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Tertullian

Dissection
The Church and Dissection

The Church and Dissection

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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…

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Davidic
Jesus Mythicism 6: Paul’s Davidic Jesus in Romans 1:3

Jesus Mythicism 6: Paul’s Davidic Jesus in Romans 1:3

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The opening of Paul’s letter to the Romans contains a statement that Jesus was a descendant of King David (Romans 1:3). Most Jesus Mythicists claim that Paul only believed in Jesus as a celestial figure, not an earthly, human and recently historical one. So, as usual, they have to strive hard to find ways to make a text fit their convoluted theories. The results are typically contrived and unconvincing. Sometime in the late 50s AD Paul wrote a letter to…

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Transmission
The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning

The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning

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The idea that we only have a fraction of Greek and Roman learning and literature because most of it was destroyed by Christians is a common assumed truism in much New Atheist discourse. But this is substantially a simplistic myth based on a number of misconceptions and errors of fact. If anything, we have a succession of Christian scholars to thank for all of the ancient learning that survives. The wicked destruction of the wondrous learning of the ancients by…

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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

Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

Review – Catherine Nixey “The Darkening Age”

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Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age: The Christian Destruction of the Classical World, (Macmillan, 2017) 305 pp. Her publisher’s blurb informs us that Nixey’s book tells “the largely unknown – and deeply shocking – story” of how a militant Christianity “extinguished the teachings of the Classical world” and was “violent, ruthless and intolerant” in an orgy of destruction and oppression that was “an annihilation”. On the other hand, no less an authority than the esteemed historian of Late Antiquity, Dame Averil…

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Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

Jesus Mythicism 1: The Tacitus Reference to Jesus

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Publius Cornelius Tacitus was one of the most reliable of all Roman historians and many first century figures are known to us solely through his mention of them. This means his passing reference to Jesus in Annals XV.44 remains an fly in the ointment of the Jesus Myth hypothesis. Despite Tacitus’ reliability and the scholarly agreement that the reference is genuine, Mythicist ideologues have several ways by which they try to dismiss this reference; all of them characteristically weak. The…

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