Empirical science and historiography are separate fields of enquiry. No big secret there. Experts (or just interested people) in one can be complete dunces in the other. Every now and then there comes along a real whopper, too. Remember the thoroughly discredited legend about Christopher Columbus, and those who opposed him because they thought the earth was flat? It is now universally admitted that this was a concocted myth strung together by opponents of religious belief, rather than by responsible historians (seriously, a flat earth?).
OK, so the fable about the opponents of Columbus is an extreme example, but still, there’s the occasional comment, historical generalisation or re-telling of history that follows this sort of pattern. Few historians would even bother with the familiar rants about how religion has always been anti-science, religion has tended to get in the way of learning, some still do take the time to correct the outdated and simply misinformed caricatures about the so-called “Dark Ages” (a term no longer current precisely because of how misleading historians have shown it to be) etc. Still, it’s enjoyable to watch one of the online proponents of these and similar tales being rhetorically garroted.
You might wonder why legends like these need to be publicly addressed at all. I mean people can just study history and they’ll know that these silly portrayals of Christianity’s role in culture are false, right? Well, maybe, but here’s the thing: People who make and people who read claims like this on the internet generally use the internet as their source of information on this subject. What’s more, historical research reproduced online that undermines this picture of history is frequently dismissed as a conservative or fundamentalist re-writing of history to suit someone’s belief system. Yes, it’s ironic, I know, but it happens (it happens in the comments at this very blog).
When someone does take the time to engage this sort of tabloid style history, however, it can be a bit of a sadistic pleasure, something akin to, as a young boy, using a magnifying glass to burn the wings off a white butterfly as it lays pinned down by stones next to the entrance to an ant nest. Having said all that (I couldn’t just post a link, I needed an introduction!), I invite you to check out Michael Flynn’s blog post, which eviscerates one such online collection of claims (that collection being called “The Myth of Christianity Founding Modern Science and Medicine”). Hat tip to Quodlibeta for the link.
Glenn Peoples
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