This was a debate between theoretical physicist and cosmologist, Lawrence Krauss, and Christian thinker, Michael Jones (his YouTube Channel) discussing what’s better: Christianity or secularism. (The full debate is HERE). I will follow the short video with the quote and link to the chapter (eight) of [atheist] Nathan Johnstone’s book.
The history of torture has much to tell us about the naive faith [atheist, Sam] Harris places in rationalism as a force for its limitation. A truly objective ethics of torture will want to take account of precedent, and precedent does not favour Harris.
Between the end of the Roman Empire and the late-twelfth century torture had fallen into disuse in Europe. Harris might be surprised to learn that Christendom owed its reintroduction not to bloodthirsty clerics, but to scientific jurists concerned to free justice from the reliance on God’s intervention and to champion human judicial competence. In both medieval Europe and modern-day America, then, societies that had abandoned torture contemplated its reintroduction as a rational necessity, but the medieval story—the one for which we know the ending— recounts the failure of rationalism to control its own offspring.
Nathan Johnstone, The New Atheism, Myth, and History: The Black Legends of Contemporary Anti-Religion (North Shields, UK: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), 224 (page 229 at ARCHIVE)
AMAZON DESCRIPTION: This book examines the misuse of history in New Atheism and militant anti-religion. It looks at how episodes such as the Witch-hunt, the Inquisition, and the Holocaust are mythologized to present religion as inescapably prone to violence and discrimination, whilst the darker side of atheist history, such as its involvement in Stalinism, is denied. At the same time, another constructed history—that of a perpetual and one-sided conflict between religion and science/rationalism—is commonly used by militant atheists to suggest the innate superiority of the non-religious mind. In a number of detailed case studies, the book traces how these myths have long been overturned by historians, and argues that the New Atheism’s cavalier use of history is indicative of a troubling approach to the humanities in general. Nathan Johnstone engages directly with the God debate at an academic level and contributes to the emerging study of non-religion as a culture and an identity.