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Entries Tagged as 'Christian History'

Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II

February 18th, 2010 2 Comments

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. In Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I, I addressed Valliant’s claims that science and freedom of religion were unanimously opposed by Christians and the success of science and freedom of religion in Europe was solely [...]

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Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part I

February 12th, 2010 14 Comments

Recently Peter Cresswell published a guest post by James Valliant, which originally appeared on SOLO. The following series is a critique of this piece.
Valliant’s basic thesis is that,
Both science and freedom came about among European Christians despite the best efforts of pious Christians to prevent their development, and only on a foundation of pagan, pre-Christian [...]

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Contra Mundum: The Flat-Earth Myth

December 1st, 2009 35 Comments

A while back I made a passing comment on my blog criticising an advertisement which claimed that, prior to Columbus, the Church taught that the world was flat. In response I received the following email from a high-school student in the US,
I’ve been studying Christopher Columbus in my history class and my history books say [...]

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Guest Post: Dan Brown’s History of Science

October 23rd, 2009 135 Comments

This guest post was submitted by Dr James Hannam. Dr Hannam is a UK based historian with degrees in physics and history from the Universities of Oxford and London and a PhD in the history of science from the University of Cambridge. He blogs at Quodlibeta.

The film adaptation of [...]

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Common Historical Myths About the Church

October 19th, 2009 4 Comments

This post is part update, part recycle.
Earlier on in this blog’s life, I ran a small series of posts last year on common historical myths about the Church that  are so pervasive in society that most Christians fall for them. Anyway, after receiving some correspondence, I have updated this post, More on the “Dark Ages” [...]

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Weight Watchers and the Historical Atrocities Argument

July 8th, 2009 6 Comments

We’ve all heard the slogan that atheism is superior to theism because of all the atrocities committed in the name of religion. If you flick through the pages of the new-atheist publications by the likes of Dawkins, Hitchens, Loftus, Harris, et al you’ll probably find some version of this assertion in each.
Setting aside the dubious [...]

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John Loftus on Madeleine Flannagan and Women and Other Red Herrings

July 1st, 2009 7 Comments

A few days ago I posted, Sunday Study: Slavery, John Locke and the Bible; in this post I defended an argument proposed by John Locke that the Bible does not support slavery. In that article I quoted from John Loftus’ book “Why I Became an Atheist” as an example of what is typically meant by [...]

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Published: Abortion and Capital Punishment UPDATED

April 21st, 2009 13 Comments

Heh!

I just discovered on Cambridge Journals that my publication for the Spring 2009 edition of Think: A Journal of the Royal Institute for Philosophy is online.

You can download the pdf here, Abortion and Capital Punishment: A Response to Beverly Harrison.

UPDATE: As some people are having trouble with the direct link to the pdf, try [...]

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Maverick Philosopher on the Historical Atrocities Argument

April 11th, 2009 7 Comments

In making their case against theism many of the “new atheists” (indeed many of the old) commonly appeal to historical atrocities allegedly committed by believers in God. I was discussing this phenomena recently with Doug Geivett in the aftermath of the Craig v Hitchens debate. I cited the need for Christian apologists to rebut not [...]

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What About the Poor? More on Sustenance Rights

November 19th, 2008 9 Comments

In my last post, What About the Poor? Sustenance Rights Examined, I noted the position of Nicholas Wolterstorff that, “If a rich man knows of someone who is starving and has the power to help that person, and chooses not to, then he violates that person’s rights as surely and reprehensively as if he had [...]

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