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Tag: Inquisition

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 Too many New Atheists use outdated, naive, over-simplified or simply plain wrong ideas about history in their arguments and claim to be “rational” while doing so.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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History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 3 – The So-called “Dark Ages”

History for Atheists on the Non Sequitur Show 3 – The So-called “Dark Ages”

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Yesterday Steve McRae and Kyle Curtis of the Non Sequitur Show were kind enough to have me back on, this time to discuss the myths around the medieval period as a “dark age” where Christianity suppressed Greco-Roman knowledge, crushed science, stifled technology, burned witches, banned baths and killed cats. The No-So-Dark Ages – Part 1 The Not-So-Dark Ages – Part 2

The Great Myths 6: Copernicus’ Deathbed Publication

The Great Myths 6: Copernicus’ Deathbed Publication

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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…

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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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