History for Atheists on Answers in Reason
It is always nice to be invited to speak to other atheists and to highlight the work I do here on History for Atheists. This week I had the pleasure of talking to Davidian from Answers in Reason in a live discussion which was mainly about the historical Jesus but also on how history is analysed, the nature of ancient source material and the problem of atheist bad history and anti-theist tribalism.
We did not get to cover many other topics, so we are planning for a second show where I will try to cover the myths around Christians causing the “Dark Ages”, destroying ancient learning and suppressing science etc.
28 thoughts on “History for Atheists on Answers in Reason”
Hey Tim, would you remind taking a look at this video from Paulogia. I had a problem with the part where he suggested that Christianity was not illegal until Diocletian. What do you think?
That is largely correct, though it could be argued Diocletian was only reviving the edicts of Decius. The idea that Christianity was an illegal sect, forced to hide in catacombs and carry out their worship in secret, for most of the first three centuries AD is mostly myth. This doesn’t mean there were not periodic local persecutions pursued by individual governors and cases of an accuser bringing a case of “impiety” against a Christian or a local group of Christians. These local and individual cases fuelled the later hagiography about extensive, centuries long persecutions with thousands of victims, which we now know is largely later, post-Diocletian folklore and not historical.
I’m a Catholic and I delight in telling other Catholics this historical fact.
Paganism was inherently tolerant. If you have thousands of gods, inviting one more to the party is “the more the merrier”. The problem with Christians is Jesus comes to the party and asks everyone else to leave. That seldom goes well.
Let me see if you understand you correctly.
When pagan authorities occasionly/locally persecute christians it follows that all versions of paganry are inherently intolerant.
when christian authorities do the same to non-christians it does not follow that christianity is.
And when christians kill each other because of theological disputes it doesn’t follow either.
I think you have misread what he said. He said quite the opposite – that polytheism is inherently *tolerant*.
You’re right.
> I delight in telling other Catholics this historical fact. Paganism was inherently tolerant. If you have thousands of gods, inviting one more to the party is “the more the merrier”.
That’s hardly true as was demonstrated both Christian persecution, and the negative reputation they had among many pagans.
Christian refusal to participate in the imperial cult branded them as anti social and traitorous.
Indeed, the idea that political solidarity and loyalty required religious conformity was still dominant many centuries later during the American Revolution, for example.
Early Christians Like Tertullian (Justin?) were
desperate to show that they could be loyal Roman citizens despite having a different religion. Political and religious
loyalty could only really be separated once divinity was no longer considered the basis for political power.
The video by Greg Koukl that is linked here is a lot more accurate than I was initially expecting it to be. Most of the information that is presented in the video is correct. Nonetheless, it does have a few very notable errors.
Koukl’s assertion near the very beginning of the video that Constantine didn’t know anything at all about Christianity until he saw his famous vision in the sky is almost certainly false, considering that Constantine was partly raised by his mother Helena, who was a Greek-speaking Christian from Bithynia. I’m pretty sure that Constantine would have picked up at least a vague awareness of what Christianity was from her.
There’s also the problem that the whole story about Constantine seeing a Christian symbol in the sky is probably made up, but it is at least a real story that was told in antiquity. I don’t think Koukl believes—or expects his viewers to believe—that the story is completely true as it is recorded.
The claim that Christians were not persecuted prior to the reign of Diocletian is not entirely accurate. It’s true that Diocletian’s reign seems to have marked the beginning of official, empire-wide persecution of Christians, but Christians had been persecuted sporadically by various regional governors and administrators for a very long time before that and they seem to have also been widely looked down upon by respectable Roman society.
Another really glaring error is the fact that Theodosius I was not “the very next emperor” after Constantine I in any sense. Constantine I died in 337 CE; Theodosius I became emperor of the eastern empire in 379 CE—forty-two years later. Saying that Theodosius was “the very next emperor” after Constantine is like saying that Donald Trump was “the very next president” after Richard Nixon.
Finally, although I haven’t read the book by Ramsay MacMullen that Koukl cites, his assessment of the number of Christians in the mid-fourth century based on the space available in known churches at the time sounds really sketchy, since most churches that existed in the mid-fourth century probably haven’t been excavated. There was probably also a large number of people who had Christian sympathies who didn’t regularly attend Christian worship services. I would have to read the book to know more about the methodology of the study, but let’s just say that I’m pretty skeptical.
People who say Constantine’s conversion made no real difference to the success of Christianity are clearly overstating things. As that video argues correctly, the idea that his conversion and his sponsorship of Christianity didn’t make some difference is highly unlikely. Bart Ehrman makes a good case that the demographics were already on track for an exponential expansion in Christian numbers and would have done so even if Constantine had not converted (see mt review of Ehrman’s The Triumph of Christianity), but it is hard to see his conversion etc. did not make a difference at all. And to conclude, as Koukl seems to, that the real impetus for the conversion of the Empire was the inherent and obvious truth of Christianity does not explain why this manifest wonderfulness took a whole 300 years to suddenly have an effect.
But this “Paulogia” person tries to swing things too far the other way and attribute the demographic change to a single cause – the sponsorship of the emperors. His claim that Theodosius was Constantine’s immediate successor is a hilarious blunder, but it’s the main way he can put the whole thing down to a state mandate and Imperial force. In fact, by the time Theodosius declared Christianity the state religion, the Empire was already a Christian majority. His edict was a reflection of reality, not an imposition of Christianity by force or fiat.
Ehrman makes the same criticisms of McMullen’s argument as you do. It also ignores the fact that “churches” as designated buildings were a relatively new phenomenon in the mid-fourth century and most congregations would still have met in homes or buildings with other mundane purposes. His estimates of Christian population are therefore most likely to be way too low.
Oops! I feel must apologize. I mistakenly identified the author of the video above as “Greg Koukl” based on the fact that the video was titled “Greg Koukl Response” and I incorrectly assumed that Koukl was the one who was responding, not the one who was being responded to.
Every place where I say “Koukl” in my comment above, I actually mean “Paulogia.”
I must apologize again. I’ve discovered another error in my comment above. I stated that Constantine’s mother Helena was a Christian before his conversion because I had previously read that somewhere. That statement is probably incorrect. I started having doubts about it, so I did some poking around and it turns out that Eusebius records in his Ecclesiastic History that she actually converted to Christianity after Constantine did and that she was not a Christian when she was raising him.
Obviously, Eusebius’s testimony isn’t always reliable and there are people who have legitimately tried to argue that Helena was a Christian or had Christian sympathies before her son’s conversion, but those people don’t really have any good evidence and there are strong circumstantial reasons to believe that Eusebius is correct.
Again, I apologize for my error. I should have double-checked the sources before posting my original comment.
It’s probably a bit misleading to say that we have no written sources documenting the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum because, while it is technically true that we don’t have any sources explicitly saying that those cities were destroyed, we do have a rather famous letter by Pliny the Younger describing the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 CE that destroyed them; he just doesn’t explicitly mention the actual destruction of those particular cities.
Luckily for me, that’s not what I said.
Which is what I actually said. I am well aware of what evidence we do have, but I was particular in noting that we don’t have any references to the two towns by name.
Yes. I know.
And neither does any other surviving source. Which is the point I made.
I know perfectly well that you are aware of all the sources in question here; I’m just pointing out the existence of Pliny the Younger’s letter for everyone else who might be reading this.
Great show. I’m looking forward to the next episode.
I didn’t realise that that Godless Engineer has it in for you. Or should I say his partner has it in for you?
I was surprised to hear you say that it is not clear that Jesus believed himself to be the ‘Son of Man’. I think the relevant passages make it obvious he did.
Re ‘apocalyptic prophet’ – yes he was that but clearly not primarily that. There seems to be a common failure to understand that when Jesus referred to the ‘kingdom of God’ and its ‘coming’ he was not necessarily referring to his return to earth. Even in Mark that is clear. Yet many seem to have made that assumption. But I know you dont accept that.
As for some sort of lessening of the apocalyptic message from Mark to John, given that many commentators believe John was fully aware of Mark’s Gospel, I think it’s reasonable to think he saw no need to repeat such teaching given that churches would have been fully aware of it through the circulation of (at least) Mark’s Gospel during the previous decades. He didnt repeat much of the teaching contained in Mark or the other synoptics, so why repeat that particular teaching?
I was also surprised to hear you say that Paul did not believe Jesus was divine. Again I I think that is obvious from his letters, including the ‘undisputed’ ones. He even appears to include Jesus in the Jewish ‘Shema’ which emphasizes the ‘oneness’ of God. That would have been shocking to a Jewish ear.
And whilst John is more explicit regarding Jesus’ divinity, Mark the earliest gospel writer (and the other two) also portrays Jesus as divine – even Bart Ehrman has now accepted that despite his previous position that only John portrayed Jesus as such. And of course per above, this was clearly a very early understanding of Jesus given that Paul’s letters date from a mere 20 years after Jesus.
Some of them do. Others make this less clear. The latter could well be an earlier stratum of tradition.
I don’t. Neither do most critical scholars.
And many don’t. But even if if writer of gJohn was, the steady diminishing of emphasis on the coming apocalypse and its almost total absence in gJohn remains a stubborn fact.
Because he didn’t see Jesus the same way as the writer of gMark did. And he may not have known gMark even existed.
Then you have a hell of a lot of critical scholars who disagree with you. Properly translated, Phil 2:6-8 explicitly states that he was NOT equal to God.
He does not. None of the Synoptics do, once you take off your Christian lenses and read what the texts actually say.
Ehrman is very careful to specify “divine in some sense” and to talk in his book How Did Jesus Become God? about exactly what he means by that. Sorry – but he does not mean anything like Christian orthodox Trinitarian Christology.
And yes, I am well and truly familiar with all the Christian arguments about the above. And so, no, I’m not interested in debating you about this further. You want to believe he was God in human form and not just a Jewish preacher? Go ahead. I’m not very interested in your religious beliefs.
I’m not sure if this is the place for recommendations, but I had a couple mythicists who linked me this page by Rational Wiki: https://tinyurl.com/y58ypbe8
A lot of it is probably stuff you’ve already responded to a million times, but I’ve never seen a list of mythicist arguments compiled together like this. It also recommends books by Richard Carrier obviously and says “the case for a historical Jesus leaves much to be desired”. Would love your initial thoughts on it.
As expected from that site, there are more terrible arguments per inch on that page than most places on the internet. For example:
“Sometimes works that talk about a “Chrestus”, “Christus”, “Chrestians”, or “Christians” are presented as evidence for the existence of Jesus as a flesh and blood man.[190] This makes the unproven assumption that Chrestus and Christus must refer to Jesus and only to Jesus. The argument also assumes that “Chrestians” are “Christians”, that they are different spellings for the same groups, and then makes the further assumption that the existence of the movement means its creator also must have existed. Following that line of reasoning we could claim that Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse were great bakers because there is only one letter difference (in US English) between chef and chief.”
But there is no such “assumption”. Tacitus doesn’t just make some passing reference to a “Christus”, but specifies he was executed by Pilate, in Judea and during the reign of Tiberius. To pretend that this reference is identified with Jesus purely because of some “assumption” that a mention of a “Christus” must refer to Jesus is absurd – it is based on all the other things Tacitus says about this figure. The Pliny reference is to Christians he has interrogated and who he says sing hymns to a “Christus” and says they do this “as though he were a god”. This indicates a sect that honours a man called “Christus” as divine. We know of no other sect called “Christians” and certainly no other than does this. So, again, the conclusion this is a reference to Christianity and its worship of a man Jesus as a god is pretty clear and not just some “assumption”.
The Suetonius reference to Claudius expelling Jews from Rome because they were “constantly making disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus” is much more ambiguous, since it implies that this person was alive at the time and so is much less likely to be a reference to Jesus. Some scholars believe that Suetonius is referring to disturbances caused by Christians among the Jews and didn’t understand that Jesus was long dead, but others disagree. Few claim this as an unambiguous reference to Jesus and Christianity anyway.
The whole article is at about this low level of argumentation and understanding of the material.
Hi Tim – just wondering of you have given thought to a History for Atheists post which links to all of your articles on Quora – or whether you might be taking them down and adding them here.
I figure either we get a splurge of (a half?) dozen or so new articles on HfA or we get one that conveniently gives us that splurge off-site?
I know I could just follow your profile on Quora – but another HfA posting always welcome.
I don’t think I’ll bother. Anything I wrote there that is relevant to this blog I’ve either covered in more detail already or intend to do so in future articles.
Ah alas – looking forward to the detailed articles still to come.
It’s worth noting that rationalwiki page has been obsessively edited by Tim’s old friend Bruce Grubb. Dude migrated to Rationalwiki after getting banned from wikipedia for pushing conspiracy theories and using sock puppets.
Really? That explains the breathless prose, bad grammar and non sequiturs then.
Anyone reading *Rational wiki* as a quality source must be the the same type who once read Lee Strobel or WLC as quality sources.
I would not call it “mostly correct” at all. Christianity was an illegal sect under Diocletian and had been at least since Trajan (possible since Nero). However, that doesn’t mean persecution was constant or empire-wide. Persecutions came in waves depending on attitude of Emperors, governors and local mobs. Until Decius (ca. 250) there was no empire-wider persecution and that under Decius did not begin as a persecution of Christianity. However, those of Valerianus and Aurelianus were. Diocletian’s persecution of course was the most massive – that the Church enjoyed peace and toleration (not a legalised status however) during Diocletian’s first two decades doesn’t change that.
Hagiography is more concerned with individual cases and not with “extensive, centuries long persecutions” and thousands of victims over 250 years might well be true.
So while catacombs as meeting places are a myth, the illegal status of Christianity and frequent persecutions are not.
Yes.
Evidence please.
No emperors made any universal edict against Christianity before Decius. Local persecutions were sporadic and most based on cases brought by individuals against other individuals or small groups.
As I said.
There were occasional, local persecutions – as I said. But no, Christianity was not illegal prior to 250 AD.