Search Results for: "dark ages"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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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The Great Myths 12: Religious Wars and Violence

That religion is uniquely prone to violence is a truism anti-theistic atheists assume almost without question. The cliché that more people have died in wars over religion than any other cause is a unassailable dictum among atheist activists, and religious violence is a driving motivation for their zealotry. But, on closer inspection, this idea becomes increasingly incoherent and actually leads several New Atheists into some ethically paradoxical positions. The idea that religion is essentially and particularly violent is a founding…

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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…

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Stephen Hicks Mangles History

Dr. Stephen Hicks thinks the Early Middle Ages were a “Dark Age” thanks to the Church, and considers any revision of that idea to be the work of conservative ideologues. Working from dubious sources, a succession of erroneous presuppositions and some total fantasy, he supports this via a sustained string of bungled arguments about history that leaves his audience considerably dumber for having heard them. Why do atheist philosophers keep doing this? I was not aware of Dr Stephen Hicks…

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