Reddit mentions of Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (Buddhism and Modernity)

People can argue about whether rebirth as commonly understood in Buddhist teachings is true or not, but I have yet to see any reasonable justification, based on the Suttas, that any of these currently fashionable re-interpretations of ideas like rebirth were ever actually intended.

I think maybe the source of much of this is that people come to Buddhism with an impression of Buddhist teachings originating from the "Scientific Buddha" ideas that are still quite commonplace and originating from Western philosophers and some early translators seeing in Buddhism, with a bit of selective reading and imposition of their own cultural prejudices, a rational and scientific counterpart to the superstitious excesses of Christianity at a time when the church was losing the absolute power it had once had and the modern scientific worldview was becoming increasingly dominant and respected.

It is also to some extent a result of historical debates, for example in Sri Lanka, between Christian missionaries attacking Buddhism for its "unscientific" ideas like Mount Meru, etc. that have lead some involved in this kind of debate to strongly emphasise aspects of Buddhism more aligned with the modern scientific worldview and downplay and selectively reinterpret those aspects that were seen at odds with it.

Donald Lopez is an academic that has written a couple of books on exactly this phenomenon:

• The Scientific Buddha: His Short and Happy Life
  
  
• Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed
  
  I've only read the second of these, but would strongly recommend it as a very interesting account of the history of Buddhism's early encounter with western thought.