Browsed by
Tag: Paganism

Review – Catherine Nixey “Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God”

Review – Catherine Nixey “Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God”

Comments 36 comments

Catherine Nixey, Heresy – Jesus Christ and Other Sons of God (Picador, 2024) 365 pp. British journalist Catherine Nixey’s first foray into popular history, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017) received enthusiastic praise by many non-specialist reviewers and an even more rapturous reception by certain polemicists, who relished its fundamentally anti-Christian thesis. It was far less well-regarded by historians who are expert in the periods and topics it covers, who condemned it as biased,…

Read More Read More

Hypatia - Myths and History
Hypatia – Myths and History

Hypatia – Myths and History

Comments 5 comments

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…

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

The Closing of the Athenian Academy
The Closing of the Athenian Academy

The Closing of the Athenian Academy

Comments 42 comments

In 529 AD Damascius, the last head of the Academy in Athens, closed down the philosophical school and, with several fellow scholars, went into exile in Persia. This is often portrayed as the final act in “the closing of the western mind” and the beginning of “the darkening age”; the symbolic closing of an institution founded by Plato himself almost a millennium earlier. It is regularly portrayed in popular writing and anti-theist polemic as the end of ancient science and…

Read More Read More

Andrew Henry
Interview – Andrew Henry on Easter and “Pagan Origins”

Interview – Andrew Henry on Easter and “Pagan Origins”

Comments 18 comments

My latest guest is Dr Andrew Henry, who is an adjunct professor at George Washington University in Washington DC and a specialist in late antique Mediterranean religion. He is also the writer and presenter of the excellent Religion for Breakfast YouTube channel, where he has several videos debunking claims about the supposed “pagan origins” of Christian festivals. In this conversation we discuss the various claims about the supposed “pagan origin” of the date of and customs surrounding Easter. We go…

Read More Read More

Joe Wilson
Interview – Joseph A.P. Wilson on Was Paul Sexist?

Interview – Joseph A.P. Wilson on Was Paul Sexist?

Comments 7 comments

Both conservative Christians and many atheist activists point to 1Corinthians 14:34-35 and note how Paul forbids women to speak in church. The Christians do this to maintain that women should not preach and cannot be pastors or priests. The atheists usually do so to hold this up as evidence that Paul was a misogynist and Christianity is inherently sexist. But did Paul really write this? And was it Christianity which made the Greco-Roman world less egalitarian or was it actually…

Read More Read More

Is Easter Pagan?
Is Easter Pagan?

Is Easter Pagan?

Comments 10 comments

Every year fundamentalist Christians, New Agers, neo-pagans and many atheists loudly agree that Easter was not originally a Christian feast and was a pagan fertility festival stolen by Christianity. Unfortunately, despite what endless memes and pop history articles claim, this idea is complete nonsense. So is the claim that Easter eggs and the Easter Bunny are also originally pagan. It is rather ironic that a set of false historical claims about the origin of Easter and its customs are propagated…

Read More Read More

Halloween
Is Halloween Pagan?

Is Halloween Pagan?

Comments 159 comments

The idea that all the traditional holidays and festivals of the year are “pagan” in origin and were simply “stolen by the Church” is one that has permeated popular culture and is repeated without question in newspaper, magazine and online articles. It is perhaps not surprising that harried journalists and underpaid online content writers are uncritical about these claims, but it is more strange that prominent atheists are as well, given they are meant to be sceptics who check their…

Read More Read More

Hitler
Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?

Hitler: Atheist, Pagan or Christian?

Comments 162 comments

Many ideologues want the world’s most reviled man to belong to “the other side”. There are some Christians who claim Hitler was a pagan who led an “atheistic regime” or even that he was an atheist himself. On the other hand, many atheists claim he was a devout Catholic or at least some kind of Christian who was cosy with the churches. So what is true? Was Adolf Hitler an atheist, a neo-pagan occultist or a devout Christian? Or was…

Read More Read More

Pagan Christmas

Pagan Christmas

Comments 70 comments

It is traditional that the media be filled with pseudo historical nonsense about the pagan elements of Christmas at this time of year. But atheists who claim to be “working for a more rational world” really should be more careful than harried journalists when presenting the “real history” of the season. Unfortunately, they almost never are. As I have noted here before, the media loves giving dubious background stories on traditions and festivals. At Christmas, it fills column inches or…

Read More Read More