The medieval Flat Earth myth is just one aspect of the whole, "the Dark Ages were entirely due to the Church suppressing science" idea, but it's a particularly pernicious one. The best that can really be said for that notion is that it's not totally bollocks. The medieval thinkers did have some really weird beliefs that came from religious textbooks, and there were indeed, on occasion, some pretty damn brutal atrocities committed in the name of religion. But the idea that all rational thinking was seen as heresy or that all scientific discoveries were seen as the work of the devil... that is pure nonsense.
Of course, the fact that the average person still gets their idea of medieval cosmology from a 1951 Bugs Bunny cartoon is not really the issue here. The problem is that the Flat Earth Myth keeps popping up in New Atheist critiques of religion, despite it being patent nonsense. If it were just people like Tyson's Twitter defenders whose grasp of history was so inadequate that they believe this stupid myth this would not be an issue. But when a man like Tyson, who is regarded as some kind of authority on all things (not just science), and who has 5.21 MILLION Twitter followers, peddles this pseudo historical crap it's small wonder New Atheists have a warped view of history. Donald Prothero is nowhere near as influential, but as an educator, it's deeply concerning that he takes it upon himself to lecture others on this subject, despite the fact he doesn't have the faintest idea what he's talking about.
What we see here, in short, is everything that is wrong with New Atheist Bad History - outdated myths backed by garbled evidence peddled by non-historians who have irrelevant authority by merit of being scientists and who are motivated by an emotionally-driven ideological bias against religion. The result is, yet again, total garbage presented uncritically by people who are meant to be rationalists and sceptics. And that's the problem.
I would add to the article that it wasn't modern antitheists who first came up with the idea of painting the Catholic Church as some sort of thought policing system. That was started by humanists and Protestants who had their own reasons to vilify the medieval Church (http://astrorhysy.blogspot.cz/2014/07/review-gods-philosophers.html). Modern antitheists are simply happy to run with this to suit their own purposes.
http://historyforatheists.blogspot.cz/2016/05/the-new-atheist-bad-history-great-myths.html
Good post, but once again the limitation of online communication strikes. Without the intonation of vocalisation his (NDT) '500 years' comment loses context, in all likelihood it was an off the cuff remark for 'a long time ago' and 'dark ages' is now a colloquialism for 'time period when they didn't know much compared to now'.
ReplyDelete9 times out of 10 when I say '9 times out of 10' I mean 'a lot, more than half, but not all'
This is clear in conversation, less so online.
That's a really interesting read. I knew that the "Flat Earth pre Columbus" thing was a myth, but there's a fantastic wealth of information in that article.
ReplyDeleteOliver Hamilton Mmm, possibly. I'm willing to give NGT the benefit of the doubt on this one, thought he does have a track record of jumping on this particular bandwagon (e.g. while Giodarno Bruno was indeed burned at the stake, it wasn't because he was a scientist : http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/outthere/2014/03/10/cosmos-pick-wrong-hero/#.V1Wwjfl96hc). I'd be surprised if he meant anything other than "the period roughly 500-1000 AD" by "dark ages" (I've never heard anyone use it to mean anything else), but I'd be prepared to accept he meant 500 years to just mean "a long time ago, not actually meaning to specify exactly when".
ReplyDeleteStill, 140 character limit + no intonation + pedantic fact-checking by angry people = fail.
Oliver Hamilton But even leaving aside that the whole Dark Ages stuff is an (idiotic) invention from the Renaissance, the point is that the knowledge of Earth's roundness was never actually lost.
ReplyDeleteSo even if "500 years" is a colloquialism, it is still false - as if I said "9 times out of 10, being struck by lightning is harmless". Even if I meant "about 2 out of 3 times", it would still be false (and dangerous to rely on).