Tim O’Neil, erstwhile wry, dry, rather sarcastic, eccentric, occasionally arrogant Irish-Australian atheist bastard, has tremendous and informative fun disabusing the vast cadre of internet atheists who worship rather than use the intellect of the gigantic myth of the Evil Old Catholic Church persecuting scientists and thereby creating The Dark Ages[TM]. In particular, he focuses his glee on this:
The Stupidest Thing on the Internet Ever
Behold its glorious idiocy!
He then gives his fellow atheists things called “facts” n’ stuff in a highly educational and fascinating romp through the fact that the world basically owes the sciences to the medieval Latin Christians.
Particularly funny is this which you should clip n’save for the next Dawkins worshipper who comes along to tell abou the Church’s “centuries-long campaign of persecution against Science and Reason” etc., blah blah:
It’s not hard to kick this nonsense to pieces, especially since the people presenting it know next to nothing about history and have simply picked this bullshit up from other websites and popular books and collapse as soon as you hit them with some hard evidence. I love to totally stump them by asking them to present me with the name of one – just one – scientist burned, persecuted or oppressed for their science in the Middle Ages. They always fail to come up with any. They usually try to crowbar Galileo back into the Middle Ages, which is amusing considering he was a contemporary of Descartes. When asked why they have failed to produce any such scientists given the Church was apparently so busily oppressing them, they often resort to claiming that the Evil Old Church did such a good job of oppression that everyone was too scared to practice science. By the time I produce a laundry list of Medieval scientists – like Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Peckham, Duns Scotus, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, John Dumbleton, Richard of Wallingford, Nicholas Oresme, Jean Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa – and ask why these men were happily pursuing science in the Middle Ages without molestation from the Church, my opponents have usually run away to hide and scratch their heads in puzzlement at what just went wrong.