By saying this, I do not mean that Dr. Hanson is dishonest, nor do I mean to impugn the honesty of his scholarship. What I mean is that the rationale for it was always dishonest, and his rationale for reviving it is mistaken. I like everyone else my age, learned this stuff in high school. It was part of the curriculum until the 1970s.

Classical studies were always about dividing history in a fundamentally anti-Christian way. There was Classical, Greco-Roman society. We were to admire the ‘steady’ Romans with their virtues and the Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle. Science, art, and everything good happened with the Greeks, we were told.

Then there was the Middle Ages. Medieval was (and still is) a term of scorn, just as Classical was a term of approval. We were invited to contemplate an ‘Age of Faith’ and ‘Age of Ignorance’. The inescapable conclusion was that Christianity is bad, bad, bad.

At the end of the Middle Ages was the Renaissance, when civilization revived. After that came the ‘Age of Reason’ and the ‘Enlightenment’ and so on.

Medieval studies proved that this was so much bunk. The modern era started when Christ rose from the grave. If that had not happened, then the modern world, including freedom, democracy, and the cell phone, would never have happened. The fundamental break in History came between Christianity and Ancient World. The first industrial revolution came in Europe in the 11th and 12th centuries. Our world is a continuation of that Medieval world.

If you really want to know what the ancient world was like, it is easy enough to find out. Read accounts of the native people of the world by 16th and 17th-century explorers and colonists. The Indians, the Chinese, the Aztecs, and the Incas hadn’t changed much in 1500 years. Because Europe had advanced so much, these areas were seen as backward and primitive. The ancient world changed very little and very slowly. It persists today as the third world. Third world dirt, poverty, oppression, and smells were all part of the Classical world, too. Classical scholars, understandably, don’t dwell on them.

Classical studies were mainly promoted by atheists for their agenda. Students could not study Christianity (separation of Church and State!), but they were forced to study the religion of the Greeks and Romans. They were also expected to approve it and look down on Christians. Classical studies were little more than dressed-up atheism. I never understood what was so great about a slave society. Greco-Roman societies were all about slaves, but they didn’t count.

Dr. Hanson thinks of himself as a conservative and writes for National Review. He knows that in the Classical view of the world, some people count and some don’t. The ones who do not count became Hillary Clinton’s ‘basket of deplorables’. Clinton, and everyone else her age, were immersed in the Classical world. These studies provided no bulwark against Communism, Nazism, Fascism, genocide, eugenics and a host of other ills. At the root of all of these movements is the conviction that some people count and some people don’t. Christianity teaches that everyone counts; Classical Studies teach that only the ruling class counts.

Classical studies was really about training the future rich and powerful how to disdain the lowly and weak. This is something that (surprisingly) requires years of training. St. Augustine, in his book City of God, wrote that the Romans, before they invaded someone, had first to be convinced that what they were doing was right. They required the most elaborate proofs. This required training, and the orators were well rewarded for their eloquence.

The result of that eloquence was war, plunder and ruin for a defeated city. The unfortunate inhabitants were sold into slavery. Like a disobedient wife (or a deplorable), they deserved a beating. The orator said so.

Classical studies existed to ease the conscience of the rich and powerful. Communists and other left-wing types, bent on enslaving others, were prominent in Classical studies. That was never a bug; it was always the main feature. That is why there is no loss if Classical studies and the entire Liberal Arts dies off. They never enriched anyone’s life in the first place.

“Every additional unit of production you get from the wind or from the sun, that displaces gas generation, and brings your price down”

Is that true? It seems to be a truism that additional electricity from the wind or sun will displace gas (or fossil fuel) generation. We often hear of advocates for wind power wanting to supply 30% or more of the power in the grid. Can high amounts of intermittent power be utilized effectively?

For answers, consider the following graph of intermittent power (wind+solar) in Germany and losses (generation – consumption) for the years 2000 – 2016.

As you can see, starting in 2011, the losses begin rising in parallel with the rise in intermittent power. In 2011, the 68 billion kWh generated by wind and solar represented 11.8% of the power generated that year. That appears to be the maximum that the grid can absorb. After that, power from the sun and wind just added to the losses in the system, and the grid tried to rid itself of them before it caused a blackout.

This explains why the German CO₂ emissions refuse to go down. The amount of power generated from fossil fuels was 339 billion kWh in both 2000 and 2016. Since the same amount of power is being generated with fossil fuels, the same amount of fuel is being consumed and the carbon footprint stays the same.

Despite generating 31.8% of its power from renewables in 2016, Germany is not decarbonizing. The graph shows that adding wind and solar power beyond what can be used to satisfy demand is useless. The power is dissipated as heat or dumped outside the system. This does nothing to decarbonize the country.

What is not dumped are the feed-in tariffs, or in the case of Australia, Renewable Energy Certificates (REC). The money paid to the owner of wind turbines and photovoltaic cells for their electricity still shows up on the ratepayer’s bills, even though the power was not used. This includes the feed-in tariff.

The ratepayer pays for the following: power he uses, tariffs on 12% of the power he uses, useless power and tariffs on that power, tariffs on power that businesses who are big enough to get an exemption use, a ‘strengthened’ grid and ‘strengthened’ interconnectors to dump useless power elsewhere, load shedding equipment and load management equipment for when the wind dies down too quickly to avoid a blackout, and big, expensive batteries.

More energy from the wind and sun will not do a thing to reduce gas generation in South Australia because the grid is already saturated with intermittent energy. Since the energy cannot be used effectively, the amount of electricity generated by gas will not go down. The only thing it does is increase energy costs and blackouts.

It is small wonder then, that the more wind and solar you have in a system, the higher the electric bill.

Source:

All data was sourced from the US EIA. Unfortunately, this is a beta site, but there was no other link to international data yet.

This website has CO₂ emissions, generation and consumption figures for every country for the years 1980-2016. This link will make available for download German CO₂ emissions.

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=0000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000f&c=00000000000g&ct=0&tl_id=40-A&vs=INTL.4008-8-DEU-MMTCD.A&vo=0&v=H&end=2016

The link for German electricity generation is:

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=00000000000000000000000000000fvu&c=ruvvvvvfvtujvv1urvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvnvvuvs&ct=0&tl_id=2-A&vs=INTL.2-12-AFG-BKWH.A&ord=CR&vo=0&v=H&end=2016

The link for German electricity consumption is:

https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=0000002&c=ruvvvvvfvtujvv1urvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvnvvuvs&ct=0&tl_id=2-A&vs=INTL.2-2-AFG-BKWH.A&vo=0&v=H&end=2016

The author of the study is Professor Bruce Mountain. He says that the way to lower electricity rates is to reduce the use of fossil fuels in producing electricity. Is he right?

The meat of the study goes something like this. When the wind is blowing, wholesale electricity rates go down. This is true. There is a large amount of wind generating capability in South Australia. When the wind blows, there is competition between vendors for market share, and prices drop.

When the wind dies down, rates go up. All of the wind generators are now idle. Their place is taken by a large number of inefficient gas turbine generators producing expensive energy in the system. The solution, according to Mr. Mountain, is to reduce the amount of electricity generated by these inefficient gas turbines and increase the amount of energy purchased from wind generators.

This is a splendid solution. The South Australian government seems likely to order more wind turbines, which, when the wind stops blowing, will be quite as useless as the ones it already has.

So, why does South Australia have the world’s highest electricity rates? Why do Germany and Denmark, two countries with very different economies than Australia, also have extremely high rates? Answer: all three of them have the same renewables policy.

Background

There are basically three classes of generators to think about:

• Baseload generators (cheap power)

1. Coal (and biomass) fired steam plants
2. Combined-cycle gas turbine plants. These are the most efficient power plants in the world.
3. Nuclear plants

• Peaking units (expensive power)

1. Peaking units are normally conventional gas turbines. These turbines are not efficient
2. Piston engines.
3. Hydro. Most hydroelectric power is treated as peaking power. Hydro is dispatchable, but there is not enough of it to provide baseload power, so the power companies use hydro as peaking power because peaking power is more valuable than baseload power.

• Intermittent power (expensive but heavily subsidized power)

1. Wind
2. Solar

Baseload generators are expensive, but since they run all the time and are long-lived these expenses can be amortized, making baseload electricity far cheaper than power from peaking units. Before deregulation, utilities would build enough baseload plants to take care of power needs most of the year

Peaking units were run on very hot days when everyone had their AC on and the demand was very high. They can be fired up almost instantly. They provided an emergency reserve of power for unplanned outages and demands. Peaking units are cheap for their size, but that does not mean they are cheap compared to their power output. They come in small sizes and small generating units do not have the economies of scale like large baseload units. In addition, they are inefficient and natural gas is usually more expensive than coal. By their nature, peaking units provide expensive power to the system.

To give some idea of the costs involved, a baseload unit might provide electricity for between $30-50/mwh. A peaking unit provides power for $300-13,000/mwh. It is a big difference.

The preferred solution was to use coal for baseload power and bring on gas peaking units when needed. Where gas is cheap and plentiful, as is currently the case in the US, it can be substituted for coal.

What South Australia (and Germany, Denmark, etc.) has done is to first construct a large number of subsidized wind and solar (mostly wind) plants. They have also shut down their coal-fired baseload plants. They have not replaced them with other baseload plants.

As a result, South Australia no longer has enough baseload power. When the wind dies down, the grid operator tries to find enough power to prevent a blackout, so expensive peaking units are brought on. These units can be brought on instantly, so the power does not go out, but the power bill does go up.

The governments around the world following this strategy have made no provision for what happens when the wind dies down. Their new strategy seems to be imposing blackouts on less-favored, poorer people. This is known as ‘load shedding’ and will probably be the wave of the future unless they are voted out of office.

The bitter irony in all of this is that these renewables do nothing to reduce CO₂ emissions, which is the ultimate reason given for them. Despite having over 30% renewable energy, Germany’s emissions have not gone down in the last 20 years; in fact, they are higher in 2017 than they were 1998. Remember, the peaking units are inefficient. They use far more fuel than a baseload unit.

This means that even though they only supply power when the wind dies down, the overall fuel consumption is higher than it was using baseload units. Put another way, if you scrapped the wind power and went back to utilizing baseload power, you would use less fuel, and hence have lower greenhouse emissions.

Only one country follows this strategy – the United States. The only country reducing its emissions – by switching from baseload coal to baseload gas – is also the United States. It also has the lowest-cost electricity. Australia is both a coal and a gas exporter, so both fuels are readily available. Unfortunately, in Australia gas is extremely expensive and not competitive with coal. If South Australia wishes to lower its electricity bills and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions, it should add efficient supercritical coal plants to its energy mix until it has sufficient baseload power.

In the actual trial of Brett Kavanaugh, conducted Thursday, Cotton Mather’s role was played by Sen. Dianne Feinstein. Cotton Mather had built up a reputation as a public intellectual before the witchcraft trials. After them he lost a considerable amount of his prestige. Like Mather, Feinstein is losing much of her reputation as a moderate. Since this is really a non-trial trial, rules of evidence are tossed and the victim’s reputation besmirched.

What is happening to Kavanaugh is very similar to a trauma-informed investigation. In a trauma-informed investigation (really it is a pseudo-investigation), the investigator coaches the accuser on what to say. She (the pseudo-investigator) works to make sure that there are no facts to corroborate, so that the defendant is helpless to defend himself. Both Christine Blasey Ford and Dorothy Ramirez have stories which have carefully been scrubbed of any details, so they cannot be refuted. Having coached them on what to say, they can repeat with confidence the story they have been told by the ‘investigator’. In fact, Ramirez admitted this happened over a period of six days.

Trauma-informed investigators will, like any good con man (or woman), pretend that this is ‘the latest research’ and ‘scientifically proven’. Before you believe that, look at the ‘oppressed’ women running around in uniforms from A Handmaid’s Tale with signs saying, ‘believe all women’. These are the kinds of people who developed the ‘science’ behind trauma-informed investigations. Do they look objective? If you were on trial, would you trust them on your jury?

Here is a typical example of a trauma-informed investigation. Joshua Horner was accused of molesting a minor, convicted and sentenced to 50 years. There was only detail they could check – the accuser said that the defendant frightened her into silence by killing her dog. It took the Oregon Innocence Project 18 months to find the dog alive. The prosecutor cooperated with the Innocence Project, so that is to his credit. The man’s conviction was tossed. That is why these trauma-informed investigators try to keep the accusation vague so there are no details like that to check. There are many men in jail with similar charges but no details they can use to exonerate themselves. You can read about it here.

This is not the only way in which liberals seek to destroy others with rape non-trials. Thanks to Obama (with a new ‘interpretation’ of Title IX), universities are holding a kind of non-trial trial. These are the Title IX tribunals. On very flimsy evidence, female students are making accusations of ‘rape’ (usually consensual sex). The proceedings and personnel are heavily slanted against the accused man. For example, in one Ohio State case, an OSU official allegedly helped a rape accuser lie. The judge rules she could be sue and held personally liable. Standard of proof is preponderance of evidence, and the university denies due process to the man. If you date the wrong woman, it is very easy to be kicked out of school. Adding to the injury are the heavy student loans which must be repaid.

Federal courts are stepping in to guarantee the rights of accused men. Colleges, including publicly funded ones, are arguing that men do not deserve any rights, but they are losing these cases. In a few cases, there have been settlements that include compensation. Men have been fighting back and winning. Naturally, left-leaning ‘civil liberties’ non-profits like the ACLU are nowhere to be seen in these fights. You can read more here.

This stain is spreading to the workplace. Expect to see closer monitoring of workers seeking to fire those who have deviant opinions. Google already (and obviously) enforces groupthink on its workers. Soon freedom of speech (unless you agree with the dominant culture) will be a thing of the past.

Democratic Party politicians know they will never suffer from these laws. Bill Clinton was credibly alleged to have raped Juanita Broddrick and nothing happened to him. Nothing happened to Ted Kennedy, who left a woman, Mary Jo Kopechne, to die. A few politicians have suffered disgrace, but once #metoo is properly weaponized they can go back to abusing women. They don’t really care about women, and neither do female colleagues like Dianne Feinstein. It is all about power.

This is why Judge Kavanaugh matters. Does anyone think that a member of the Supreme Court nominated by a Democratic president would do anything to stop these travesties? Justices like Ginsburg were chosen to further liberalism. Why would they suddenly start caring about freedom and the constitution?

The other thing that matters is the midterms. If the Democrats lose at the ballot box, it will make them think twice about these things and give Republican politicians time to pass laws to stop these travesties. If we don’t, freedom will soon be a thing of the past. Vote!

This is the blog of me, Richard D. Patton. It is about my interests and writings. I am an aspiring author, scholar and engineer. I will do my best to be honest about our religion, Christianity, and the problems that beset us.

Many of us are surrounded by unbelievers. Some of them try to persuade us that Christianity is bunk and that God does not exist.  Some of them tell us that Christianity has not been a force for good in the world.  I have, and will publish more, articles on these topics.

You won’t like everything you read here.  That’s okay.  What I want you to do is to think.  Too many Christians refuse to debate with non-Christians on their own terms.  In Acts 17, Paul wasn’t afraid to debate them, and neither am I.  I am a follower of Jesus Christ, and I am not ashamed. I hope all Christians find this blog helpful.

We’re bored, and we want to be entertained.  Except for a few months when a newborn enters the life of a family, we have spare time and would like to be entertained.  It’s reasonable, after the day’s work is done, to want to do something that is fun.  Some Christian sects, most notably the Puritans, substituted work for having any kind of entertainment.  Not surprisingly, word ‘puritanical’ is an insult.

A second reason is that, like the animals being trapped for their fur, bored humans can be trapped and harvested in their search for entertainment.  We need good entertainment.  The question is always where are we going to find it?

A confession: I don’t like movies.  I am, as of this writing, 68, so I’ve been to a few movies.  I grew up in the 50s, and I can say that I would not like to be growing up today.  By today’s standards, the movies were tame back then.  Today they would all be G-rated.  Moreover, miracle of miracles, pornography was practically non-existent.  Playboy had just been started.  The biggest star was Doris Day, and the film industry catered to families.   I liked movies back then, and movies were popular.

Movies aren’t popular anymore.  I don’t know any adults who regularly go to the movies, unless they are taking their children to one.  The story lines are boring or implausible.  Movies are actually a small, shrinking industry compared to the potential size of their audience.  Because they have so little appeal, movies have shrunk into niche markets.  The largest niche market is for young people, which is why Disney, a medium-sized studio when I was growing up, is now the largest.  Other niche markets are for comics (another small market when I was growing up) and science fiction (ditto).

At one time, there were over 250 movie releases by major studios in a year.  In 2017, there were 165 movies in wide release, grossing 10.65 billion.  Only 53 (less than 1/3, or a little over 1 per week) of them grossed over 50 million, and they accounted for 80% of the total gross (8.53 billion).  The highest ranked Christian film was The Shack at 57 million, ranked 47^th on the list.

How small is the movie industry?  Movies usually take in around 11 billion in US ticket sales.  By contrast, the NFL takes in 11 billion and college football another 6 billion.  Spectator sports (professional and college) are around 50 billion, total.  The cruise ship industry is around 22 billion.  Golf courses and country clubs are around 23 billion.  The music industry (the one that publishes and sells recorded music) is 6 billion.   Artists and performers, i.e. independent authors, actors, models, dancers, comedians, musicians, etc. are collectively a 38 billion dollar industry.  Ford Motor Company, on the other hand, takes in 140 billion annually.

I can tell you exactly when I decided to quit watching TV.  I was driving my car and listening to the radio.  There was a controversial TV show coming up, and a Christian minister was discussing it with a TV spokeswoman.  Finally, the TV spokeswoman told the minister, “Just turn your TV off”.  I took her excellent advice and dropped cable.  Once that happened, I gave up on sports, too, because most sports are shown on cable.  Since I did not happen to live near a professional sports team (of any sort) I switched to high school and college sports.

I don’t really miss pro sports, nor do I miss the commercials constantly telling me to buy, buy, buy.  In fact, once I turned off the TV, I had a much easier time balancing my budget.  You pay for those commercials eventually.

When I went to movies, it always seemed to me that there were harsh, unnecessary elements in the plot.  There was gutter language and/or violent, explicit sex.  The hero (or anti-hero) was never Christian; those roles were reserved for villains.  The hero seldom has good morals; he was always jumping into bed with women, none of whom were his wife.  We were supposed to think this was a good thing.  I would tense up when watching movies, wondering when a harsh element was going to occur.  I finally just gave up on them and started reading books of all kinds.  Libraries are a lot cheaper than cable (if you return your books on time).  A Christian bookstore can offer entertainment without having to wade through cultural junk.

What to do?  I believe that there is a big enough Christian audience to make a viable Christian film industry.  What we are lacking are stories and directors to tell them.

Consider this.  The biggest explicitly Christian-themed movies that have appeared in recent years are 3 movies based on C. S. Lewis’ The Chronicles of Narnia.  Those 3 movies grossed 1.5 billion.  The Chronicles of Narnia, before it was a movie, was first a very successful series of 7 children’s fantasy novels (only 3 of the 7 have been made into movies).  The first movie in this series, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, grossed 745 million.  The Shack (57 million) was not a blockbuster but it did very well considering the handicaps that still accompany a Christian release.  There is a market out there.

If you think, as I do, that we need more than Biblical stories (like Passion of the Christ), then we are left with the problem of how to get someone to make good Christian movies.  I believe that successful movies are made from good stories, most of which start as successful novels.  The problem seems to be here.  Our culture (see Myth: the Flat Earth) is so poisoned that writers have a difficult time finding untainted material.  Materials taught in universities are so poisonous that they hamper efforts to produce a different, superior culture.

We cannot rely on Hollywood.  I truly believe that most of their screenwriters can’t come up with a good story anyway.  Plus, it would violate their ethics to show Christians in a good light.  It wasn’t necessarily better in the old days.  Consider Pollyanna, a 1960 flick from Walt Disney Studios when Walt Disney was alive.  It has no harsh elements, but the church scenes are ridiculous.  I believe that is because neither Disney nor the film’s director/writer David Swift had ever set foot in a church, any church (Disney was an atheist).

What should a Christian movie look like?  Is it enough to just strip out the harsh elements in conventional movies?  I think more needs to be done, since even without the harsh elements, most movies are junk from the starting gate.  We need fresh stories and new directors.

We know what a movie shouldn’t look like.  You can find proof that Hollywood has forgotten how to make a good movie just by going to a movie theater and watching one.  One need is to have more Christian directors behind the camera.  Another missing ingredient is good writing.  We need to bring along good young Christian writers.  More Christian fiction is being written.  I hope it reaches a critical mass where there are enough good stories from which to make movies.

Questions for comments

What kinds of stories do you think would make a good Christian movie?

What kinds of Christian entertainment would you like to see?

How do you define Christian entertainment?

copyright 2018 Richard D. Patton all rights reserved

Thanks,

The Management

There is currently a fight brewing over the minimum wage. Some groups want the minimum to go up to $15.00/hour. In response, other groups point out that some industries cannot afford $15.00/hour. They point to the fast food industry as an example. McDonald’s recently began rolling out kiosks in its stores. By 2020 they will be in every store in the US. You can read about it here.

If the $15/hour minimum wage is enacted, then I foresee the following:

• McDonald’s uses new technology to improve productivity.
• McDonald’s workers get a higher wage.
• Some workers are let go. Jobs are plentiful so that they will get new jobs. These jobs will be higher paying jobs in other industries.
• McDonald’s customers will experience better service.

BTW, $15/hour does not sound high to me. I earned the minimum wage of $1.60 back in 1971. Adjusted for inflation that is $10/hour in today’s money. You can check it yourself using the inflation calculator from the BLS, here.

Contrasting this with the attitude of the ancient Romans is interesting. Emperor Vespasian (69-79 A.D.) turned down an offer to have some heavy columns transported cheaply. He was worried about the effect on employment, saying ‘you must let me feed my poor commons'[1]. He was probably correct. Application of technology would have resulted in widespread unemployment and unrest in the Roman Empire.

Critics of a minimum wage hike echo Vespasian’s attitude toward technology. It is true that a minimum wage hike will cause unemployment if jobs are scarce. That is true, but if jobs are plentiful, a minimum wage hike usually helps workers. Rome was a totalitarian state. It had a small group of super-rich people who controlled everything. Everyone else was either poor or a slave. Demand was static because all of the money was with the rich, and they didn’t need more money. If you made money outside the system, the Roman tax collector took it. This is true of any totalitarian state. They are inherently corrupt. In a totalitarian state, the group in power enriches itself at the expense of the rest of society.

By contrast, America is a democracy. It has a large, prosperous middle class. Government is not corrupt. The middle class wants to increase its standard of living. This increases the demand for goods and services. As productivity rises, displaced workers go into better-paying jobs. This middle class is due to Christianity. Christianity advocates for the poor, rather than the rich. There is no ‘divine right of kings’ in Christianity. Based on the teachings of the Bible, Christians want a living wage for poor workers. Christianity also encourages the use of technology to improve living standards. This created the modern society.

McDonald’s isn’t doing anything wrong by automating its stores, and its workers will benefit from a higher wage. This dance between technology and rising living standards helps all of us. I hope it continues long into the future.

1) Gimpel, Jean. The Medieval Machine, Penguin Books, New York, NY 1976, p 9.

Copyright 2018 by Richard Patton Creative Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

Readers of this blog will note that blogging has fallen off. I am currently working on two books, and this is cutting into the time I can spend on articles for this blog. Usually, I try to write two articles/week, but now it will be more like one article/week. I expect this to continue. One of the books is a novel that I am preparing for publication.

The other book is about ancient and medieval technology, with an emphasis on the role of Christianity in creating a technological society. I have a question for readers. I would like some responses to the following question: How long should the book be?

The publishers prefer short non-fiction books. A short book would be 100-150 pages long and would cover most of the essentials of what I talk about in this blog, but without going deeply into them.

A long book would be 250-400 pages, and it would be a more scholarly book. It would go into great detail about each topic.

Which would you prefer: a short book or a long book? Let me know in the comments.

Copyright 2018 by Richard Patton Creative Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.

There are numerous references to the supposedly book-burning, ignorant Christian.  This is mostly the work of Humanist ‘scholars’, who clearly twist the facts to suit their Christophobe bigotries.  Here is an example from a book on Oceanography.  You would think that the topic would have nothing to do with Christianity, but that doesn’t stop the author from writing about it.

From How the Ocean Works : an introduction to oceanography, by Mark Denny.

The Dark Ages

The notion of a spherical earth survived the Roman absorption of Greek culture, but it was nearly lost to Western Civilization with the fall of the Roman Empire.  In 391, for instance, Christian mobs overran the library at Alexandria and burned its invaluable contents.

Mr. Denny packs a number of myths and fallacies into these sentences.  Let’s unpack them and learn the truth.  We have already seen that the myth of the flat earth was invented by Washington Irving in 1828 (see Myth: The Flat Earth).  It has no truth or validity; Medieval thinkers did not believe in a flat earth and there is really no Biblical justification for believing in a flat earth.  The Bible is silent on this point.  Let’s look at the academic fantasies related to the Library of Alexandria.

• Few institutions inspire academic fantasies as much as the Library of Alexandria. The Library was not like a municipal library; you could not go to it and visit.  It was a prestige item owned by the Pharaoh.  No one has actually located a building called the Library (Canfora, p137).  It appears to have been some bookshelves located in the School of the Muses, or Museum (Barnes p73).
• When Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 B.C., the Pharaohs became Greek and Alexandria was built to rule over the African population of Egypt. After his death, one of his generals, Ptolemy, eventually came to rule Egypt.
• Julius Caesar conquered Egypt in 47 B.C., and Augustus Caesar annexed it in 30 B.C. Thereafter Egypt, including the Library of Alexandria, became a Roman possession.  There appears to have been a daughter library (or perhaps a book warehouse) near the harbor of Alexandria; this was thought to have been destroyed by the fire Caesar started to burn the Egyptian fleet (Barnes p70-71, Canfora p137-142).
• As the Roman Empire declined in the 3^rd century A.D., the Library of Alexandria became an unnecessary expense. Caracalla sacked the city in 215 A.D.  No one knows exactly what happened to the Library.  It was probably destroyed in the fighting in the area around it (the Brucheon, where the Museum and Palace were located) in 272 A.D.  At this time there was fighting between the Roman forces under Aurelian and the Syrian forces under Zenobia.  One observer of the aftermath said that where the library had once been, ‘there is now a desert’ (Barnes p73, Canfora p195).
• So what happened in 391 A.D.? There were three major groups in Alexandria by 391 A.D. – Christians, Jews and Pagans.  The other two groups hated the Christians, because Christians were gaining and they were losing.  In 383 A.D. Christians were granted control of the Temple of Dionysus and displayed the ridiculous and indecent objects they found there.  There were Pagan riots and many Christians were killed (Hardy p84-87).  In 391 A.D., official support for Paganism was withdrawn and its temples closed in response to Pagan riots.  The Pagan historian Ammianus Marcellius (330-400 A.D.) confused the libraries of the Serapeum with the Library of Alexandria (Canfora p123).  The Serapeum (Temple of Serapis area) was turned over to Christians for churches and its temples were razed in 391 A.D. (Barnes p73).  This appears to be the source for myth that Christians burned the library.  A mob did not storm the Library; Christians took legal possession of the Serapeum.  Also, the Pagans could have removed the scrolls (if any were there) before the Christians took possession of the Serapeum.  Books on Serapis would not interest Christians.
• The Library was long gone by the time of the conquest of Alexandria by the Arabs in 641 A.D. They could not have burned the Library (Barnes p74), although they are sometimes accused of it.

Like the myth of the flat earth, the destruction of the Library of Alexandria has inspired countless Christophobes to slander early Christians and by extension, all Christians.

Mr. Denny has many more accusations of this kind; they are common to this kind of academic author.  Needless to say they are either outright falsehoods are gross exaggerations of what really happened.  I have chosen this example because it is typical of what a young Christian might see when he attends a university.  How the Ocean Works is a beginning text in the field, so a freshman or sophomore would use it, either as a textbook or a reference.  The sad thing about How the Ocean Works is that a young person considering Christianity might see this and be deterred.  That is why I put it up on this website.

Sources:

Barnes, Robert, ‘Cloistered Bookworms in the Chicken Coop of the Muses’, from The Library of Alexandria, edited by Roy MacLeod, I. B. Taurus & Co. Ltd, 2000.

Canfora, Luciano, The Vanished Library, translated by Martin Ryle, University of California Press, Berkeley, CA, 1990.

Hardy, Edward Roche, Christian Egypt, Oxford University Press, New York, NY, 1952.

A further reference in the web is:

‘Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

There is another article, ‘Destruction of the Library of Alexandria’ in Wikipedia.  I have some issues with it, mainly because it is too polemical.  The author(s) in my opinion, go beyond what can reasonably be said about the Library given the evidence; they offer their conclusions as fact rather than conjecture.  According to Wikipedia, it does not meet their standards.