Myth: Darwin's destroyed faith
It's been said evolution destroyed Charles Darwin's faith in Christianity - until he reconverted on his deathbed. Mostly bosh created by "untutored evangelicals" in the early 20th century, writes James Moore, Darwin biographer and professor of the history of science at the Open University in England. He says Darwin saw evolution as a superior theology.
Myth: Einstein's personal God
It's been said Albert Einstein believed in a personal God. Although the 20th century's most recognizable scientist acknowledged that an intervening God could never be disproved as long as there remained areas that science did not precisely understand, he declared that divine judgment and the efficacy of prayer seemed completely implausible in light of the consistency of science.
Myth: Descartes's 'ghost in the machine'
It's been said René Descartes originated the separation of mind and body, known as "the ghost in the machine" and a disaster for Western philosophy and its attempts to understand mental functioning scientifically. In fact, his views on the relationship between mind and body are subtle, sophisticated and complex, and he may well not have been a dualist.
Myth: Medieval church's prohibition
It's been said the medieval church prohibited human dissection. This was totally invented in the 19th century by Andrew Dickson White, U.S. diplomat, educator and co-founder of Cornell University. White was obsessed with the notion that science and religion existed in constant conflict.
Myth: Newton's elimination of God
It's been said that Isaac Newton's mechanistic cosmology eliminated the need for God. Not according to Newton, who believed that God was no Enlightenment absentee clockmaker. Rather, he was free to make a world of any sort he pleased, and if he chose to alter it later, that was his prerogative.
Myth: Haeckel's Nazi biology
It's been said Darwin and biologist Ernst Haeckel - the great champion of Darwinism in Germany - were complicit in Nazi biology because of their ideas on natural selection. Web-search "Haeckel" and "Nazis" and you get thousands of hits, mostly from creationist and intelligent design websites. But both Darwin and Haeckel believed natural selection embraced an authentic altruism, and Haeckel proclaimed his hope for a world in which "the man with the most perfect understanding, not the man with the best revolver, would triumph …"