Review – Bart D. Ehrman “The Triumph of Christianity

Review – Bart D. Ehrman “The Triumph of Christianity

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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…

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Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”

Jesus Mythicism 2: “James, the Brother of the Lord”

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It makes sense that the sect which survived Jesus’ execution would be more likely to leave an early historical trace than Jesus himself, given his relative obscurity in his lifetime. Seeing that this sect seems to have been led initially by his brother James, it also makes sense that we would get early historical references to James. This is why two references to Jesus’ brother, one contemporary and one by a non-Christian historian, represent a crucial flaw in the claim…

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Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

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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…

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An Islamic “Reformation”? – Pseudo History meets Politics

An Islamic “Reformation”? – Pseudo History meets Politics

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New Atheists generally acknowledge that it was the 9/11 attacks that gave their anti-theistic movement its initial impetus. Not surprisingly, several of their leading lights, led by Dawkins, Harris and comedian Bill Maher, have become trenchant critics of Islam as a key example of the toxicity of unfettered religion. These critics therefore lionise the ex-Muslim atheist Ayaan Hirsi Ali and support her calls for an Islamic equivalent to the Protestant Reformation. But is this based on good history? Ayaan Hirsi…

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The Lost Books of Photios’ Bibliotheca

The Lost Books of Photios’ Bibliotheca

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If New Atheists know anything about ancient Greek and Roman learning, they know that Christians destroyed it. They will grudgingly admit that at least some ancient works of wisdom, science and rationalism were preserved in the “Dark Ages”, but generally this is quickly followed by laments that these represent only a fraction of the storied wealth of ancient learning and thundering condemnations of the Christian destruction, suppression and neglect that led to this learning’s ultimate loss. But is this accurate?…

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The Archimedes Palimpsest

The Archimedes Palimpsest

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New Atheist discussions of the history of science are almost always based on some form of the Conflict Thesis. Despite the fact this conception of an eternal “warfare between science and religion” has long since been rejected by historians of science, anti-theists have an emotional commitment to this dusty nineteenth century idea, with most naively accepting it without question while a few struggle to prop it up in the face of the consensus of modern historians that it is simplistic,…

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Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was one of the most reliable of all Roman historians and many first century figures are known to us solely through his mention of them. This means his passing reference to Jesus in Annals XV.44 remains an fly in the ointment of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Despite Tacitus’ reliability and the scholarly agreement that the reference is genuine, Mythicist ideologues have several ways by which they try to dismiss this reference; all of them characteristically weak. The…

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The Great Myths 5: The Destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria

The Great Myths 5: The Destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria

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If there is a story that forms the heart of New Atheist bad history, it’s the tale of the Great Library of Alexandria and its destruction by a Christian mob.  It’s the central moral fable of the Draper-White Thesis, where wise and rational Greeks and Romans store up all the wisdom of the pre-Christian ancient world in a single library, treasuring science and reason and bringing western civilisation to the brink of a technological and industrial revolution.  But then a…

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Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

Did Jesus Exist? The Jesus Myth Theory, Again.

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The consensus of scholars, including non-Christian scholars, is that a historical Jesus most likely existed and the later stories about “Jesus Christ” were told about him.  The idea that there was no such historical person at all and that “Jesus Christ” was a purely mythical figure has been posited in one form or another since the eighteenth century, but is not taken seriously by anyone but a tiny handful of fringe scholars and amateurs.  Despite this, the Jesus Myth thesis…

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Welcome to the New Look Blog

Welcome to the New Look Blog

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When I began “History for Atheists” in October 2015 it was largely as an opportunity to put down some summaries of why certain persistent New Atheist pseudo historical myths are wrong, curate the positions of expert historians and other scholars on relevant issues and direct readers to reliable information on history.  This was at least, in part, because I found myself writing refutations to the same nonsense claims over and over again and was starting to find the repetition pretty…

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