Scott Alexander (author/host)

And just went on thinking that until they were asked.

Any one of those people, ordinary people in an ordinary village, would have been burned at Joan's trial in five minutes flat.

Nobody without theological training would survive.

Arendelle, I've been regularly told by Christians that theology is basically just logic and deducible from the premises of the religion, and very smart people are good at logic.

Basilica, I'm a Christian and I don't buy it.

Brilliant people in the 4th century and in the 16th century and in the 20th century study their Bibles, read theologians, and come up with heresies conclusively condemned by Athanasius.

Indeed, we observe that all these brilliant people assembled in the 4th century produced dozens of close church councils which the emperor tried to shape to whatever was most politically useful, and then later centuries saw hundreds of extremely corrupt papal elections between would-be popes where cardinals were paid vast sums to vote for the candidate who paid most, some of which produced popes who made historically vital rulings for utterly cynical reasons.

If God is real, maybe the Council of Nicaea was divinely inspired.

But if God isn't real, theology is men looking at their reflection, quarreling about it, and then voting to decide who to kill for being in the minority.

If everyone who doesn't study theology in the 12th century is a heretic, and everyone who doesn't study theology in the 20th century is a heretic, shouldn't Joan have just been a heretic?

Arendelle, I agree that this is adding a lot of complexity to the atheist theory, but Joan was very pious.

All you need to argue is that her village priest wasn't a heretic, which if the Catholic Church is any good at its job, he shouldn't be, and that any other errors she made were corrected at Poitiers, and she pays attention and learns the right answer and then remembers it later.

Basilica, I am touched by your faith in the simplicity and purity of the Christian doctrine and the ability and honesty of the Catholic Church.

Arendelle laughs.

Basilica, and the artillery!

Imagine, Arendelle, that you hear that Google has just offered a billion dollars a year salary to a new employee, a young woman from a small tribe in Africa who was illiterate until the age of 15.

Arendelle, this seems unlikely.

Basilica, yep.

Would you guess she was hired to be their new top programmer?

The first Balliste were invented by a devoted R&D team around 400 BC.