The History for Atheists Video Channel is Live
After a long gestation, the History for Atheists video channel is now up and running. For the last five years I have written fairly regular articles here at History for Atheists, with the aim of providing substance and depth on topics that are, all too often, covered in a manner that is superficial and usually wrong. But not everyone reads 10,000 word articles, so I have launched this accompanying video channel to cover most of the same subjects.
The channel will include video versions of the articles in my Great Myths series, as well as interviews with historians and history writers on atheist bad history and related subjects. I hope to produce audio versions of these videos for release in a podcast as well, so people can choose between listening to them or watching them online.
I am very pleased that my first interview is with Cambridge University historian of science, Dr Seb Falk, who took the time to discuss his excellent book on medieval science, The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science (Allen Lane, 2020) with me:
My Great Myths article on the Medieval Flat Earth Myth was one of the first substantial pieces I posted here, back in 2016. The heavy traffic it continues to receive indicates that this is a subject that still needs debunking and so I chose it as my first video from what will be an ongoing series on these major pieces of anti-theistic bad history. The video version also takes up the nonsense claims of “Aron Ra” and gives them another vigorous thrashing:
And I could not launch the channel without at least something on the perennial nonsense of Jesus Mythicism, so I have recorded an overview of why almost all scholars conclude that a historical Jesus most likely existed. I hope this will be a useful summary for people who demand “proof” and who do not understand how historical analysis on this subject works:
These videos do take some time to produce, but I hope to add to the channel reasonably regularly, while also keeping up with monthly(ish) articles here. Please subscribe to the channel if you like the content here at History for Atheists and feel free to share the videos widely to those who may be more likely to watch them than read a lengthy article. Enjoy.
15 thoughts on “The History for Atheists Video Channel is Live”
Nice! I’ll subscribe
Awesome stuff, well done Tim.
Huh. I must have refreshed my browser just as you loaded this post.
Go for it.
Would love to see an interview with Tom Holland on his books as well! Also, do you plan to debate other atheists on your channel as well, Tim?
I do hope to have Tom on to discuss his book. But no, I don’t find “debates” to be a useful format for analysis of history. See my FAQ for why.
Exciting news! Looking forward to viewing these.
Great initiative!
Congrats! Already subscribed!
Wonderful material! And yes, please do interviews.
Congrats on the channel Tim, get ready for a whole new world of comments!
I watched all three videos up so far today and enjoyed them a lot. I think those who don’t like the written word and won’t have read your blog will get even more out of them.
Great interview with Seb Falk.
Saw your channel was up on Twitter – looking forward to the next phase of the ‘Tim O’Neil’ media empire!
Nice job. It sounds like a lot of people are going to enjoy it but for those of us that prefer to read are you going to continue to write your 10,000 word essays? I’m voting yes please
Yes. Most of the videos will be versions of the articles here.
What are your thoughts on this?
https://listverse.com/2021/01/11/top-10-reasons-the-dark-ages-were-darker-than-you-think/
Basically, it looks like someone has read some Bryan Ward-Perkins and essentially parroted him. Not that there is anything wrong with that – no-one pretends the decline collapse of the Western Roman Empire didn’t have a huge impact from c 300 to around 800 or even 900 AD. The problem is with the pejorative associations of the term “the Dark Ages”, the post hoc ergo propter hoc argument that it must have somehow been the fault of Christianity and, especially, the tendency to stretch this “Dark Age” all the way out over the whole Middle Ages, with the (equally ill-defined) “Renaissance” as its terminus. That list veers into silliness with its overemphasis on “Christian hostility” when talking about the loss of ancient texts and the fact that it cites the Varian Disaster to start its “Dark Ages” all the way back at 9 AD. That makes every Roman emperor after Augustus into rulers in “the Dark Ages”. Pretty absurd stuff.
In addition to ToN’s remarks: it’s ambiguous, incomplete and onesided. Ambiguity is worst: the author doesn’t define Dark Ages. Is Late Antiquity part of it? No idea. When did they end? You tell me.
The invasions of Germanic barbarians are nr. 10, while they should be nr. 1. It doesn’t mention that they started in late 4th Century (a point could even be made for 250 CE) and only ended around 1000 CE when the Vikings finally settled down – the reign of Charlemagne was the anomaly. It doesn’t mention Ireland: flourishing until about 800, CE, ravaged the two centuries after. It doesn’t mention islamic Spain either. “….. with the exception of Constantinople” is cringeworthy – the Eastern Roman Empire was the rule, the remote and unimportant (for the Grand Scheme of things) western parts were the exception. Finally
“The fall of the Western Roman Empire was primarily caused by invading Germanic barbarians and their violent seizure of power. ”
is way, way too simple. Still it fails to draw a conclusion that is simple: 6 centuries of nearly endless wars do not stimulate art, science and culture in general.
For the defense: we should not expect from such lists much better and it could have been far worse. Still I think that for Britain, the Low Lands, France and Italy things were actually worse from 400 until 1000 CE than the list describes (eg christianizing often didn’t happen peacefully – remember Charlemagne slaughtering 3000 Saxon heathens on one day), so the title got it wrong too.