History for Atheists

Did the Pope Apologise to Galileo?

March 23, 2025 Tim O'Neill Comments 6 comments

One regularly repeated element in the mythic version of the Galileo story is the claim that the Catholic Church did not even admit Galileo had been right about heliocentrism until 1992, which is when Pope John Paul II finally issued an apology for his persecution. This factoid forms a satisfying coda to the popular version of the Galileo Affair, when the righteous martyr for reason is finally vindicated and the Church is shown to be an antiquated behemoth, belatedly dragged…

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Interview – Dr Nathan Johnstone on New Atheist Bad History

January 30, 2025 Tim O'Neill Comments 7 comments

My guest today is Dr Nathan Johnstone. Nathan is the author of the excellent 2018 book, The New Atheism, Myth and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion. Like me, Nathan is an unbeliever. And, like me, he has been concerned at the way many of our more anti-theistic fellow atheists have misused history in their arguments. His book covers many of the same examples of this as the articles on my site History for Atheist, so it was a…

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Pagan Christmas, Again.

December 15, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 82 comments

Every year, without fail, we find endless articles, memes and claims on social media about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christmas. As with Halloween and Easter, anti-theist activists find themselves in furious agreement with neo-pagans and even some evangelical Christians that the date and virtually all the main customs and traditions of Christmas are actually pagan. Pop history articles and books are full of these breathlessly confident claims. Except, in fact, very little about Christmas is ancient, less still is…

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Interview – Dr David M. Perry on the “Dark Ages”

October 29, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 2 comments

My guest today is Dr David M. Perry . David is a medieval historian and author of several books, including The Bright Ages: A New History of Medieval Europe and the forthcoming Oathbreakers, both co-authored with Matthew Gabriele. He has taught medieval history at Dominican University and is currently the Associate Director of Undergraduate Studies at the University of Minnesota. The Bright Ages sought to refute common misconceptions about the Middle Ages and counter the misconception that this period was…

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The Great Myths 15: What about “the Dark Ages?”

September 29, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 73 comments

The concept of “the Dark Ages” is central to several key elements in much anti-religious polemic. One of the primary myths most beloved by many anti-theists is the one whereby Christianity violently suppressed ancient Greco-Roman learning, destroyed an ancient intellectual culture based on pure reason and retarded a nascent scientific and technological revolution, thus plunging Europe into a one thousand year “dark age” which was only relieved by the glorious dawn of “the Renaissance”. But when this “Dark Age” supposedly…

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Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism

June 29, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 9 comments

My guest today is Dr Kipp Davis. . Kipp is a biblical scholar and an expert in early Jewish literature and history, with a focus on the Dead Sea Scrolls. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester (2009), has held several professional academic appointments in Europe and North America, and has published widely on the topics related to the Bible, its creation, development and transmission in the Second Temple period. His work on manuscript forgeries in private collections…

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Review – Catherine Nixey “Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God”

May 2, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 36 comments

Catherine Nixey, Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God (Picador, 2024) 365 pp. British journalist Catherine Nixey’s first foray into popular history, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017) received enthusiastic praise by many non-specialist reviewers and an even more rapturous reception by certain polemicists, who relished its fundamentally anti-Christian thesis. It was far less well-regarded by historians who are expert in the periods and topics it covers, who condemned it as biased,…

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Hypatia – Myths and History

April 1, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 5 comments

The story often told about Hypatia of Alexandria was that she was a great scientist, rationalist and scholar who was brutally murdered by a mob of Christians who hated her knowledge and learning, with her death ushering in the Dark Ages. But this story is mostly nonsense and the real history is far more complex and much more interesting. Contrary to the myths, she was not a modern-style scientist, she was far from an atheist or what we would regard…

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The Great Myths 14: “The Inquisition” – Myths and History

February 28, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 120 comments

Along with “the Witch Craze” and “the Crusades”, the violence and oppression of “the Inquisition” is part of a triumvirate of historical atrocities that is usually invoked by anti-theists as proof of the wickedness of Christianity in particular and religion in general. “Everyone knows” these things were evil, even though what most people know about each of these things is largely wrong. This is perhaps most the case with “the Inquisition”; given that there was never a single institution by…

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The Crappy Golden Orrery Award 2023

January 15, 2024 Tim O'Neill Comments 39 comments

Here is my annual year in review survey for History for Atheists in 2023. But I am happy to announce the return of the much loved Crappy Golden Orrery Award for the most egregious, boneheaded and/or stupid bad history by an atheist in 2023. A lack of suitable candidates meant it was not awarded last year, but 2023 saw some prime examples of terrible takes on history by anti-theists, with some stiff competition for this unprestigious prize. Tune in to…

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