Comments by "disgruntledtoons" (@disgruntledtoons) on "The boring truth about the Library of Alexandria" video.

  1. There was a strong anti-Catholic sentiment among intellectuals in 19th century Europe, who made up a lot of nonsense in their search for reasons to condemn Catholicism. Some of this was taken up by anti-Christian thinkers of the same era, who conflated the Catholic Church with all of Christianity (a habit of thought which persists to this day). The stamp of legitimate scholarship was placed onto accounts of things that never happened.
    72
  2. People cling to the dramatic versions of the tale, particularly that the library was burned down by religiously-motivated throwbacks, because they want to justify their view of religiously-motivated people as throwbacks. The religious people of ancient times were just as enlightened as any of their secular contemporaries, and the secular people of ancient times were just as hidebound, bigoted, and anti-intellectual as their religious counterparts of the same era.
    46