Roger Pearse

Do you really think anyone will benefit through getting a whole load of ignorant weenies basing their noisy and easily-proved-false claims on "Agora"? If not, why defend it?

Don't do this. Let's keep clear in our minds that a lie is a lie, and the dissemination of a lie by means of fiction is just as much lying as doing so by any other means. We must never defend something we know is a deception and will be deceptive. To do so is to prostitute our own understanding.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Styrofoam

I saw Agora and liked it. I knew ahead of time that the story was fictional. I don't think Agora tries to be any more historically accurate than, say, Troy.

darstec

Baloney. Christianity is nothing but magic. Rosary, crucifixes, mass vestments, magical mantras at services repeated over and over again (ora pro nobis). Don't forget the illogic of one god in three persons and transubstantiation which they simply label mysteries that nobody but a magical, invisible god can understand. And let us not forget ritual magic like the former eating meat or meat products will land you in hell to burn forever and ever. Amen.

Let us not forget the talismans like the fragment of the holey cross, foreskin and the various holey shrouds, nor even the chicken and pig bones mixed with human bones they revere as belonging to a fictitious Peter and Paul. And the magical statues in many churches.

They just replaced one set of magic beliefs with their own.

darstec

Yes and how dare anyone detract from Roger's book of fiction called the bible.

Chaucer

Two wrongs don't make a right. Roger's point is spot-on. Are you saying that the atheist blogger referenced in the OP is wrong to call attention to the deliberate distortions in the film?

Chaucer

Toto

So far, this thread contains reviews from two atheist bloggers and a reviewer from the Skeptic Society. They all seem to agree that the movie does not represent actual history. This is typical of movies. What else is there to say?

Doug Shaver

What the movie apparently says, by way of historical commentary, is that Christians of the time were hostile, sometimes murderously so, to the progress of scientific thinking. Are you saying that's a lie?

Toto

Chaucer wants to say that it is a lie. Two of the three atheist commenters listed here see it as a myth, intended to comment on current events.

Historical accuracy seems to be a bit too nuanced and messy to serve as a coherent plot line. Most people know this.

Carrier's blog post has some interaction with Tim O'Neil (the first blogger mentioned) on the historical details.

Chaucer

I think I would probably choose this specific exchange --


Tim O'Neill said... But [Ammianus] did have "direct knowledge" because he visited Alexandria himself and had been to the Serapeum.

Richard Carrier said... Oh? Where does he say that?

Do you even read these sources? --


as the crucial one. This references the contention that Ammianus specifically describes his own visit to the Serapeum long before 391 C.E. (the date when this movie's first half takes place) in which Ammianus seems to explicitly describe the Serapeum library (the "daughter library" of the long-destroyed Great Library of Alexandria) as being in the past and something he couldn't view personally simply because he strongly implies it was no longer there when he visited long before 391. That would make the film's depiction of swarms of marauders destroying scrolls in 391 fortuitous horror aimed at revving up hate. However, if Carrier's contention is right that Ammianus never explicitly describes what he himself saw at the Serapeum much earlier, then there's nothing fortuitous about this film's crucial scene of scroll destruction at all, and its director can be let off the hook.

Please, does anyone here know the full details of Ammianus's extant description of his Serapeum visit, and does he make any reference to what he himself saw/didn't see with reference to a library? Could it even be possible that the Ammianus description may be viewable on the Web, hopefully in an English translation?

Thanks,

Chaucer

Toto

Hmm

Why is Tim O'Neill trying to justify a Christian mob?