Excellent! I would suggest also giving out an award to someone you interacted with who was willing to change their mind in the face of evidence. All us atheists can't be that intransigent I hope
I suspect there'd be no candidates as Tim's targets usually earn that status by being seriously devoted to avoiding any effort to get the history right in the first place. A recurring theme, and one mentioned in the video above, is that of people working outside their area of expertise and not seeking input from those with the relevant expertise before they spout off confidently as such folk do. The kind of arrogance that takes is seldom persuadable.
@@mikehjt Yes that's true. I believe one of the reasons Tim created his web site was because there's so much historical ignorance among atheists and Bible skeptics and almost no accountability for their endless misinformation. Unfortunately there is a free lunch if your in right group.
I mean, I changed my mind on a lot of stuff after seeing Tim's content and that was just a couple weeks ago. I can't be the only one who's done this, and at least a few would hopefully have done so in a public arena (it was pretty easy for me just being alone on my computer watching videos). Derek from MythVision, for instance, is no longer a mythicist after speaking to a bunch of biblical scholars. Tim also has a rather abrasive style that might be making people defensive. If it's true that he's not changing many minds that suggests the channel's goals aren't being met and adjustments would be needed
@@benroberts2222 He did manage to change mine! At least partly. I wasn't a mythicist but I often flirted with mythicism and accepted it as a valid possibility, but after checking Tim's blog, I'm now all against mythicism. VERY against it actually lmao I think I'd be a proper nominee to your award proposal, I have also changed my mind on many aspects of biblical scholarship. Probably my most interesting case was my acceptance that the gospels weren't originally anonymous. I know it is still the consensus of critical scholarship that the gospels were in fact anonymous, but after reading the works of Evans and Gathercole I think I find the idea of the gospels NOT bearing annonimity in their original forms quite likely. This of course is NOT the same as concluding that Mark, Luke, John and Matthew wrote them, these are two separate matters entirely, but most apologists will use this argument and run wild with it to support their bias. Mike Wiggler did that already.
Next Year's Golden Orrery Award winner better be Godless Engineer for his awful grasp on the historicity of Jesus (does he even grasp it at all??) and his over-reliance on Carrier. I'd love to see a piece-by-piece rebuttal of his claims in your blog Tim, although most of his opinions wouldn't be new in your experience, would they?
Hardly surprising that the winner is a former fundamentalist Christian. There do seem to be quite a lot of vocal atheists from that background who seem to retain the mindset after losing their childhood faith. The fact that they are such a prominent part of the atheist community (presumably because they're much more likely to talk about issues of religion than are atheists from other backgrounds) really does drag down the level of discussion around these issues.
Lol I remember that Unruhe tweet. A bunch of the responses had parody versions of "the chart" (like one that had "The Hole left by the Finno-Korean Hyperwar").
One of the joys of 2021 for me was stumbling on your channel and blog. Fascinating and brilliantly executed. As someone who's own research masters in history was 20th Century, I've always been fascinated by how historians of the ancient world cope with there being so little evidence, compared to my period where the problem is an overwhelming superabundance of government and private papers, written original sources, printed, broadcast and other media, even people you can interview. You've given me a good insight into how that issue is handled - and indeed bungled, even abused. You mentioned somewhere you'd tackled Shoah denial but I can't find it. If you do have a chance to share the link(s) I'd be very interested in seeing it! Yours, a Pommy Fan, David.
I gotta say, I have been linking your pagan holiday articles to people since you wrote them. It is something that is really common to come up in conversation.
Just wanted to say thank you for doing what you do. I usually quit engaging shortly after understanding that the writers, podcasters, etc. are complete “f__king d__kheads” [FD], as you aptly call them. However, I very much appreciate that someone of your caliber perseveres to set the record straight in the hopes that misinformation has a short life. Just as I’m sure many believers don’t like being associated with some (e.g. extremist) coreligionists, I don’t like being associated with FDs; it’s just not good for my health. Happy new year and I look forward to your future contributions to sanity.
Seems I missed some fun due to not being on Twitter. I hadn't heard of half of these morons. Would be great to see your channel grow a lot this year, I think you could really get a good platform going where you can call out this nonsense and actually be heard. Keep up the good work.
You should review Adam ruins Christmas! There Adam, the host of Adam ruins everything, tries to argues that Christmas is based off pagan winter solstice festivals.
Plenty of people accept the old "pagan Christmas" stuff because it was widely accepted by scholars for a long time. But unless Adam is an atheist, he's not really relevant to my channel. I will be doing a video on *atheists* who peddle the "pagan Christmas" myths, but that will be at the end of this year.
I have enjoyed your contents so far. I love your bashing of new athiest. I am ashamed to admit that I was a part of that group. I wish I found your website when I began to question thing.
Really find your channel fascinating and challenging. Atheism, in the broadest term, is not just relegated to disbelief in Christianity's god version. Have you considered other myths such as Islam or Hinduism, Buddhism, or pastafarian? Just curious. Oh, and hope you had a wonderful Festivus for the rest of us....
I laughed and I winced, some of this was a bit rough on the nominees. But at least one of them came out of it with a nice shiny (fake) prize! I think the problem with the "pagan Christmas" thing is that if someone is name-checking "Tammuz" then it probably all goes back to Alexander Hislop's "The Two Babylons". Many ex-fundamentalists come out of their own little sub-denomination with no wider knowledge of the history of Christianity and a smattering of anti-Catholicism, but when they stop believing Pastor Brown about the Resurrection they still cling on to Pastor Brown explaining why their splinter of the sub-denomination that split off from one of the mainline Protestant denominations don't celebrate Hallowe'en/Christmas/Easter is because they're "pagan". Then they happily use this as proof that Christianity is all fake, etc. They rely heavily on "I was raised strict First Third Free Light Church of Christ Baptist 1856" as "I know everything about Christianity" and they're wrong. But you can't tell them that.
My guess is it's a convenient pre-emptive defense for an atheist continuing to observe the secular rituals of christmas. We all grew up with the notion that only christians are allowed to celebrate christmas. If all the things you want to keep doing were stolen from other cultures, then you can keep doing them while also telling yourself you've completely jettisoned christianity. Of course I think all the practices us atheists tend to follow are just secular additions to a religious holiday, but that requires a lot more explanation and it will be harder to "win" an argument with an apologist going that route
Hey Tim, I know that this isn’t the right video but I just wanted to get your opinion on something. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anti-theistic atheists recently, especially mythicists, and I just have a couple of things that I wanted to get your opinion on if you don’t mind, specifically regarding historical inaccuracies in the gospels, especially Mark. For example, I’ve heard a lot of atheists say that in Mark 10:10-12, where Jesus gives his teachings on divorce, that that’s an error because in Jewish law, women weren’t allowed to obtain divorce. So they would use this as evidence that the author of Mark wasn’t from Palestine. And also some geographical errors in the Synoptics, specifically with regards to the Gerasenes,Gadarenes, Gergesenes, and how Mark and Luke both make the error, but Matthew seems to correct it. Are these arguments valid, or is this just more mythicist crap?
Hey Tim, have you ever read "Galileo and the Conflict Between Religion and Science" by Greg Dawes? The book seems to be more a work of philosophy, but i'd love to see your take on it.
Considering Dawes is yet another academic operating outside his area of expertise (it's not history, quelle surprise), in his conclusion simply dismisses the history on the grounds that science and religion have different epistemic bases and puts down the present possibility to a lack of conflict over facts to "luck", I can't think it would be a useful read. That was based on very brief perusal of a pdf of the book found on line in a minute of googling.
I use a Rode VideoMic Me-L, which is considered one of the best external mics for Apple IOS devices. I use it with an Apple 13. If you think I should have something better, feel free to buy it and send it to me.
I am going to try to avoid "stepping in it" so to speak, but I can understand how there can be some confusion around Christmas, as many cultures that either pre-dated Christianity or had mythologies and religious traditions that were indigenous had winter festivals. (In other words I can see how someone may come to conflate Christmas and non-Christian winter festivals.) Without being an apologist for the Crappy Golden Orrery Award winner - worthy as she appears to be of this "distinction" - her main failing appears to be one of wilful ignorance and having become deeply vested to a set of false narratives. Alas, this weakness is one which is not exclusive to those who are Christians of the more fundamentalist bent. I suppose given a large enough sample of people this behavioural pattern - which is easily observed and often mocked by some atheists - would be found amongst atheists also. It smacks of hubris to think that merely being an atheist would somehow grant immunity from this rather deplorable tendency. Come to think of it, atheists who were apostate from a fundamentalist type of Christianity - of which I am one - have already established their susceptibility to this flaw through having previously believed many of the most ridiculous things written in the Bible as historical fact rather than as allegory or mythic narrative. I suppose it is now up to me to look at the history of Christmas as it evolved and morphed over different times and cultures to obtain a truer view of its development and significance. I must also admit that even as an apostate fundamentalist Christian of the atheist bent that I rather enjoy Christmas, and especially the beauty of such rousing classical pieces as Handel's "Messiah". Just because I am an atheist does not mean that I cannot appreciate the artistic artefacts of a religion which I find strange as well as socially and politically problematic today.
"Dickhead Department" Awesome. LOL.
Excellent! I would suggest also giving out an award to someone you interacted with who was willing to change their mind in the face of evidence. All us atheists can't be that intransigent I hope
I suspect there'd be no candidates as Tim's targets usually earn that status by being seriously devoted to avoiding any effort to get the history right in the first place. A recurring theme, and one mentioned in the video above, is that of people working outside their area of expertise and not seeking input from those with the relevant expertise before they spout off confidently as such folk do. The kind of arrogance that takes is seldom persuadable.
@@mikehjt Yes that's true. I believe one of the reasons Tim created his web site was
because there's so much historical ignorance among atheists and Bible skeptics and almost no
accountability for their endless misinformation. Unfortunately there is a free lunch if your in right
group.
I mean, I changed my mind on a lot of stuff after seeing Tim's content and that was just a couple weeks ago. I can't be the only one who's done this, and at least a few would hopefully have done so in a public arena (it was pretty easy for me just being alone on my computer watching videos). Derek from MythVision, for instance, is no longer a mythicist after speaking to a bunch of biblical scholars.
Tim also has a rather abrasive style that might be making people defensive. If it's true that he's not changing many minds that suggests the channel's goals aren't being met and adjustments would be needed
@@benroberts2222 He did manage to change mine! At least partly. I wasn't a mythicist but I often flirted with mythicism and accepted it as a valid possibility, but after checking Tim's blog, I'm now all against mythicism. VERY against it actually lmao I think I'd be a proper nominee to your award proposal, I have also changed my mind on many aspects of biblical scholarship. Probably my most interesting case was my acceptance that the gospels weren't originally anonymous. I know it is still the consensus of critical scholarship that the gospels were in fact anonymous, but after reading the works of Evans and Gathercole I think I find the idea of the gospels NOT bearing annonimity in their original forms quite likely. This of course is NOT the same as concluding that Mark, Luke, John and Matthew wrote them, these are two separate matters entirely, but most apologists will use this argument and run wild with it to support their bias. Mike Wiggler did that already.
11:07 I laughed a bit too hard at that!
It's all in the delivery mate. ;>
Me, too! 🤣
Next Year's Golden Orrery Award winner better be Godless Engineer for his awful grasp on the historicity of Jesus (does he even grasp it at all??) and his over-reliance on Carrier. I'd love to see a piece-by-piece rebuttal of his claims in your blog Tim, although most of his opinions wouldn't be new in your experience, would they?
Well, I tend to rebut Carrier and the Godless Yokel is just another Carrier parrot. But yes, there will be some videos on Mythicism next year I think.
I think this should have been one of your contenders: ua-cam.com/video/Y3UQe5N1Rfg/v-deo.html
@@historyforatheists9363 Lmao the Godless Yokel. Brilliant
Thanks for making these videos Tim O'Neill! Very informative and interesting.
Your channel is so refreshing!
Hardly surprising that the winner is a former fundamentalist Christian. There do seem to be quite a lot of vocal atheists from that background who seem to retain the mindset after losing their childhood faith. The fact that they are such a prominent part of the atheist community (presumably because they're much more likely to talk about issues of religion than are atheists from other backgrounds) really does drag down the level of discussion around these issues.
Wishing us a 'Great Christmas'. Tim O'Neill confirmed as a crypto-Christian!
In all seriousness, thanks for the great content :)
Unfortunately, yes. I will be doing a video debunking the "pagan Christmas" claims in December 2022.
Lol I remember that Unruhe tweet. A bunch of the responses had parody versions of "the chart" (like one that had "The Hole left by the Finno-Korean Hyperwar").
One of the joys of 2021 for me was stumbling on your channel and blog. Fascinating and brilliantly executed. As someone who's own research masters in history was 20th Century, I've always been fascinated by how historians of the ancient world cope with there being so little evidence, compared to my period where the problem is an overwhelming superabundance of government and private papers, written original sources, printed, broadcast and other media, even people you can interview. You've given me a good insight into how that issue is handled - and indeed bungled, even abused. You mentioned somewhere you'd tackled Shoah denial but I can't find it. If you do have a chance to share the link(s) I'd be very interested in seeing it! Yours, a Pommy Fan, David.
Thank you Tim. All the best in the new year!
Man, there are sooo many contendors. I'd say Aron Ra Nelson but that's too easy
I am quite shocked by Cosmic Skeptic's blunders on the Galileo affair. That was quite a blunder.
I gotta say, I have been linking your pagan holiday articles to people since you wrote them. It is something that is really common to come up in conversation.
So can Courtney contact you to claim her prize? Will you charge her shipping? You didn't answer these important questions!
Just wanted to say thank you for doing what you do. I usually quit engaging shortly after understanding that the writers, podcasters, etc. are complete “f__king d__kheads” [FD], as you aptly call them. However, I very much appreciate that someone of your caliber perseveres to set the record straight in the hopes that misinformation has a short life. Just as I’m sure many believers don’t like being associated with some (e.g. extremist) coreligionists, I don’t like being associated with FDs; it’s just not good for my health.
Happy new year and I look forward to your future contributions to sanity.
Ohh cool! I just got the Bright Ages for Christmas lol.
My copy hasn't arrived yet.
Not much of a surprise who got the award.
Seems I missed some fun due to not being on Twitter. I hadn't heard of half of these morons.
Would be great to see your channel grow a lot this year, I think you could really get a good platform going where you can call out this nonsense and actually be heard.
Keep up the good work.
You should review Adam ruins Christmas! There Adam, the host of Adam ruins everything, tries to argues that Christmas is based off pagan winter solstice festivals.
Plenty of people accept the old "pagan Christmas" stuff because it was widely accepted by scholars for a long time. But unless Adam is an atheist, he's not really relevant to my channel. I will be doing a video on *atheists* who peddle the "pagan Christmas" myths, but that will be at the end of this year.
Harsh but fair.
I have enjoyed your contents so far. I love your bashing of new athiest. I am ashamed to admit that I was a part of that group.
I wish I found your website when I began to question thing.
@History for Atheists Do you have an article or video on Cosmic Skeptic's take on the Galileo affair?
I'm surprised Joe Rogan wasn't a nominee, given how vehemently you criticized his (boneheaded) "historical" take. You even made a video about it.
He made those comments in 2015, so he didn’t qualify for 2021.
Really find your channel fascinating and challenging. Atheism, in the broadest term, is not just relegated to disbelief in Christianity's god version. Have you considered other myths such as Islam or Hinduism, Buddhism, or pastafarian? Just curious. Oh, and hope you had a wonderful Festivus for the rest of us....
Most atheist bad history seems to be focused on Christianity. I go where they lead.
I laughed and I winced, some of this was a bit rough on the nominees. But at least one of them came out of it with a nice shiny (fake) prize! I think the problem with the "pagan Christmas" thing is that if someone is name-checking "Tammuz" then it probably all goes back to Alexander Hislop's "The Two Babylons". Many ex-fundamentalists come out of their own little sub-denomination with no wider knowledge of the history of Christianity and a smattering of anti-Catholicism, but when they stop believing Pastor Brown about the Resurrection they still cling on to Pastor Brown explaining why their splinter of the sub-denomination that split off from one of the mainline Protestant denominations don't celebrate Hallowe'en/Christmas/Easter is because they're "pagan". Then they happily use this as proof that Christianity is all fake, etc. They rely heavily on "I was raised strict First Third Free Light Church of Christ Baptist 1856" as "I know everything about Christianity" and they're wrong. But you can't tell them that.
My guess is it's a convenient pre-emptive defense for an atheist continuing to observe the secular rituals of christmas. We all grew up with the notion that only christians are allowed to celebrate christmas. If all the things you want to keep doing were stolen from other cultures, then you can keep doing them while also telling yourself you've completely jettisoned christianity.
Of course I think all the practices us atheists tend to follow are just secular additions to a religious holiday, but that requires a lot more explanation and it will be harder to "win" an argument with an apologist going that route
Hey Tim, I know that this isn’t the right video but I just wanted to get your opinion on something. I’ve been dealing with a lot of anti-theistic atheists recently, especially mythicists, and I just have a couple of things that I wanted to get your opinion on if you don’t mind, specifically regarding historical inaccuracies in the gospels, especially Mark. For example, I’ve heard a lot of atheists say that in Mark 10:10-12, where Jesus gives his teachings on divorce, that that’s an error because in Jewish law, women weren’t allowed to obtain divorce. So they would use this as evidence that the author of Mark wasn’t from Palestine. And also some geographical errors in the Synoptics, specifically with regards to the Gerasenes,Gadarenes, Gergesenes, and how Mark and Luke both make the error, but Matthew seems to correct it. Are these arguments valid, or is this just more mythicist crap?
No, this isn't the place for those questions.
Great videos. Former indoctrinated new atheist (somewhat) here. You'd need to increase the loudness of your voice in your videos, maybe a better mic?
I can barely hear this video. Just some feedback. I hit the like button anyway!
So what will next years prize be?? Richard Carrier's couch linen?? Or is this some sort of sacred artifact ;)
The Crappy Golden Orrery is a perpetual trophy.
@@historyforatheists9363 Maybe you should create other prizes for other genius. Maybe one of Doherty's celestial nails or something like that :)
Hey Tim, have you ever read "Galileo and the Conflict Between Religion and Science" by Greg Dawes? The book seems to be more a work of philosophy, but i'd love to see your take on it.
I haven't.
Considering Dawes is yet another academic operating outside his area of expertise (it's not history, quelle surprise), in his conclusion simply dismisses the history on the grounds that science and religion have different epistemic bases and puts down the present possibility to a lack of conflict over facts to "luck", I can't think it would be a useful read. That was based on very brief perusal of a pdf of the book found on line in a minute of googling.
Hi Tim are you a member of the ISF by any chance? formerly JREF forums
ISF?
@@historyforatheists9363
International skeptics forum :)
@@AceofDlamonds Okay. I posted there on Galileo about four years ago but gave up on the place given some of the boneheaded contributors there.
Alway enjoy your content, Tim. Please buy a microphone.
I use a Rode VideoMic Me-L, which is considered one of the best external mics for Apple IOS devices. I use it with an Apple 13. If you think I should have something better, feel free to buy it and send it to me.
Your Golden Orrery award is just a cheap ripoff of the excellent Golden Crocoduck award given to anti-science religious apologists.
I am going to try to avoid "stepping in it" so to speak, but I can understand how there can be some confusion around Christmas, as many cultures that either pre-dated Christianity or had mythologies and religious traditions that were indigenous had winter festivals. (In other words I can see how someone may come to conflate Christmas and non-Christian winter festivals.) Without being an apologist for the Crappy Golden Orrery Award winner - worthy as she appears to be of this "distinction" - her main failing appears to be one of wilful ignorance and having become deeply vested to a set of false narratives. Alas, this weakness is one which is not exclusive to those who are Christians of the more fundamentalist bent. I suppose given a large enough sample of people this behavioural pattern - which is easily observed and often mocked by some atheists - would be found amongst atheists also. It smacks of hubris to think that merely being an atheist would somehow grant immunity from this rather deplorable tendency. Come to think of it, atheists who were apostate from a fundamentalist type of Christianity - of which I am one - have already established their susceptibility to this flaw through having previously believed many of the most ridiculous things written in the Bible as historical fact rather than as allegory or mythic narrative.
I suppose it is now up to me to look at the history of Christmas as it evolved and morphed over different times and cultures to obtain a truer view of its development and significance. I must also admit that even as an apostate fundamentalist Christian of the atheist bent that I rather enjoy Christmas, and especially the beauty of such rousing classical pieces as Handel's "Messiah". Just because I am an atheist does not mean that I cannot appreciate the artistic artefacts of a religion which I find strange as well as socially and politically problematic today.