History for atheists

[Thomas]

Here's a useful resource provided by Tim O’Neill, who describes himself as an atheist, but who doesn't make a big deal out of trying to disprove theism as such.

O'Neill produced the blog to correct the many errors and dubious historical claims made by 'new atheists'. His premise is simple: rationalists should not base their arguments on errors and distortions.

Among the many 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.

Enjoy

 

[wil]

Lol, I've heard these rarely from atheists other than internet memes...

I just fund it funny that so many atheists are literal fundamentalists.

And have as much use for radical atheists as I do for the religious that act the same.

 

[Thomas]

Lol, I've heard these rarely from atheists other than internet memes...

Oh, there's a few, half a dozen, that have been declared by here ...

I just fund it funny that so many atheists are literal fundamentalists.

I think the same of 'liberal theologians' who assume the literal reading as the basis of their critiques.

And have as much use for radical atheists as I do for the religious that act the same.

Ditto. And likewise their leftwing counterparts.

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

Thomas, you once scoffed at 'Enlightenment' as a poorly named era, do you mind expanding on this, it might fit somewhat with the OP?

 

[Thomas]

"Christianity claimed to bring light, hope, and truth, but its central myth was incredible, its dogma a conflation of rustic superstitions, its sacred book an incoherent collection of primitive tales, its church a cohort of servile fanatics as long as they were out of power and of despotic fanatics once they had seized control." (Peter Gay, "The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism")

I had once paraded the idea of the Enlightenment as the triumph of the rational over religion.

There is indeed a somewhat extreme historiography favoured by New Atheists, that embraces the idea that Antiquity was destroyed by the rise of a new religion that plunged the world into a theocentric, anti-scientific and deeply oppressive Dark Age, dominated completely by an all-powerful Catholic Church.

Such dreadful conditions continued until the Renaissance and the Reformation broke the grip of the Church and in turn gave rise to science, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.

It's a view that divides history into a story of the Good Guys (the rational) v the Bad Guys (the religious).

These nineteenth century views have been largely reviewed and revised by later scholarship. As ever, what emerges is a picture that's not quite so black and white as either I and the NAs might like to think ...

Many of the Enlightenment thinkers were Catholic (Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, Montesquieu), many Protestant (Hume, Locke, Kant). Some have been identified as deists, but identified deists were rare, and moreover a Deist theology never really impacted Enlightenment thinking. Its notoriety was more in the mind of its critics than in actuality.

These enlightenment thinkers did not necessarily abandon their beliefs, rather they tried, as the Fathers of the Church had done, to explain their faith in the light of contemporary scientific/philosophical understanding.

Equally, the concept that our contemporary liberal values derive from revolutionaries of the Enlightenemtn is dubious as well. Rather it is the case that the bringing of liberty and education to the masses came not from bewigged aristocrats in Parisian salons or London coffee houses, but via earnest Quakers and parish priests.

Such things as universal suffrage or the Emancipation Movement may well be framed in the context of the new philosophical dialogue, but they drew on much older Christian ideals of equality and dignity for their foundation.

"What the 'Enlightenment' really was, however, was a great elite talking-shop in which gentlemen in brocade coats and ladies in rich silks, it was said, 'talked about freedom and the Rights of Man once the servants had gone to bed'." ("Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith", p74)

 

[RJM]

Here's a useful resource provided by Tim O’Neill, who describes himself as an atheist, but who doesn't make a big deal out of trying to disprove theism as such.

O'Neill produced the blog to correct the many errors and dubious historical claims made by 'new atheists'. His premise is simple: rationalists should not base their arguments on errors and distortions.

Among the many 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.

Enjoy

What a treat! Thank you ...

 

[wil]

This time you made me look up... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deists

 

[A Cup Of Tea]

"Christianity claimed to bring light, hope, and truth, but its central myth was incredible, its dogma a conflation of rustic superstitions, its sacred book an incoherent collection of primitive tales, its church a cohort of servile fanatics as long as they were out of power and of despotic fanatics once they had seized control." (Peter Gay, "The Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Paganism")

I had once paraded the idea of the Enlightenment as the triumph of the rational over religion.

There is indeed a somewhat extreme historiography favoured by New Atheists, that embraces the idea that Antiquity was destroyed by the rise of a new religion that plunged the world into a theocentric, anti-scientific and deeply oppressive Dark Age, dominated completely by an all-powerful Catholic Church.

Such dreadful conditions continued until the Renaissance and the Reformation broke the grip of the Church and in turn gave rise to science, the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution.

It's a view that divides history into a story of the Good Guys (the rational) v the Bad Guys (the religious).

These nineteenth century views have been largely reviewed and revised by later scholarship. As ever, what emerges is a picture that's not quite so black and white as either I and the NAs might like to think ...

Many of the Enlightenment thinkers were Catholic (Voltaire, Diderot, Condorcet, Montesquieu), many Protestant (Hume, Locke, Kant). Some have been identified as deists, but identified deists were rare, and moreover a Deist theology never really impacted Enlightenment thinking. Its notoriety was more in the mind of its critics than in actuality.

These enlightenment thinkers did not necessarily abandon their beliefs, rather they tried, as the Fathers of the Church had done, to explain their faith in the light of contemporary scientific/philosophical understanding.

Equally, the concept that our contemporary liberal values derive from revolutionaries of the Enlightenemtn is dubious as well. Rather it is the case that the bringing of liberty and education to the masses came not from bewigged aristocrats in Parisian salons or London coffee houses, but via earnest Quakers and parish priests.

Such things as universal suffrage or the Emancipation Movement may well be framed in the context of the new philosophical dialogue, but they drew on much older Christian ideals of equality and dignity for their foundation.

"What the 'Enlightenment' really was, however, was a great elite talking-shop in which gentlemen in brocade coats and ladies in rich silks, it was said, 'talked about freedom and the Rights of Man once the servants had gone to bed'." ("Slaying the Dragons: Destroying Myths in the History of Science and Faith", p74)

My own view of the Enlightenment is not that it was counter religious in essence, but a shift in what and how things were explored.
Going by your text, and the ending quote in particular, one would think that the Enlightenment didn't have any effect on society at all, and if it did, it was certainly for the worst!