History for Atheists

I wasn't quite sure where to put this one; this seemed the most fitting.

History for Atheists

This blog is for articles, book reviews and critiques relating to “New Atheist Bad History” – the misuse of history and the use of biased, erroneous or distorted pseudo history by anti-theistic atheists. The author is an atheist himself so no, this is not some theist apologetics blog. It is simply an attempt to call out and correct the misuse of history, because rationalists should not base their arguments on errors and distortions.  Among the myths and pseudo historical theories that this blog tackles are:

• That there was no historical Jesus at all and that Christianity arose out of a belief in a purely mythic/celestial being, not a historical Jewish preacher
  
  
• That Christianity caused the “Dark Ages” by systematically destroying almost all ancient Greco-Roman learning,
  
  
• That Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria and that Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered because of a Christian hatred of science
  
  
• That pagan Greco_Roman society was rational and scientific and fairly non-religious and was on the brink of a scientific and technological revolution
  
  
• That Constantine was a crypto-pagan who adopted Christianity as a cynical political ploy (and he personally created the Bible)
  
  
• That Christianity somehow held back technology and we’d all be living on Mars by now if it wasn’t for the “Dark Ages”
  
  
• That Medieval Europe was a theocracy ruled by the Church, which wielded supreme power and killed anyone who questioned any aspect of its teachings
  
  
• That scientists were oppressed during the Middle Ages and science stagnated completely until “the Renaissance”
  
  
• That “the Inquisition” was a kind of Europe-wide medieval Gestapo and that the medieval Church was an all-powerful totalitarian theocracy
  
  
•  That Giordano Bruno was a wise and brave astronomer and cosmologist who was burned at the stake because the Church hated science
  
  
• That the Galileo Affair was a straightforward case of religion ignoring evidence and trying to suppress scientific advancement
  
  
• That Pope Pius XII was a friend and ally of the Nazis who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and helped Nazis escape justice
  

 

The tone of this blog tends to range from amused exasperation to mild scorn, though it will aim to go into sufficient technical detail, scholarly analysis and primary evidence to explain why the bad history in question is flawed. Comments on posts are welcome, though the author gives back what he gets, so civil comments will get civil replies and uncivil ones will definitely not. Be warned.

You won't find a friend to parapsychology here, but you will find plenty of interesting stuff that I'll bet a good number of the membership here didn't know before. I definitely learned new things about the Roman Empire, the Middle Ages, Bruno, Galileo, and early Christianity.

I didn't even know there were people who thought it was christians who burned the library of alexandria. I mean wasn't the famous quote about it that "If it agrees with the Qu'ran it isn't needed and if it disagrees with the Qu'ran it isn't wanted"?

I didn't even know there were people who thought it was christians who burned the library of alexandria. I mean wasn't the famous quote about it that "If it agrees with the Qu'ran it isn't needed and if it disagrees with the Qu'ran it isn't wanted"?

?

The library had ceased to exist centuries before the advent of Islam.

According to Wikipedia it was the Serapeum, a later library in Alexandria, that was destroyed by Christians in the late fourth century.

According to Wikipedia it was the Serapeum, a later library in Alexandria, that was destroyed by Christians in the late fourth century.

As it happens, that gets brought up in the article on Alexandria:

When the mythic version of the story of the destruction of the Serapeum gets told it usually begins without explaining why the temple was attacked.  These retellings focus on the supposed destruction of its library, so they tend to assume that the mob was there simply because they hated learning.  But several accounts of the end of the temple note that it came as the climax of a series of attacks by pagans on Christians in reaction to the desecration of pagan idols...

We have no less than five accounts of the destruction of the Serapeum – Rufinius Tyrannius, Socrates Scholasticus, Sozomen, Theodoret and Eunapius of Antioch – which is rare in ancient history and actually makes this one of the best documented events in the period.  What is significant about them is that not one of them mentions a library...

The lack of any mention of a library is most likely explained by concluding that it was no longer there by 391 AD.  Temples had begun to be starved of funds with the conversion of the emperors of Christianity and the slower but gradual conversion of many rich patrons and city benefactors.  The Serapeum survived most of the fourth century, but it is very likely that the expense of maintaining an extensive library would have been a strain.  We know that it was ransacked on the orders of the Alexandrian bishop George the Cappodocian c. 360 AD and it is likely the library was looted in this action. 

As it happens, that gets brought up in the article on Alexandria:

Thanks. I was just reading that. To be fair to Wikipedia, it does also mention similar arguments, at the same time as citing a source that suggests the opposite.

I see there are also references to stories of the Muslims destroying a still later library in Alexandria, though their accuracy seems to be doubted.

A lot of the stuff on that blog covers the ancient and medieval world, but the most recent entry gets into modern history:

The Great Myths 7: "Hitler's Pope"

This is the latest in an on-going series that should be required reading, for atheists and the religious.

Jesus Mythicism 5: The Nazereth "Myth"

If there is anything most people would say they know about Jesus it is the fact he came from Nazareth. After all, after “Jesus Christ” he is most commonly referred to as “Jesus of Nazareth” and his home town of Nazareth features in popular narratives about him: for example, in the well known Christmas stories. Nazareth also features as his place of origin in all four of the canonical gospels and appears in a significant story of his return to his home town in the three Synoptics.

So why do many Jesus Mythicists argue that Nazareth is an addition to the Jesus stories or even that no such place existed? This is because the Nazareth element is awkward for the gospel writers in ways that strongly indicate it was a historical element that they had to include, despite that awkwardness. For Mythicists, elements which seem to indicate historicity cannot be allowed to stand, so they have to find ways to make this one go away. Their attempts to do so are, as ever, convoluted, contrived, based on carefully selected snippets of scholarship and a lot of suppositions and – in the most extreme cases – crackpot pseudo archaeology and crazed conspiracy theories.

The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning

In the fairy tale version of history used by these polemicists, the Greeks and Romans were wise and rational and scientific and on the brink of a scientific and industrial revolution until the evil Christians came along, destroyed almost all of their learning and plunged us into a dark age. What little we have of Greco-Roman learning survived this holocaust of ignorance by chance, largely thanks to Arabic scholars who preserved these fragments until they could be rescued from medieval ignorance by the marvellous rationalists of the Renaissance. As usual, this simple and pretty picture is almost entirely nonsense.

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

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.

1 John 4: 2-3

"2This is how you can recognize the Spirit of God: Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, 3but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming and even now is already in the world."

John 1:14

"14 The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth."