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…
The young sceptic Alex O’Connor of the Cosmic Skeptic video channel has built a substantial audience discussing theological and philosophical questions from an atheistic and rationalist perspective. But when he tries to discuss history, he is on unsure ground and two forays onto the complex subject of the Galileo Affair have seen him present bungled misapprehensions and some outright pseudo historical fantasy to his followers. The content creator Alex O’Connor is a 23 year old recent graduate from Oxford who…
The anti-theistic activist who calls himself “Aron Ra” has responded to my critique of some of his historical claims. The resulting self-indulgent exercise in dodging, distraction, subject-changing, whining, tone policing, sophistry and pomposity only serves to further illustrate this polemicist’s profound ignorance of history. In August 2019 I wrote a detailed analysis of a series of claims about history made by the atheist activist who calls himself “Aron Ra”, all of which were completely wrong. As a result, I entitled…
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…
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…
On July 8 2018 the neuroscientist and New Atheist luminary, Sam Harris, sat down for an interview with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. In the course of their conversation Shapiro argued that western values are derived from Judeo-Christian roots. Harris disputed this and, in doing so, presented a sustained six minutes of total pseudo historical gibberish. Shapiro’s grasp of history was little better and neither did a particularly good job of making their case, but Harris’ string of historical howlers is…
Copernicus first circulated his ideas in 1514, but the Catholic Church did not get around to condemning his heliocentric cosmology until the Inquisition’s injunction against Galileo in 1616. If the Church opposed science and condemned any idea that was contrary to the Bible, why the century long delay? And why did they never persecute Copernicus himself? Many new atheists explain this by claiming he kept his ideas secret and only published his book when he was on his deathbed to escape…
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…
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…