Waking Up from Waking Up from History

Via Wintery Knight, in “The Myth of the Flat Earth”, Jeffrey Burton Russell talks about one argument which those who scoff at Christianity (or at the past generally) don’t have available to them:

. . . an error that the Historical Society of Britain some years back listed as number one in its short compendium of the ten most common historical illusions. It is the notion that people used to believe that the earth was flat—especially medieval Christians.

It must first be reiterated that with extraordinary few exceptions no educated person in the history of Western Civilization from the third century B.C. onward believed that the earth was flat.

More on Global Warming and the Limits of Human Knowledge

For those who have been wondering:

After an unusually cold winter in 2011 (December 2010-February 2011) the winter of 2012 was unusually warm in the continental United States. But the winter of 2012 was bitter in Europe, Asia and Alaska.

(from “Global Warming Models Are Wrong Again”, opinion section, Wall Street Journal)

Related entries:

• “More on Global Warming”
• “Re Global Warming, Be Reasonable”
• “On Conservatism and Global Warming”

Contraceptives

Apparently the Pill makes men and women like each other less.  Also, apparently, condoms make women more depressed.

Sometimes I wonder whether the Catholic Church hasn’t been right about contraceptives all along.

Incidentally, political correctness makes it difficult even to talk about such questions.  The Wall Street Journal writer, at that first link, feels compelled to assure readers,