Browsed by
Category: Paganism

Pagan Christmas, Again.

Pagan Christmas, Again.

Comments 35 comments

Every year, without fail, we find endless articles, memes and claims on social media about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christmas. As with Halloween and Easter, anti-theist activists find themselves in furious agreement with neo-pagans and even some evangelical Christians that the date and virtually all the main customs and traditions of Christmas are actually pagan. Pop history articles and books are full of these breathlessly confident claims. Except, in fact, very little about Christmas is ancient, less still is…

Read More Read More

Halloween
Is Halloween Pagan?

Is Halloween Pagan?

Comments 159 comments

The idea that all the traditional holidays and festivals of the year are “pagan” in origin and were simply “stolen by the Church” is one that has permeated popular culture and is repeated without question in newspaper, magazine and online articles. It is perhaps not surprising that harried journalists and underpaid online content writers are uncritical about these claims, but it is more strange that prominent atheists are as well, given they are meant to be sceptics who check their…

Read More Read More

Review – Bart D. Ehrman “The Triumph of Christianity

Review – Bart D. Ehrman “The Triumph of Christianity

Comments 122 comments

Bart D. Ehrman, The Triumph of Christianity: How a Forbidden Religion Swept the World, (Simon & Schuster, 2018) 335 pp. In his latest book Ehrman tackles the question of how an obscure Jewish sect came to conquer the Roman Empire and dominate the western world. It is a subject which can stir up both triumphant apologism and vehement condemnation. But in this book Ehrman, a first rate and highly accessible public educator, does what a true historian should do: seeks…

Read More Read More

Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

Comments 216 comments

Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017) 305 pp. Her publisher’s blurb informs us that Nixey’s book tells “the largely unknown – and deeply shocking – story” of how a militant Christianity “extinguished the teachings of the Classical world” and was “violent, ruthless and intolerant” in an orgy of destruction and oppression that was “an annihilation”. On the other hand, no less an authority than the esteemed historian of Late Antiquity, Dame Averil…

Read More Read More

Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs

Easter, Ishtar, Eostre and Eggs

Comments 164 comments

  As I mentioned in my last post, two things we can now be sure the internet will deliver up at Easter are rehashes of the tedious “Jesus never existed” thesis and memes telling us that “Easter is actually pagan!”.  The one above has become one of the most popular in recent years, so much so that its “Ishtar = Easter” claim has taken on internet factoid status. More recently, online New Atheists seem to have finally worked out that…

Read More Read More

The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism

The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism

Comments 92 comments

Well, it’s Yuletide and so tis the season to be merry, to buy presents, to queue for ages in airports and to eat too much.  It’s also the season when New Atheists fill their social media feeds with smug memes like these:   How do they know these things about Mithras and December 25th?  Well, they read them in memes on other New Atheists’ Facebook feeds.  Though the fact that this idea was given a boost by the delightfully droll…

Read More Read More

Edward T. Babinski Objects

Edward T. Babinski Objects

Comments 25 comments

My interview with Thomas Smith on the “Atheistically Speaking” podcast last week has stirred up an interest in the topics we covered among some of Thomas’ audience.  Inevitably, given that I had to skate over some topics pretty quickly, not everything I was saying seems to have been grasped fully by some listeners.  The part of the conversation on Galileo was very rushed and that is a complex subject, since many New Atheists find it hard to get their head…

Read More Read More