SOURCE: Flynn, Tom. “But They Do Overlap.” Free Inquiry 19, no. 4 (fall 1999): 69.

In the following review, Flynn asserts that Rocks of Ages, which purports to help bridge the divide between science and religion, actually does the opposite.

“Faith and knowledge are totally different things,” wrote Schopenhauer, “which for their mutual benefit have to be kept strictly separate, so that each goes its own way without paying the slightest attention to the other.” In a sentence, that's the message of biologist-essayist Gould's latest book.

Gould is a deservedly decorated veteran of the evolution wars. Surely his job would be simpler if believers would quit shouting that Darwinism leads to atheism or if sophisticated atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel C. Dennett stopped implying the same thing. But his arguments [in Rocks of Ages] lead him into successive quagmires.

Gould's theory of non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) counsels “mutual respect, based on non-overlapping...