Huston Smith is the highly respected author of The World's Religions who was the focus of a five-part PBS television series with Bill Moyers. He has taught at Washington University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and several other colleges. In this polemical work, he criticizes the present power and status of scientism and its cronies — technology and a relativistic understanding of existence.

Smith salutes the religious dimension and the crucial role it played in the lives of people centuries ago. In our time, he observes, it has been pushed aside to a marginal status. But, instead of hurrahing the many efforts afoot to reconcile religion and science, the author sarcastically suggests the creation of an Equal Opportunity Center for Science and Religion to serve as a watchdog on scientism and to discuss those subjects where scientific and religious understandings appear to be in conflict, such as Darwinism and intelligent design.

Certainly, we can concede that modern science "works with a limited viewfinder," as Smith puts it. But there is no need to reestablish the longstanding adversarial relationship between science and religion. There are far too many significant co-operative ventures on the horizon that will put both faith and reason to good use. Let the God-and-science talks continue!