The Triumph of Christianity

In 251 the bishop of Rome wrote a letter to the bishop of Antioch in which he mentioned that the Roman congregation was supporting fifteen hundred widows and distressed persons.

Women were especially drawn to Christianity because it offered them a life that was so greatly superior to the life they otherwise would have led.

In keeping with their Jewish origins, Christians condemned the exposure of infants as murder.31 As Justin Martyr (100–165) put it, “we have been taught that it is wicked to expose even new-born children... [for] we would then be murderers.”32 So, substantially more Christian (and Jewish) female infants lived.

The idea that the earth rotates had occurred to many people through the centuries, but two objections had always made it seem implausible. First, if the earth turns, why wasn’t there a constant and powerful wind from the east, caused by the rotation of the earth in that direction? Second, why did an arrow shot straight up into the air not fall well

The truth is that not only did Christianity not impede the rise of science; it was essential to it, which is why science arose only in the Christian West! Moreover, there was no sudden “Scientific Revolution”; the great achievements of Copernicus, Newton, and the other stalwarts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were the product of normal

As Rabbi Eliezer is quoted in the Babylonian Talmud (ca. 90 CE ), “Better burn the Torah than teach it to a woman.” Indeed, elsewhere the Talmud advises: “Everyone who talketh much with a woman causes evil to himself.”11

the concern and antagonism expressed in the Gospels about “the Jews” must be interpreted as the sentiments of a group totaling no more than three thousand (in 70 CE ) and who had reason to fear a group numbering in the millions—too often critics have anachronistically reversed the relative sizes.

Although the tale about Columbus and the flat earth is equally fictional, Irving presented it as fact. Almost at once the story was eagerly embraced by historians who were so certain of the wickedness and stupidity of the medieval church that they felt no need to seek any additional confirmation, although some of them must have realized that the st

because God has given humans the power of reason it ought to be possible for us to discover the rules established by God. Indeed, many of the early scientists felt morally obliged to pursue these secrets, just as Whitehead had noted. The great British philosopher concluded his remarks by noting that the images of God and creation found in the non-E