In Dan Brown's Angels and Demons, Harvard professor Robert Langdon is summoned by Maximilian Kohler, the head of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research), to help solve the murder of a prominent physicist. The murder appears to be the work of the Illuminati, a secret society seeking revenge on the Catholic Church for their treatment of scientists such as Galileo. At the same time, a bomb of terrifying power ticks away in the Vatican, where the College of Cardinals has assembled to elect a new pope. Teaming up with the beautiful Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra, Langdon races against the clock to decipher a trail of ancient symbols to save the Vatican before it's too late.

It's riveting fiction, but Angels and Demons is more than just a novel. To portray the drastic measures the Church sometimes takes to protect its authority, Brown relies on the pervasive view of the eternal conflict between science and religion. He is perpetuating a myth that is useful for elevating science over religion, but which has little historical basis.

Fact or fiction?

As in Dan Brown's more famous book, "The Da Vinci Code", he states at the beginning of the book: "References to all works of art, tombs, tunnels, and architecture in Rome are entirely factual… The brotherhood of the Illuminati is also factual." While Brown does not explicitly claim that his descriptions of people and events are true, he is setting up a factual framework for the novel, thus blurring the line between fact and fiction. Moreover, he is trying to convince the reader of an eternal conflict between science and religion, which caused scientists such as Galileo to suffer at the hands of the Church.

This claim initially seems plausible for, shaped by scientific achievements, our society takes for granted that science provides a reliable way of looking at the world. Science is believed to be objective and rational, while religion is seen as merely superstition. Indeed, these two realms are perceived as so different, that it is not hard to imagine that they have endured an eternal conflict.

Science versus Religion?

"Since the beginning of history," Langdon explained, "a deep rift has existed between science and religion. Outspoken scientists like Copernicus – " "Were murdered," Kohler interjected. "Murdered by the church for revealing scientific truths. Religion has always persecuted science."
(Angels and Demons, p. 50)

In the nineteenth century, the Darwinian biologist Thomas Huxley wrote: "History records that whenever science and (religious) orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed, if not annihilated; scotched if not slain."

From this perspective, science and religion always have been, and always will be, in bitter opposition. The most commonly cited example is the 'Galileo Affair'. The story, as presented in Angels and Demons, depicts Galileo as a staunch defender of scientific truth persecuted by the Catholic Church for trying to educate the public. While the Church is stuck in the Dark Ages with its geocentric Ptolemaic cosmology, Galileo achieves "incontrovertible" proof that the earth moves around the sun. Sadly, the Church responds to this challenge to its authority by accusing Galileo of heresy.

Historically, Galileo's problems with the Church erupted after the publication of his Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems. He had been granted permission by Pope Urban VIII, who admired his work, to write a treatise on the Copernican system, a discussion between three characters – Salviati (Galileo's Copernican mouthpiece), Simplicio (representing the Ptolemaic–Aristotelian view) and Sagredo (the supposedly unbiased layman). Although the Dialogue purported to be hypothetical, it was clear that Galileo was arguing for the Copernican system as reality. Within a few months of publication, all copies of the book were seized and Galileo was summoned to stand trial before the Inquisition. Galileo was accused of heresy, forced to recant his belief in the Copernican system, and sentenced to house arrest.

Brown's story is dramatic but extremely distorted. Since we now view Galileo's ideas as correct, it is easy to look back and view the situation as a simple clash between religious dogmatism and science. However in reality, far from suppressing scientific progress, the Church encouraged study of the natural world, and theologians were prepared to reinterpret Scripture in light of demonstrated scientific discoveries. Unfortunately, Galileo's acerbic wit and sarcasm gained him enemies among the Aristotelian philosophers. When they couldn't defeat him in argument, they took the battle to the church. Further, the Pope reportedly felt personally betrayed by Galileo's Dialogue. It was not hypothetical, as requested, and the Pope's view was included as an afterthought, in the mouth of Simplicio – a simpleton indeed in the eyes of the other characters. Finally, Galileo had no proof of his ideas, as much of his telescopic evidence applied equally to the Ptolemaic and Copernican systems. He could not even explain how his system worked, or how the earth could move at all – something seemingly contrary to common sense.

Crucially, Dan Brown focuses only on Galileo's ideas that turned out to be correct. He mentions the theory of the tides, which Galileo thought was conclusive proof of the Copernican system, but not that it turned out to be wrong. Brown also suggests that Galileo's use of ellipses to describe the orbit of the planets contradicted the Church's belief that circles were divine. However, elliptical orbits were thought up by Johannes Kepler, a Protestant German astronomer to whom Galileo paid little attention. To the end, Galileo firmly believed that circles were more mathematically beautiful, and hence the only possible shape for the heavens.

The Myth of Conflict

In Angels and Demons, Robert Langdon and Maximilian Kohler claim that the church did not want a unification of science and religion. However, in Galileo¹s time, science and religion were viewed as complementary ways of understanding the world: one dealing with the book of God's works and the other dealing with the book of God's word. In fact, many famous thinkers and scientists of the time, such as Galileo, René Descartes, Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, were committed Christians. Moreover, the natural philosophical systems developed by these people were influenced deeply by their faith. Descartes, for example, explicitly states that he developed his system of the world from attributes of God, such as immutability and free will, and Newton viewed gravity as evidence of God's providence in a mechanical universe.

The question must be asked: if there was no conflict between science and religion at this time, why is the view used by Dan Brown so widely believed? The answer is to be found through an understanding of the period of the Enlightenment. The providential God of seventeenth century natural philosophy was replaced by an impersonal, absent deity who left the universe to run like clockwork, a God who was finally dispensed with all together. This was useful for people trying to counter the authority of the established church, and thus religious beliefs began to be separated from the study of the natural world.

Further, until the nineteenth century, science was more of a hobby than an established vocation. Men such as 'Darwin's Bulldog' Thomas Huxley, wanted to see scientists replace churchmen as intellectual leaders. To achieve this, Huxley portrayed the relationship between science and religion as an eternal battle, one in which science would always triumph. For such people, science replaced religion. In Angels and Demons, as Langdon arrives at CERN his guide explains: "Physics is the religion around here. Use the Lord's name in vain all you like, just don¹t slander any quarks or mesons."

Later in the nineteenth century, two major works, focusing on this conflict theme, were published: John Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1883) and Andrew Dickson White¹s A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896). These works, inspired by the authors' negative experiences with religion, fuelled 'the conflict myth'. Although extensive historical research has shown the conflict thesis to be misleading, the idea remains in the popular mindset.

Rhetoric, fact and fiction

The myth of the conflict between science and religion is not simply a misunderstanding of history. Instead, it has become a rhetorical tool, put to good use for a political purpose. The conflict myth allows an artificial barrier to be drawn between science and religion. Portraying the church as dogmatic and anti–science ensures that science remains authoritative in our culture instead of religion.

Books such as Dan Brown's Angels and Demons help to perpetuate this myth. Although his historical allusions are faulty, Brown blurs the line between history and invention, and encourages the reader to accept much of what he presents as fact. Some of the mistakes Brown makes in Angels and Demons are so basic that it would take little more than an introductory history of science text to refute them. Unfortunately, the popularity of such novels makes it likely that the conflict myth will continue.

Larissa Johnson, History and Philosophy of Science PhD Student, University of New South Wales, Australia

A version of this article was originally published in Case, the magazine of the Centre for Apologetic Scholarship and Education at the University of New South Wales