What really happened? ('Bad Faith' #15)
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In 1860, a famous debate about the new theory of Evolution happened in Oxford between Thomas Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce. Everyone knows that in this 'Great Debate,' Huxley made a fool of Wilberforce, and won a great victory for science over religion. But what really happened? There are no written records of the debate itself, and the accounts that were written afterwards conflict with each other.
In reality, the 'debate' was so insignificant that when John William Draper wrote his book about the conflict between science and religion in 1874, he did not mention it – even though he was there when it happened!
With contributions by Dr Allan Chapman (Oxford University), author of 'Slaying the Dragons: destroying myths in the history of science and faith' and 'Stargazers: Copernicus, Galileo, the Telescope and the Church,' and by Dr Ian Hesketh, author of 'Of Apes and Ancestors: Evolution, Christianity, and the Oxford debate.'
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