Search Results for: "dark ages"

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

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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?”

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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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History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 3 – The So-called “Dark Ages”

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Yesterday Steve McRae and Kyle Curtis of the Non Sequitur Show were kind enough to have me back on, this time to discuss the myths around the medieval period as a “dark age” where Christianity suppressed Greco-Roman knowledge, crushed science, stifled technology, burned witches, banned baths and killed cats. The No-So-Dark Ages – Part 1 The Not-So-Dark Ages – Part 2

“The Dark Ages” – Popery, Periodisation and Pejoratives

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“When the Pope ruled England, them was called the Dark Ages!”(East London street orator, reported by Herbert Butterfield, 1931) The concept of “the Dark Ages” is central to several key elements in New Atheist Bad History.  One of the primary myths most beloved by many New Atheists 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…

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Hypatia – Myths and History

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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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Review – Alec Ryrie “Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt”

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Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers – An Emotional History of Doubt (William Collins, 2019) 262 pp. We unbelievers are often mentioned in passing in histories of religion, but there are only a few works of history that focus on those of us who reject religion or who never held religious beliefs at all. This one is by a scholar who is a Christian, but one who strives to give a balanced and nuanced view of how various modern Western strains of unbelief…

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The Closing of the Athenian Academy

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In 529 AD Damascius, the last head of the Academy in Athens, closed down the philosophical school and, with several fellow scholars, went into exile in Persia. This is often portrayed as the final act in “the closing of the western mind” and the beginning of “the darkening age”; the symbolic closing of an institution founded by Plato himself almost a millennium earlier. It is regularly portrayed in popular writing and anti-theist polemic as the end of ancient science and…

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Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Al-Ghazali

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While he identifies more as an agnostic than an atheist, astrophysicist and science populariser Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a favourite among anti-theist activists and their followers. This is not just because of his advocacy of a scientific world view and general scepticism toward supernatural claims – it is also because he makes occasional forays into history. Tyson presents easily digestible stories on the history of science that, generally, present science and religion in opposition to each other in what are…

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The Church and Dissection

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The claim that the Medieval Church “banned dissection” and so set back progress in the study of human anatomy is often made in popular sources. It is also regularly found in academic sources by medical experts commenting on the history of anatomy. So, unsurprisingly, it is often produced by anti-theists as evidence that Christianity retarded scientific knowledge for religious reasons. This is despite the fact there was no such “ban” and that the practice of anatomical dissection that founded the…

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The Great Myths 13: The Renaissance Myth

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Many of my fellow atheists operate with a simplistic children’s picture book view of the past. This is one where the glories of Greece and Rome are destroyed and suppressed by the Medieval Church, but civilisation is saved by the geniuses of the Renaissance, whose revival of ancient thought, critical analysis and radical new thinking establishes most of what we value today. This conception of the Renaissance as a dramatic and revolutionary break with the medieval world is actually Modernity’s…

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