Great Myths #16: The Conflict Thesis

Other posts in the 'series':

    The Great Myths 1: The Medieval Flat Earth
    The Great Myths 2: Christmas, Mithras and Paganism
    The Great Myths 3: Giordano Bruno was a Martyr for Science
    The Great Myths 4: Constantine, Nicea and the Bible
    The Great Myths 5: The Destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria
    The Great Myths 6: Copernicus’ Deathbed Publication
    The Great Myths 7: “Hitler’s Pope”?
    The Great Myths 8: The Loss of Ancient Learning
    The Great Myths 9: Hypatia of Alexandria
    The Great Myths 10: Soviet Atheism
    The Great Myths 11: Biblical Literalism
    The Great Myths 12: Religious Wars and Violence
    The Great Myths 13: The Renaissance Myth
    The Great Myths 14: ‘The Inquisition’ – Myths and History
    The Great Myths 15: What about the ‘Dark Ages’?
    The Great Myths 16: The Conflict Between Science and Religion

* https://historyforatheists.com/the-great-myths/

He also has some good interviews (with authors) on his Youtube channel:

* https://www.youtube.com/@historyforatheists9363/videos

* https://historyforatheists.com/video-channel-2/

Neat read that I think I will have to come back to.

I think it should be clear that religion clearly was not a historical road block to progress. If only because of how religious many of the names we can remember were.

I have grown to read a lot of modern criticisms of Christianity with difficulty. Too many people pushing the criticisms seem to take the view that the ills of the past were unique to Christianity. Which, again, we have plenty of evidence that people do bad things. In many contexts.

I would be interested to know what has given rise to some of the modern conflict with religions. To this day, I can't come up with a reason for people not directly studying it to care how old the earth is. And I'm always at a complete loss for people that don't believe in dinosaurs. Or the flat earth stuff. Just how is that spreading?

> It is reported in the Supplement of the Council of Nicaea that the Fathers, when they had no idea how to determine which were the questionable or apocryphal books of the Old and New Testament, piled all of them disorderly on an altar; and the books to be rejected fell to the ground. It’s a pity this nice method has fallen into disuse nowadays.

Nice to see this ancient practice reinstated in recruitment with resumés.