For thousands of years, science has unraveled the workings of the universe in its orderly fashion--picking, pulling, and sometimes yanking away turf previously claimed by religion. Religion has not always yielded willingly. As science staked more ground, Christian clerics countered by debunking and suppressing science, and, when all else failed, persecuting and prosecuting the heretics. • A Roman Catholic tribunal during the 17th-century inquisition sentenced Galileo to life in prison for advocating the Copernican theory that Earth orbits the sun. More than 350 years later, the Kansas State School Board, motivated by religious considerations, dropped evolution from the state's science curriculum. • Yet, we would be wrong if we were to believe that religion and science have been at odds throughout history. Austrian monk Gregor Mendel was the father of modern genetics. Charles Darwin saw evolution as a process designed by God. Galileo was devoted to the religion that prosecuted him. And Albert Einstein wisely observed that "science without religion is lame. Religion without science is blind."