Historically speaking, the relationship between science and religion has been more complicated. Some scientists were very religious, and religion was often a chief motivator and sponsor of scientific investigation. However, towards the end of the 19 th century, science and religion came to be seen by the public as being increasingly at odds, a gradual phenomenon which came to a head around the debates over the work on evolution produced by Charles Darwin. Precursors and preconditions for the apparent split did exist before Darwin 's publication of The Origin of Species , but it was this work which brought the debate into the popular British press and became a figurehead for the tensions between science and religion among certain groups (a position it still holds for some today). However, many religious people don't see any conflict between science and religion or The Origin of Species and the original Hebrew language of the Bible. This is referred to as theistic evolution.

The work by Draper and White must be seen as directly coming out of this social climate, and their model of science and religion as being eternally opposed, if not historically accurate, became a dominant social trope. Sociologists of science have studied the attempts to erect hard distinctions between science and non-science as a form of boundary-work, emphasizing the high stakes for all involved in such activities.

Logical Positivism

This new conception of science as something not only independent from religion, but actually opposed to it raised the inevitable question of what separates the two. Among the first to develop an answer were the members of the Vienna Circle . Their philosophical position, known as logical positivism, espoused a theory of meaning which held that only statements about empirical observations and formal logical propositions are meaningful, effectively asserting that statements which are not derived in this manner (including religious and metaphysical statements) are by nature meaningless. However, it soon faced many logical difficulties (such as, how the statement "only statements about empirical observations are meaningful" is empirically observed)...........................................