Hypatia
The Great Myths 9: Hypatia of Alexandria

The Great Myths 9: Hypatia of Alexandria

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Hypatia of Alexandria sits alongside Galileo and Giordano Bruno as something of a historical trinity in anti-theistic mythology. She is depicted as a martyr of science and reason, wickedly murdered by religious fanatics, a symbol of lost learning and of the beginning of the Dark Ages. But the distorted story that makes up her modern myth bears little resemblance to actual history and ignores the key contexts for both her life and her assassination. Ever since her violent death in…

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Davidic
Jesus Mythicism 6: Paul’s Davidic Jesus in Romans 1:3

Jesus Mythicism 6: Paul’s Davidic Jesus in Romans 1:3

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The opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans contains a statement that Jesus was a descendant of King David (Romans 1:3). Most Jesus Mythicists claim that Paul only believed in Jesus as a celestial figure, not an earthly, human and recently historical one. So, as usual, they have to strive hard to find ways to make a text fit their convoluted theories. The results are typically contrived and unconvincing. Sometime in the late 50s AD Paul wrote a letter to…

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Transmission
The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning

The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning

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The idea that we only have a fraction of Greek and Roman learning and literature because most of it was destroyed by Christians is a common assumed truism in much New Atheist discourse. But this is substantially a simplistic myth based on a number of misconceptions and errors of fact. If anything, we have a succession of Christian scholars to thank for all of the ancient learning that survives. The wicked destruction of the wondrous learning of the ancients by…

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Review – Tom Holland “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind”

Review – Tom Holland “Dominion: The Making of the Western Mind”

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Tom Holland, Dominion: How the Christian Revolution Remade the World (Little, Brown, 2019) 624 pp. Tom Holland is the best kind of popular history writer. He is a good researcher who knows what can be stated with emphasis and what needs to be judiciously hedged. He is a fine story-teller, who can weave bare facts into a smooth and engaging narrative. He is provocative and startling enough to keep the reader on their toes and turning pages. And he is…

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Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazareth “Myth”

Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazareth “Myth”

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Not only is the idea that Jesus came from Nazareth a common element in all four canonical gospels, it also seems to have been an awkward fact that did not fit well with the gospel writers’ claim he was the Messiah. This indicates it is likely his origin in this small village was a historical fact. Jesus Mythicists often deal with this by removing Nazareth from the story and some even claim all the archaeologists are wrong and Nazareth did…

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“Aron Ra” Gets Everything Wrong

“Aron Ra” Gets Everything Wrong

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Unfortunately the New Atheist activist who calls himself “Aron Ra” is all too typical of this kind of polemicist – he does not let his profound ignorance of history stop him from pontificating about it. In a recent debate he put this on full display, with a remarkable burst of pseudo historical gibberish proclaimed with supreme confidence and smug self-assurance. Yet virtually everything he said was wrong. L. Aron Nelson, the anti-theism activist who calls himself “Aron Ra”, has a…

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Review – Nathan Johnstone “The New Atheism: Myth and History”

Review – Nathan Johnstone “The New Atheism: Myth and History”

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Nathan Johnstone, The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion, (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018) 309 pp. Since 2015 I have been arguing on this blog that many anti-theistic and anti-religious activists often abuse and distort history while making their case against religion. Too many New Atheists use outdated, naive, over-simplified or simply plain wrong ideas about history in their arguments and claim to be “rational” while doing so. Now historian Nathan Johnstone has written an excellent monograph…

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The Great Myths 7: “Hitler’s Pope”?

The Great Myths 7: “Hitler’s Pope”?

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In God is Not Great the New Atheist writer Christopher Hitchens describes how March 2 1939 saw “the death of an anti-Nazi pope and the accession of a pro-Nazi one”. The claim that Pius XII was friendly with, or at least passively acquiescent to, the Nazi regime is an unquestioned dictum in New Atheist circles. This is despite the fact the claim Pius XII was “Hitler’s Pope” is a total distortion of history. Hitchens and “Hitler’s Pope” Christopher Hitchens was…

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Jesus Mythicism 4: Jesus as an Amalgam of Many Figures

Jesus Mythicism 4: Jesus as an Amalgam of Many Figures

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When discussing the historicity of Jesus and debating the claims of Jesus Mythicists I often come across people who take the view that there may be at least some historical basis for Jesus, but there was no single historical person. They claim he was an amalgam of many different figures from the time, not one man. These people rarely back this idea up with evidence-based argument, but when they do, it does not stand up to critical scrutiny. The “Amalgam…

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Medieval Maps and Monsters

Medieval Maps and Monsters

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If Bob Seidensticker, New Atheist author of the Cross Examined blog, knows anything about the Middle Ages, he knows they were bad. According to Seidensticker, this was a period in which “Christianity was in charge” and learning and reason suffered as a result. So when Seidensticker looked at the medieval Hereford Map, he did not like what he saw. In a blog post entitled “When Christianity Was in Charge, This Is What We Got”, Seidensticker made it very clear how…

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