There have been a lot of people recently who felt the need to go into print to tell us that Christianity has been a force for good in the last sixteen hundred years, one of the latest being humanist journo. Madeline Bunting.
Now I understand where Ms. Bunting is coming from, we all have Christian friends and understand they don't really want to be constantly reminded what a bloodthirsty gang of thugs their predecessors were but historian A.C. Grayling felt the need to put his colleague right on a few points.
A LESSON IN HISTORY
Pity he dod not have time to mention what the buggers did to Hypatia and the Library of Alexandria. I mean, Roz and Jenni are a couple of sweeties and my friend Janet is a drink on a stick, but that still does not excuse the fact that Christians dragged poor Hypatia, the most learned woman in the world, out of her office in the Library and flayed her with oyster shells while the library itself, which held the largest collection of texts in the ancient world, was burned.
And their excuse? True wisdom can only come from God through the church so everything not approved by the church (for the simple reason it had not been invented) was the work of the devil!
Those events took place around 405 AD but examine the logic and you will see many parrallels with the American fubdamentalist thinking that is dragging us towards WW3.
"Reserve your right to think for even to think wrongly is better than not to think at all. To teach superstition as truth is a most evil thing" :- Hypatia of Alexandria.