Sauron

Actually, I'm waiting on your quotation from Lindberg.

By the way - Savage-Smith was the author of the NIH page I extensively quoted for you above. So there is your quotation from Savage-Smith.

Huff and Burgel are clearly deficient in their research, then. The NIH quotation I provided above, as well as the other citations, demonstrate a knowledge of dissection in Islamic science. Since Huff & Bergel's claim is formulated as an absolute, the claim is easily falsifiable.

As for Huff and Bergel - they're studying the transmission of science as Western generalists. However, Savage-Smith's 40+ page article exploring the topic in detail -- written by an expert who specializes in the precise narrow area of the history of Islamic medicine - obviously trumps a one-paragraph citation. Here is Savage-Smith's bio information:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/about.html
Moreover, the fact of dissections being found in Islamic history isn't that hard to substantiate. From a Medline quotation from the American Journal of Nephrology:
So the claim that dissection was "first practiced in Christian Europe" --as you claimed -- turns out to be just another conceit that I'm happy to eviscerate.

JCS

I am an Atheist. Mythology as it is, is not essential to my sense of identity. Atheist mythology, is a myth. I don't know if Jesus was a myth or not

1) History will record one day that religous people tried to incite conflict between what science demonstrates and what their religious beliefs claim.

2) The Great Library of Alexandria Burnt down? Damn why am I always the last to find out.

3) The Flat Earthers teach it. http://www.lhup.edu/~dsimanek/fe-scidi.htm

4) What ever Hitler was at the moment of his death, would be between him and his god, no?

5) Brutal doesn't need a time or place, so who cares if the time was the inquisition or George Bush's GWII.

6) Does the single victim of a witch hunt really give a rats ass if there are millions of other victims? Is suffering injustice measured by volume?

7) Christianity is responsible for lots of bad things, no need to single out one age.

8) Eusebius was a liar or he wasn't, how can we be absolutely 100% sure either way? Remeber it only takes one.

9) In order to be a christain would you not have to take some part of the bible as literal? If not, why or how do you come to know or accept christianity?

10) I wouldn't say forced, unless you are talking about the indoctrination of children.

TollHouse

You misrepresent at least this particular atheist here. My qualm about Christianity is that the Christians of their day didn't do any better than the rest of the savages.

So Christians weren't any worse? Well gee-whiz, that's hardly a ringing endorsement for the one true faith serving the one true god.

MortalWombat

Hence the need for the slogan "Christians aren't perfect, just forgiven." Both bases are covered that way.

Clutch

Bingo.

Take some claims of enormously varying familiarity, carefully render each in its least qualified, most radical form, and call them Great Atheist Myths.

I might as well demolish the Great Christian Myth that Judas was first hanged, and then fell and burst open when the rope broke. (Of course, anyone who claims this is not a Great Christian Myth has obviously not been on these boards long enough!)

Bede, you're better than this.

Gregg

I'm gonna have to pick up a copy of the Malleus Maleficarum one of these days...

Gregg

Amos

The only problem here is that evolutionists do not recognize the intelligence within the species that makes adaptation possible. They think that nature does the selecting but always fail to point out where nature gets the intelligence to select with (in fact, their problem is to identify nature itself). In other words, if nature selects it must have a consciousness and if the species select they must have a consciousness. Since nature does not have an existence of being it cannot have a consciousness and if it does not have a consciousness it cannot do any selecting. So really, the entire "evolution theory" is bason on appearances without realizing that creation is the leading edge of evolution.

Koyaanisqatsi

Amos, notwhithstanding, let's recap and see what's what, shall we? But first...

Bede's myth number 1.

Bede's myth number 2.

Bede's myth number 3.

Instead, you've turned it into another boring, generalized assertion thread.

Now, on to the recap and let's tally up:

As just about everyone here has pointed out (and you have not countered), there has, in fact, been an "historical conflict between science and religion." Creationism/Evolution is just one salient example, Heliocentrism another, but there is also the problem with such conflicts in medical history, such as abortion and stem cell research and cloning, for more modern history, as well as the beliefs in "demons" causing illness and the slew of conflicts arising out of Christian Science, witchdoctors and practicioners of Voodoo and there's the conflict of prayer as a healing mechanism over the centuries; the belief that the dead can resurrect is definitely in conflict with science; etc., etc.

So, as worded, your first "myth" is demonstrated to not be a myth at all.

Agreed, but that's probably because the actual library the Christians destroyed was a "sister" library to Alexandria, in the Temple of Serapeum, if memory serves from the last time we did this dosey-do.

Here's this from Wikipedia (who quote you, Bede, BTW on Theophilus not being responsible for Alexandria) that shows the sentiment behind the pervaling legend you decry as "myth:"

So, although the legend is incorrect, the notion that early Christians were intent on destroying non-Christain history is not.

How you qualify this is unknown, since the bible is what teaches the earth ito be flat and as you well know, not every church teaches the same things.

You should more properly state that, "The Catholic Church did not historically include flat-earth as part of their dogma," yes?

Again, as others have pointed out and you haven't addressed, he was a Christian, so, this, too, is not a "myth."

Since you fallaciously qualified this with "unusually" and "for its time," this, too, is not a "myth;" it is a strawman. The inquisition was brutal for any time.

If you include the victims' families, friends and offspring and expand the notion of "victim" to include victimization (such as the ostracization and fear-based "conversions" of otherwise innocent people) then I would argue it did run into the millions.

Being a "victim" of the witch hunts/crusades was not necessarily limited to those who were directly tortured or murdered, or do the rippling effects of Christian brutality not concern you in your attempt to be historically accurate?

A very good argument can be made for the idea that the crusades have never stopped. Does the term, "Manifest Destiny" ring any bells? Or "evil doers?"

I have never heard or seen this from any atheist, but it's not difficult to infer from previous centuries of Christian oppression, victimization, torture and murder and the absolute authority of the Church over Kings throughout that period.

Arguably, any period of reigning supremacy by a fear-based cult would be considered "Dark Ages" in my book, so, I guess with just about anything you post here, it's all in the wording isn't it?

Well, by definition, that can't be a "myth." It's a "claim."

Again the use of a strawman. Many millions (if not hundreds of millions over the centuries) have taken the Bible literally, even to this day, so your strawman is moot.

Again, it's all in how you word it, now isn't it? Conversions to Christianity have been forced. That is historical fact, as you well know.

As for most "conversions," if one simply looks at when (and how) the majority of Christians "convert" to christianity (from atheism; the default from birth), you'll find that they are, indeed, "forced;" forced by their parents, primarily, and their cult leaders reinforcing it. "Suffer the children unto me" and all that Nazi-esque horseshite.

So, out of your list, only one can be considered a "myth" (the Library of Alexandria) and even that one is more confused "legend" than technically "myth," the sentiment behind which is historically supported. To what degree, of course, is questionable, but irrelevant to the reasons why an atheist might raise this point (however incorrect they may be in the detail of which library was deliberately and officially destroyed by Christians).

Yes, well, it's the Christian myths that matter, since they're the primary cause of all of that victimization you attempt to marginallize in your apologetics.

Family Man

Interestingly, I started reading one of the books Bede uses in his essay that "settles" the conflict issue and what do I encounter? A 4th century bishop that insisted on interpreting that bible literally. This doesn't mean that his position is the dominant position -- the good bishop had his opponents on the point. But to dismiss the literal interpretation as a myth when it is clear that some of them did is oversimplifiying the issue.

Sauron

No. I don't think he is. The reaction so far has been "here we go again", indicating that this kind of trolling & use of strawmen is par for the course. So far from being a departure from his usual style, this is classic Bede. I think we all just forgot how disingenuous he can be, until we're forced to wade through it again.