"The Dark Ages" - Popery, Periodisation and Pejoratives

[timoneill]

New History for Atheists post - "'The Dark Ages' - Popery, Periodisation and Pejoratives".

God's Philosophers features and Artie Ziff gets a mention. Enjoy.

[wraggy]

"Of course, this simply assumes that the idea he so forcefully rejects rejects actually is invalid, which makes his point about Reppert linking to my review "uncritically" somewhat ironic".

Is this a typo here Tim? The two "rejects" are what I am referring to.
It is the first line of the 8th paragraph break.

A good article. I shared it on my FB page and did the G+ Google recommendation.

[timoneill]

Nov 20, 2016 3:31:34 GMT wraggy said:

"Of course, this simply assumes that the idea he so forcefully rejects rejects actually is invalid, which makes his point about Reppert linking to my review "uncritically" somewhat ironic".

Is this a typo here Tim? The two "rejects" are what I am referring to.
It is the first line of the 8th paragraph break.

Fixed. Thanks.

[ignorantianescia]

Another smashing post, Tim.

The problem was that Bellarmine was correct: in 1615 there was no such demonstration and the overwhelming scientific consensus was that Galileo and the handful of other heliocentrists were wrong. That consensus did not begin to change for another 90 years.

Are you sure it took this long or was it a typo? I recall that it was mentioned on the Renaissance Mathematicus that Keplerian heliocentrism became the mainstream view some time around 1660.

The terms "Middle Ages" and "Medieval" have cognates across Europe; the period is the Mittelalter to German speakers and the Moyen Âge to the French. But while these terms have all had some historiographical associations with "darkness", the term "the Dark Ages" is uniquely English in its usage, if not its origin.

"Dark Ages" is exceptionally common in English, but there are actually equivalents in use in other languages that often translate to "dark Middle Ages" (German "dunkle Mittelalter", Dutch "donkere middeleeuwen").

[timoneill]

Nov 20, 2016 14:10:17 GMT ignorantianescia said:

Another smashing post, Tim.

The problem was that Bellarmine was correct: in 1615 there was no such demonstration and the overwhelming scientific consensus was that Galileo and the handful of other heliocentrists were wrong. That consensus did not begin to change for another 90 years.

Are you sure it took this long or was it a typo? I recall that it was mentioned on the Renaissance Mathematicus that Keplerian heliocentrism became the mainstream view some time around 1660.

Thony knows his stuff, but I wonder what he's basing that assessment on. Riccioli published his New Almagest championing the Tychonian system in 1661 and it held sway as the definitive word for many decades until Newton finally resolved the physical problems with the Keplerian system and that won the day. But that was long after 1660. Perhaps Thony means the Keplerian model became the preferred one for calculation "saving the appearances".

"Dark Ages" is exceptionally common in English, but there are actually equivalents in use in other languages that often translate to "dark Middle Ages" (German "dunkle Mittelalter", Dutch "donkere middeleeuwen").

Yes, that was what I was referring to when I said "But while these [non-English] terms have all had some historiographical associations with "darkness", the term "the Dark Ages" is uniquely English in its usage, if not its origin.".

[wraggy]

" I did a little research on Tim O'Neill, and could find no reason to think that he is anything other than a Christian who claims to be an atheist. His articles are uniformly supportive of theists and their beliefs, and critical of atheists."

So this bloke has somehow managed not to see those posts where Mr. O'Neill states that "Jesus was a failed Apocalyptic prophet".

I am fairly sure that Mr.O'Neill will not get any gigs with with Christian Apologist Web groups with statements like this on his C.V.

[ydoethur]

Nov 21, 2016 5:13:51 GMT wraggy said:

"So this bloke has somehow managed not to see those posts where Mr. O'Neill states that "Jesus was a failed Apocalyptic prophet".

Be fair, he's obviously not fully literate. He even managed to miss the byline on an apologetics article and thought, bizarrely, that it was written by Tim and not by the random minor apologist whose name was on it.

Even Raphael Lataster would probably have done a better job than that (although I'm not going to say I'm sure Carrier would have).

[James Hannam]

Thanks for the mention, Tim.

I recall that there is a running joke in Milton's Paradise Lost about whether the earth or sun is the centre of the universe, which made it clear that this was a matter of dispute in the 1660s. I'd suggest that Kepler's tables quickly became the standard but that it took a good deal longer for the heliocentric thesis to fully percolate to everyone in Europe.

I suspect that there was also a gap between the view being accepted by the educated elite and becoming part of the worldview of ordinary people.

J

[timoneill]

Nov 22, 2016 12:11:16 GMT James Hannam said:

Thanks for the mention, Tim.

No problem, though it eas really "Skep" who gave you the mention first. If anyone wants some entertainment, "Skep" has now turned up in the comments and is trying to put up a fight. I made him go read the first essays in Numbers' Galileo Goes to Jail and he did. I hoped this may be a turning point for him but ... no. He's found ways to deflect everything he read there while still clinging to his baseless assumption that the Church was still "suppressing the development of science, particularly when it comes into conflict with religious dogma". He just can't give us any examples of this happening, for some reason. I'm not being gentle with him, so blushing maidens and school marms who dislike foul language should probably avoid the ensuing exchange.