Since the 1970s, historians have come to agree that the notion of an inherent conflict between science and religion—a notion dating back at least to the trial of Galileo—is a myth. The historian Yves Gingras, in his book Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue, seeks to overthrow this consensus. But, to Peter Harrison, the consensus is right, and Gingras’s argument is unconvincing:

[O]n a number of occasions, Gingras makes much of prohibitions and book censorship [of scientific work by the medieval and Renaissance Church] on the assumption that this is a sign of an enduring battle between science and religion, or at least between the institutions that stand in for them. But this reading results from a failure to understand the universality of regimes of censorship and their ultimate goal. Legislative restrictions placed on the expression of religious, political, moral—and, in a small minority of cases, scientific—views might have served to maintain the power of particular institutions, but their goal was also the preservation of social order. . . .

Matters become even more complicated when we consider other institutions that were part of the Catholic Church. [The Church created] the medieval universities, which were the chief sites of scientific activity in the Latin Middle Ages. Subsequently, the Collegio Romano, founded in 1551, provided considerable institutional support for the sciences conducted by members of the Jesuit order, with a particular focus on astronomy and mathematics. . . . In fact, between the 12th and 18th centuries the Catholic Church’s material and moral support for the study of astronomy was unmatched by any other institution. In light of this, the unfortunate prosecution of Galileo is beginning to look like the exception rather than the rule. Affording emblematic status to the Galileo affair is a little like proposing, on the basis of the Athenians’ equally notorious trial and execution of Socrates, that the ancient Greeks were implacably opposed to philosophy. . . .

Gingras’s rehearsal of well-known historical episodes thus turns up nothing new, and his focus on institutions simply reinforces what historians of science have been saying all along: the historical picture is complicated, and while we can construct tensions that are analogous to our modern “science and religion,” conflict is neither inevitable nor does it constitute an enduring pattern.

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.