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…
My latest guest is Dr Andrew Henry, who is an adjunct professor at George Washington University in Washington DC and a specialist in late antique Mediterranean religion. He is also the writer and presenter of the excellent Religion for Breakfast YouTube channel, where he has several videos debunking claims about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christian festivals. In this conversation we discuss the various claims about the supposed “pagan origin” of the date of and customs surrounding Easter. We go…
Some atheists and even some prominent scientists claim that the Black Death was caused or at least made worse by a wholesale massacre of cats ordered by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. But is this true? And where did this strange story come from? In this episode on the History for Atheists video channel we look at this claim and several others associated with it, examine the history of the pandemic of the 1340s known as the Black…
My guests today are David Hutchings and James C. Ungureanu, co-authors of Of Popes and Unicorns: Science, Christianity and How the Conflict Thesis Fooled the World. David is a physicist, science teacher and writer and James is a historian of science and religion. In this interview we discuss their book and the origin and impact of the Conflict Thesis – the pervasive but erroneous idea that religion and science have always been in conflict down the ages. To buy the book: Of…
Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated…
My latest guest is Derek Lambert, the presenter of the excellent Mythvision video channel and podcast. Derek has been kind enough to have me on his channel several times over the last two years to discuss atheist bad history in general and Jesus Mythicism in particular. But today we are going to hear from Derek about his very interesting personal journey regarding his thoughts and conclusions about the historical Jesus. As he’ll detail for us, Derek began as a fundamentalist…
The historical myths surrounding the emperor Constantine, his conversion to Christianity and the claim he created the Bible at the Council of Nicaea are persistent and continue to be propagated in popular culture, despite being total nonsense. Unfortunately, leading atheists also perpetuate these silly ideas, with everyone from Richard Dawkins to Joe Rogan insisting that Constantine was not really a Christian, that he pretended to convert for political reasons and that it was he who set the canon of the…
My latest guest on the History for Atheists video channel is Associate Professor Ted McCormick. Ted is a specialist in intellectual history and the history of science at Concordia University in Canada. He examines the intersections between science, technology, economy and empire in the early modern era. Recently, he has taken an interest in how the concept of “the Enlightenment” has been taken up as something of an ideological cause by some popular writers. In particular he has critiqued the…
This is a long-awaited addition to the History for Atheists video channel – my long and detailed interview with historian of science, Thony Christie. Thony is an independent scholar based in Germany who also the author of the superb Renaissance Mathematicus blog. His knowledge of the history of Early Modern science is vast and so he is the perfect person to give us a detailed overview of what happened and, more importantly, what did not happen in the dispute between Galileo and…
The latest video on the History for Atheists video channel is Part One of a two-part episode on the Great Library of Alexandria. What was the Great Library and why does it feature in some anti-religious rhetoric? In this first part we will examine some of the misconceptions about the Great Library, look at what it was and – more importantly – what it was not. And in the upcoming second part, we will explore how the Great Library came…