Did you know that the “New Atheists and their online acolytes” have “a long list” of historical ideas that are “wildly wrong”? If this situation has been causing you sleepless nights then you will be relieved to learn that Tim O’Neill has started a new blog to bring these dimwits to their senses. It’s called . . . .
For those of us who had not realized the full extent of this problem, Tim explains that these New Atheists — and he names them: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens (and also P.Z. Myers, Jerry Coyne and Richard Carrier) — happen to get wrong just about any and everything they ever say about history whenever they try to declare how bad religion has been for humanity.
Given that they are such historical ignoramuses it is not surprising that the one “cluster of fervid and contrived pseudo history” that comes in for special attention is the “elaborate fringe theory . . . that is the Jesus Myth hypothesis”.
Tim proudly promises his readers plenty of sarcasm and scorn [meaning, if he continues with his past form, personal insults and abuse along with plenty of factual and logical fallacies], but his opening post, Why History for Atheists? An apologia for (yet) another blog, also promises some confusion of argument besides.
Before we address the promised confusion let’s understand more of Tim’s view of his new blog. Tim is pretty pleased the number of online hits to his earlier articles, laced as they are with “occasionally Irish-Australian atheist bastardry”, and has interpreted these clicks as “an appetite and a clear need for some level headed, carefully researched and objective fact checking and debunking of New Atheist Bad History”. Of course Tim is the one equipped and willing enough to meet that appetite and need.
He sincerely assures his readers that though his motives are dual they are not duplicitous. His two motives are
- Firstly, I love history, including the history of religions, especially Christianity. . . .
- Secondly, as a rationalist, I like to take rationalism seriously. So I go where the evidence takes me on history as with everything else. However much an idea may appeal to me emotionally, if the historical evidence doesn’t support it, I can’t accept it. Many New Atheists don’t seem capable of putting their emotions aside and looking at the evidence.
Little sign of the self-awareness and humility of a Daniel Boyarin here.
Thank God and Rationalism for Tim.
So what is all of this history that the New Atheists get wrong? Tim set it all out in “the long list”:
- Christians burned down the Great Library of Alexandria and Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered because of a Christian hatred of science
- Constantine was a cryptopagan who adopted Christianity as a cynical political ploy (and personally created the Bible)
- Scientists were oppressed during the Middle Ages and science stagnated completely until “the Renaissance”
- “The Inquisition” was a kind of Europe wide medieval Gestapo and the medieval Church was an all powerful totalitarian theocracy
- Giordano Bruno was a wise and brave astronomer and cosmologist who was burned at the stake because the Church hated science
- The Galileo Affair was a straightforward case of religion ignoring evidence and trying to suppress scientific advancement
- Pope Pius XII was a friend and ally of the Nazis who turned a blind eye to the Holocaust and helped Nazis escape justice
I hadn’t realized Dawkins, Harris, Dennett and Hitchens, have been filling our sponge-brains with such dated prejudices. Continue reading ““New Atheists Are Bad Historians””