In the wake of recent controversies over intelligent design and the ethics of stem cell research, the antagonism between science and religion might seem more unbridgeable than ever. In her new book “Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think,” Elaine Howard Ecklund, Ph.D., investigates this assumption in a systematic study of what scientists actually think and believe about religion.

Ecklund, who is director of Religion and Public Outreach at the Institute for Urban Research and assistant professor of sociology at Rice University, surveyed nearly 1,700 scientists, interviewing 275 and centering the book around portraits of 10 representative individuals working in the natural and social sciences at top American research universities. She finds that most of what we believe about the faith lives of respected scientists is wrong. Her respondents run the gamut from a chemist who teaches a Sunday School class to a physicist who chose not to believe in God well before he decided to become a scientist. With broad implications for education, science funding and the thorny ethical questions surrounding stem cell research, evolution and other cutting-edge scientific research, “Science vs. Religion” offers a welcome dose of reality to the science and religion debates.