elizabeth Cotton, who went by the pen name Lady Hope. She claimed to have witnessed Darwin鈥檚 conversion. 鈥淎lthough much of it was fictitious, the original story cannot be dismissed as pure invention,鈥� Moore says, because it contained several plausible descriptions of Darwin鈥檚 home and life.

Either Cotton had actually visited his home, or else she had collected enough tidbits from the Darwins鈥� domestic staff to render her story plausible. The fact that Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey suggests that, despite his likely persistent lack of faith, he remained on good terms with the church until the end.

Other myths explored in the book include Einstein鈥檚 confusing brand of atheism and Descartes鈥� misunderstood role in the establishment of mind/body dualism. In another entry, deftly dispels .

The book helps to clear up misconceptions on both sides of the science/religion debate that pertain to history and sociology. In the end, though, they are irrelevant to the fundamental conflict between science and religion: the question of what constitutes truth and how we can access it. These ontological and epistemological tensions will persist, regardless of what history has to say. This book won鈥檛 get us closer to solving the conflict, but it can help us get our facts straight as we battle on.