Browsed by
Tag: Medieval

Medieval

The Inquisition
The Great Myths 14: “The Inquisition” – Myths and History

The Great Myths 14: “The Inquisition” – Myths and History

Comments 73 comments

Along with “the Witch Craze” and “the Crusades”, the violence and oppression of “the Inquisition” is part of a triumvirate of historical atrocities that is usually invoked by anti-theists as proof of the wickedness of Christianity in particular and religion in general. “Everyone knows” these things were evil, even though what most people know about each of these things is largely wrong. This is perhaps most the case with “the Inquisition”; given that there was never a single institution by…

Read More Read More

Interview Dr Philipp Nothaft
Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas

Interview – Dr. Philipp Nothaft on the Date of Christmas

Comments 8 comments

My guest today is Dr Philipp Nothaft. Philipp is a Fellow of All Souls Oxford and a historian specializing in astronomy, astrology and calendars in late antiquity, the Middle Ages and early modern Europe. He’s also the author of a key paper on the question of why Christmas falls on December 25th, which is our main topic today. It’s often claimed in pop history that Christians stole a pagan feast day and made it into Christmas, and this is a…

Read More Read More

Review – Alec Ryrie “Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt”

Review – Alec Ryrie “Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt”

Comments 34 comments

Alec Ryrie, Unbelievers – An Emotional History of Doubt (William Collins, 2019) 262 pp. We unbelievers are often mentioned in passing in histories of religion, but there are only a few works of history that focus on those of us who reject religion or who never held religious beliefs at all. This one is by a scholar who is a Christian, but one who strives to give a balanced and nuanced view of how various modern Western strains of unbelief…

Read More Read More

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Al-Ghazali

Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Al-Ghazali

Comments 55 comments

While he identifies more as an agnostic than an atheist, astrophysicist and science populariser Neil DeGrasse Tyson is a favourite among anti-theist activists and their followers. This is not just because of his advocacy of a scientific world view and general scepticism toward supernatural claims – it is also because he makes occasional forays into history. Tyson presents easily digestible stories on the history of science that, generally, present science and religion in opposition to each other in what are…

Read More Read More

Dissection
The Church and Dissection

The Church and Dissection

Comments 44 comments

The claim that the Medieval Church “banned dissection” and so set back progress in the study of human anatomy is often made in popular sources. It is also regularly found in academic sources by medical experts commenting on the history of anatomy. So, unsurprisingly, it is often produced by anti-theists as evidence that Christianity retarded scientific knowledge for religious reasons. This is despite the fact there was no such “ban” and that the practice of anatomical dissection that founded the…

Read More Read More

Biblical Literalism
The Great Myths 11: Biblical Literalism

The Great Myths 11: Biblical Literalism

Comments 134 comments

It is assumed in much anti-theistic polemic that the Bible has traditionally always been interpreted literally. A lot of criticism of believers is based on how irrational, impossible and anti-scientific such a reading of the Bible has to be and how the current literalism of many fundamentalist Christians simply reflects how the Bible has always been read, with non-literal interpretations simply a modern rear-guard attempt to reconcile the Bible with current understandings of the world. But this is not true….

Read More Read More

Stephen Hicks Mangles History

Stephen Hicks Mangles History

Comments 51 comments

Dr. Stephen Hicks thinks the Early Middle Ages were a “Dark Age” thanks to the Church, and considers any revision of that idea to be the work of conservative ideologues. Working from dubious sources, a succession of erroneous presuppositions and some total fantasy, he supports this via a sustained string of bungled arguments about history that leaves his audience considerably dumber for having heard them. Why do atheist philosophers keep doing this? I was not aware of Dr Stephen Hicks…

Read More Read More

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

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

Comments 206 comments

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…

Read More Read More

Medieval Maps and Monsters

Medieval Maps and Monsters

Comments 63 comments

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…

Read More Read More

Sam Harris’ Horrible Histories

Sam Harris’ Horrible Histories

Comments 104 comments

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…

Read More Read More