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 [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Christian History'
Freedom, Science and Christianity: A Response to James Valliant Part II
February 18th, 2010 2 Comments
Tags: Aristotle · Christian History · Dark Ages · Enlightenment · Founding Fathers · James Valliant · Libertarianism · Liberty · Mark Murphy · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Peter Cresswell · Regine Pernoud · Rodney Stark · Science and Religion · SOLO · W.E.H. Lecky
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 [...]
Tags: Christian History · Dark Ages · David Lindberg · Enlightenment · Founding Fathers · James Hannam · James Valliant · Libertarianism · Liberty · Peter Cresswell · Regine Pernoud · Science and Religion · SOLO
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 [...]
Tags: Christian History · Contra Mundum · flat earth · Investigate Magazine · Science and Religion · Urban Myths
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 [...]
Tags: Christian History · Dan Brown · Faith and Reason · Guest Post · James Hannam · Religious History · Science and Religion
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” [...]
Tags: Christian Blogs · Christian History · Dark · Dark Ages · Faith and Reason · Science and Religion
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 [...]
Tags: Atheism · Christian History · Religious History · Thinking Matters
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 [...]
Tags: Atheism · Christian History · Ethics · John Loftus · Religious History · Theology
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 [...]
Tags: Abortion · Christian History · Ethics · Published
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 [...]
Tags: Alvin Plantinga · Apologetics · Atheism · Christian History · Christopher Hitchens · Philosophy of Religion · Walter Sinnott-Armstrong · William Lane Craig
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 [...]
Tags: Christian History · Nicholas Wolterstorff · Role of the State · Welfare
