Rationality Rules vs Tom Holland
“Rationality Rules” Bungles Tom Holland

“Rationality Rules” Bungles Tom Holland

Comments 46 comments

In 2019 public historian Tom Holland published his book Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind, a thematic history examining the ways Christianity has fundamentally influenced western thinking. The book became a best-seller and critical favourite, though it did not sit well with some, particularly those with an animus against Christianity and religion in general. It has been, however, warmly embraced by Christian apologists and this has recently attracted the ire of the YouTube creator Stephen Woodford, known online as…

Read More Read More

Ada Palmer interview
Interview – Dr Ada Palmer on Myths of the Renaissance

Interview – Dr Ada Palmer on Myths of the Renaissance

Comments 7 comments

My guest today is Dr Ada Palmer, Associate Professor of Early Modern European History at the University of Chicago and author Inventing the Renaissance: Myths of a Golden Age. I must say I haven’t enjoyed reading a book as much as this one in quite some time. Dr Palmer takes the traditional idea of the Renaissance – that it was a glorious rebirth of reason, artistic mastery and secular thinking after a centuries long dark age – and shows this is…

Read More Read More

THe Pope and Galileo
Did the Pope Apologise to Galileo?

Did the Pope Apologise to Galileo?

Comments 19 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…

Read More Read More

Nathan Johnstone interview
Interview – Dr Nathan Johnstone on New Atheist Bad History

Interview – Dr Nathan Johnstone on New Atheist Bad History

Comments 11 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…

Read More Read More

Pagan Christmas, Again.

Pagan Christmas, Again.

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 79 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…

Read More Read More

Kipp Davis interview
Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism

Interview – Dr Kipp Davis on Jewish Apocalypticism

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…

Read More Read More

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

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

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,…

Read More Read More

Hypatia - Myths and History
Hypatia – Myths and History

Hypatia – Myths and History

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…

Read More Read More