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Month: May 2017

Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

The consensus of scholars, including non-Christian scholars, is that a historical Jesus most likely existed and the later stories about “Jesus Christ” were told about him.  The idea that there was no such historical person at all and that “Jesus Christ” was a purely mythical figure has been posited in one form or another since the eighteenth century, but is not taken seriously by anyone but a tiny handful of fringe scholars and amateurs.  Despite this, the Jesus Myth thesis…

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Welcome to the New Look Blog

Welcome to the New Look Blog

When I began “History for Atheists” in October 2015 it was largely as an opportunity to put down some summaries of why certain persistent New Atheist pseudo historical myths are wrong, curate the positions of expert historians and other scholars on relevant issues and direct readers to reliable information on history.  This was at least, in part, because I found myself writing refutations to the same nonsense claims over and over again and was starting to find the repetition pretty…

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Giordano Bruno – Gaspar Schoppe’s Account of his Condemnation

Giordano Bruno – Gaspar Schoppe’s Account of his Condemnation

In my previous post, “The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science“, I noted the excellent work of Alberto A. Martinez in his recent article “Giordano Bruno and the heresy of many worlds”, (Annals of Science, Volume 73, 2016, Issue 4, pp. 345-374). Martinez makes a solid case against the general scholarly consensus that Bruno’s multiple worlds cosmology was not one of the reasons he was condemned for heresy, and goes so far as to argue it…

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The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicaea and the Bible

It seems the “Philosophical Atheism” group on Facebook is going to be the New Atheist bad history gift that just keeps on giving.  No anti-Christian snippet or meme seems to be able to get by this group without it being posted as factual, without any hint of checking its claims.  So the gloriously stupid (and grammatically bizarre) pastiche of nonsense above was posted to “Philosophical Atheism” yesterday, with the group’s followers reverently genuflecting to its mighty historical truth and insight.  The…

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