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The Great Myths 16: The Conflict Between Science and Religion

The Great Myths 16: The Conflict Between Science and Religion

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The “Conflict Thesis” forms a kind of underlying historical metamyth that informs and undergirds a substantial number of assumptions about history by anti-theist polemicists. This is the assumed and unquestioned idea that Science and Religion have been perpetually at war down the ages. Also known as the Draper-White Thesis or Warfare Model, it is a conception of the history of science that presents religion as the perpetual and consistent enemy of science, technology and progress. It is a pervasive idea…

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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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Giordano Bruno – Gaspar Schoppe’s Account of his Condemnation

Giordano Bruno – Gaspar Schoppe’s Account of his Condemnation

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In my previous post, “The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science“, I noted the excellent work of Alberto A. Martinez in his recent article “Giordano Bruno and the heresy of many worlds”, (Annals of Science, Volume 73, 2016, Issue 4, pp. 345-374). Martinez makes a solid case against the general scholarly consensus that Bruno’s multiple worlds cosmology was not one of the reasons he was condemned for heresy, and goes so far as to argue it…

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The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science

The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science

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Last month the Italian National Association of Free Thought gathered in the Campo de’Fiori in Rome to commemorate the 417th anniversary of the execution by burning at the stake of Giordano Bruno on that spot on February 17, 1600. The ceremony highlighted Bruno as a free-thinker who ran afoul of dogmatic religious beliefs. But he was also remembered by others as a scientist who died because his rational thought contradicted the superstition of his day and a symbol of an…

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