Who Were the Sea Peoples?

You know the story: 1) how the rise of Christianity destroyed Greco-Roman science; 2) how it threw us into the "Dark Ages"; 3) how the church carefully monitored every scientific idea, holding back science for centuries; and 4) it was only with the overthrow of Church authority that science began to advance again. Unfortunately, every single point in the above narrative is false, has been known to be false for many decades, and is acknowledged to be false by essentially all professional historians of science. When I studied the history of science at King's College in London, right away the lecturer, who as far as I could tell is an atheist, began debuking the above story, since it is the main obstacle to learning the actual history of science for most students. Here is another actual historian of science noting the same problems with the commonplace narrative, and also noting that the above story is "Far from reflecting the latest considerations of the hist...

The chief characteristic of inference in the exact sciences, the characteristic of which Greek logicians tried to give a theoretical account when they formulated the rules of the syllogism, is a kind of logical compulsion whereby a person who makes certain assumptions is forced, simply by so doing, to make others. He has freedom of choice in two ways: he is not compelled to make the initial assumption (a fact technically expressed by saying that 'the starting-points of demonstrative reasoning are not themselves demonstrable'), and when once he has done so he is still at liberty, whenever he likes, to stop thinking. What he cannot do is to make the initial assumption, to go on thinking, and to arrive at a conclusion different from that which is scientifically correct. In what is called 'inductive' thinking there is no such compulsion. The essence of the process, here, is that having put certain observations together, and having found that they make a pattern, we extr...

(And, of course, by "liberalism" the author means here the full gamut of liberalism's children, from socialism to libertarianism): The logic to which liberalism tends is to dismiss [the] moral content [of its Christian roots] and replace [the] “objective” morality, held as valid by the different Christian churches, by a formal morality of “reciprocity” or “respect” by all of the “individuality” of all. To choose a crucial illustration, it is impossible for a society claiming to be in the Christian tradition to admit that the right to abortion be written into law, and it is impossible for a liberal society to refuse members this right. -- Pierre Manent Hat-tip Dreher .

The atheists over at Bob Murphy's blog have made the case that there never was any such historical personage named "Jesus of Nazareth." I think they have a point: I suspect that the doctrines we today call Christianity were actually developed by a fellow named "Rusty of Zurishaddai." But the gospellers knew they could never get people to follow a guy named "Rusty," so they claimed these doctrines were originated by Jesus.