Introducing My Book: Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes - The Strange Tale of How the Conflict of Science and Christianity Was Written into History

Hello, my good readers!

It recently occurred to me that though I have included several extremely rough-draft teasers excerpted from my upcoming book (see here, here, and here for examples, or if you would like to read the summary essay I submitted as part of the process, head here), I have, oddly enough, not written a post summarizing what the book is about! 

So with that in mind, I am absolutely thrilled to announce that Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes: The Strange Tale of How the Conflict of Science and Christianity Was Written Into History was accepted by Cascade Books, and is due out by the end of 2019! I couldn't be more excited (and terrified!) to embark on the journey to finishing the manuscript (due at the end of September, 2019). I should note about the picture: no, that is not the actual cover. Just a mock-up I threw together as I was goofing off in my excitement (though I actually think its not half bad). My main editor is Rodney Clapp, who has not only edited some extremely helpful books that I deeply admire like Stanley Hauerwas' With the Grain of the Universe: The Church's Witness and Natural Theology, he himself is a terrific author who has written extensively on faith and science (check out his latest book, New Creation, here). I couldn't be in better hands.

Synopsis

From one angle the easiest summary of what my book is about is that it is a history of Christianity and science written like a piece of detective work. It is going to be written in a story-driven, accessible style for general audiences interested in Christianity and science (for an example of the tone I am going for, head here) An incredible array of myths ranging from the fanciful to the extremely serious have grown up over the years, and I set out to investigate what really happened. This involves not just debunking myths, but asking how, when, and by whom the myths were originally created, what functions they served, and how often they combine together to shape our collective cultural imaginations. 

On the other side, the same questions can be asked about those debunking these myths: how were their discoveries made, what functions do their counter-histories serve, and what are we to make about the actual histories of science and Christianity? Many books that tackle matters of faith and science look at how these two spheres relate today. This is a vital and inescapable task, but my book focuses on the histories involved--and in particular I want to look at how historians, scientists, theologians, philosophers, and others interpret and represent that history. For it is deciding how to tell a story that has often shaped what is told. I think there are some absolutely fascinating--and often extremely strange--stories to be related, and frankly I am overjoyed that I get the attempt to share this with you all. 

If I might indulge and quote myself in what is (so far) the opening lines of the book:

There is no such thing as the history of the conflict of science and Christianity, and this is a book about it. To put in slightly different terms: once, there was no warfare between science and Christianity. It was not latent, merely waiting to erupt when the power of Christendom began to fade, or when men and women began to turn to science; rather it had to be instituted and imagined, in both theory and practice. Ultimately, even atheism (which is not one thing, but many) is not a perennial option to humanity but has a history; its time emerged, and it can be grasped only as a historical truth. If there is a historical conflict, it exists only in the sense that it is the invention of historians.

To tell this tale (or tales) the book is divided into three major sections. The first third focuses on the construction and deconstruction of the mythology I just spoke of. Did Christians believe in, and dogmatically perpetuate the idea that the earth is flat (to take the titular example of the book)? Short answer: nope. And why "fake footnotes"? Because another question immediately arises: where did the myth of the myth of Christian flat-earthers come from? Why was it used as a story? Where did the metaphor of conflict and warfare come from? A surprising number of these myths crop up because of misinformation, missing citations (or false citations), stories that--like the game of telephone--become bent and broken as they are passed along.

While I do not really consider my book to be a work of apologetics (history is too complex, and ultimately Christians often did too many dumb and horrible things that we must acknowledge), nevertheless in the last half-century or so, what I like to term a "quiet revolution" has taken place among historians and philosophers of science (a majority of whom are not Christians, I should add) where the idea of perennial and essential conflict between history and science through the ages has not just been discarded, but scholars have mounted a sustained attack on the thesis. Unfortunately, this revolution has only slowly trickled down into more popular avenues (and amongst those like the New Atheists it has been overlooked completely). 

"Clever metaphors die hard," as James Moore puts it in his book, The Post-Darwinian Controversies, and the metaphor of conflict is the idea that wouldn't die. The first third of my book especially aims to correct this, as much as possible, because histories either perceived or imagined, all too real or otherwise, shape at very visceral levels our perceptions of science and religion today even when we are not explicitly thinking about history. Jeffrey Burton Russell puts it like this:

Fallacies or ‘myths’ of this nature take on a life of their own, creating a dialectic with each other and eventually making a ‘cycle of myths’ reinforcing one another.  For example, it has been shown the ‘The Inquisition’ never existed, but that fallacy, like the flat earth fallacy, is part of the ‘cycle’ that includes The Dark Ages, the Black Legend [of the Inquisition trials], the opposition of Christianity to science, and so on.  The cycle becomes so embedded in our thought that it helps to form our worldview in ways that make it impervious to evidence.  We are so convinced that medieval people must have been ignorant enough to think the world flat that when the evidence is thrown in front of us we avoid it, as we might, when driving, swerve around an obstacle in the road.  Thus our worldview is based more upon what we think happened than what really happened.  A shared body of myth can overwhelm all evidence …[1]

The middle third of my book focuses on what is often called the "secularization thesis." What "secularization" entails exactly is a matter of huge debate (which I will introduce in a survey chapter) but the essence of these tales of secularization are historical narratives detailing the inexorable decline of religion. This topic is too huge for me to cover,  so the angle I am taking in particular I term "deleting theology."

What I mean here is that secularization is often taken to be the normal course of the progression of human society. Religion is, for example, a deficient form of science that has now been superseded and of which we have no need. We have no need for God--where "God" is taken as a scientific hypothesis that no longer does any heavy lifting. The gaps are filled, and God now kills his time in the unemployment line. And when this is assumed in various ways, recounting histories of knowledge and practice that led to where we are today often overlook, distort, or simply "delete" religion and theology. This thereby increases all the more the mythology of antagonisms or warfare we speak of in section one, because religion and theology are now at best thought of as extraneous to the human adventure of civilization, and at worst an actively hostile repressor to free inquiry and scientific progress. To get a sense of what I am talking about, head here to a paper I presented at the North West Evangelical Theological Society meeting earlier this year.

The final third of my book narrates the rise of atheism from the perspective that atheism is fundamentally dependent upon the host theistic or religious contexts from which it emerged. In other words, when the existence of God is denied, or deemed unimportant--which God is denied? Whose theology is being overcome? Like the other two sections, I mean to represent for a general audience big ideas often hidden amidst giant monographs or hard to obtain peer-reviewed journals. Again, for a sense of the stories I will be telling, read the third section of the overview essay I turned in as part of the book proposal submission.

To Be Continued...

Writing this book so far has been both a joy and extremely exhausting. This year alone I have read around 100 books (not to mention countless articles) in preparation, and I still feel like I am scratching the surface of a boundlessly fascinating topic. Translating this into fun, readable, bite-sized prose is exciting, but it is also one of the hardest things I've done as an aspiring academic. Luckily, unbeknownst to myself I have been researching this topic with a dogged determination for the last four (!) years or so. Please pray for me as I continue on this writing adventure!

I would like to give a HUGE word of thanks to those who have already helped me get this project off the ground: Dr. Mike Gurney for initially directing a guided studies course many years ago on the history of Christianity and science, which started this madness. Dr. Paul Louis Metzger, who initially urged me (along with one of my best friends, Dr. Greg Oltmann) to write this book, along with Dr. Jon Robertson who always fields my endless questions on Patristic and early Medieval thought and allowed me to help shape his "History of Faith and Science" course at Multnomah University and Seminary.

I have also been floored by the kindness of other academics in their support and feedback. Because I do not have a Ph.D. and given the ambitious nature of the book, I was asked to gather academic endorsements based on the overview essay I crafted to help the acceptance process along. I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart those who not only agreed to take a look, but gave me such hearty endorsements or encouraging words that I honestly choked up when I received them. A hearty word of thanks then to Dr. Kendall Soulen of Emory University and the Candler School of Theology, Dr. Sameer Yadav of Westmont College, Dr. Peter Harrison of the University of Queensland, Dr. Conor Cunningham of the University of Nottingham, Dr. Rodney Stiling of Seattle Pacific University, Dr. Stephen Lloyd of the Oregon Health and Sciences University, and Dr. James McGrath of Butler University who always kindly shares my blog posts and expressed his enthusiasm for the project. 

Truly I am so humbled by this experience, and I pray that I can deliver a truly useful and entertaining book that honors the kindness and support I have received.

To start the hype train, I would like to share what Dr. Peter Harrison wrote. Harrison is, in my opinion, one of--if not the--foremost expert in the world on the history of science and Christianity, so I was in shock not only when he responded to my request for feedback, but at what he wrote:

“I am pleased to write in support of Derrick Peterson’s book proposal, Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes. This prospective volume will address an important shift in our understanding of the historical relations between science and religion that has taken place over the past 50 years. While the common popular view is that science and religion have been engaged in perennial conflict, the current consensus among historians of science is that this is a myth.  However, the consensus in the academic community has been very slow in filtering out to the general public.  This book will go a considerable distance in remedying that deficiency. On the basis of the 50-page proposal that I have read, Peterson has an exceptionally good grasp of recent scholarship on this issue.  This extends both to mastery of a large body of historical detail ranging from antiquity to the present, to important theoretical and historiographical matters.  At the same time, his writing is very accessible, and is pitched at the right level for his intended audience. Somewhat surprisingly, there are few, if any, competing volumes out there. Much of the relevant scholarship has been addressed to historians of science, and is distributed across a number of scholarly monographs.  Closest, perhaps, to the prospective volume is the collection edited by Ron Numbers, Galileo goes to Jail and Other Myths in the History of Science and Religion (Harvard, 2010).  This is an excellent collection that has sold well. But a single-authored work that looks comprehensively at the conflict myth, and takes in, in what I think is an unprecedented way, the full range of historical episodes that inform the myth, would be most welcome. In sum, this is a much-needed volume, and I whole-heartedly recommend its publication.

 —Peter Harrison, D.Litt., Ph.D., Former Andreas Idreos Chair of Science and Religion at Oxford University, Australian Laureate Fellow, Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Queensland, author of The Territories of Science and Religion, editor of The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion.

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[1]Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth, 76.