Posted here because I feel this is more a Ethics/Morality question rather than a life science question
So on to the question
So on to the question
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The Salem Witch Trials
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"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Obvously Biblical. And they still kill "witches" in certain parts of South Africa today. Man, religion has a lot to answer for.
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What, like criminal justice? I mean you might think they're ignorant for believing in witches, but ignorance isn't really a moral problem.
I don't think witches are a specifically religious idea. I think it's more like ghosts, dragons, mermaids, etc.; kinds of things people have long histories of believing and which don't necessarily come from any religion.
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Jade Margery
Stranger in a strange land
To be fair, people can be ignorant and superstitious without religion. All it takes is a little fear and misunderstanding for people to draw the wrong conclusions. And witch hunts still happen in our culture, don't you doubt that.
Take Michael Jackson for instance. (I know everyone's probably sick of hearing about him, but it's the first example I could think of.) A jury found him not guilty. That's supposed to be enough--his name should have been clear. But due to the media parade, the fears of parents who put their empathy for small children before their reason, the assumption that a person who looks and acts weird would have weird sexuality etc... I bet that two months ago, if you had polled a thousand Americans, the vast majority of them would have thought he was a pedophile.
Now, I pay little attention to the media and I don't know or even care whether MJ was guilty. But either way, he was hounded, watched, scrutinized, despised, laughed at, and probably got a bag full of death threats on a daily basis.
We might as well have been carrying torches.
Take Michael Jackson for instance. (I know everyone's probably sick of hearing about him, but it's the first example I could think of.) A jury found him not guilty. That's supposed to be enough--his name should have been clear. But due to the media parade, the fears of parents who put their empathy for small children before their reason, the assumption that a person who looks and acts weird would have weird sexuality etc... I bet that two months ago, if you had polled a thousand Americans, the vast majority of them would have thought he was a pedophile.
Now, I pay little attention to the media and I don't know or even care whether MJ was guilty. But either way, he was hounded, watched, scrutinized, despised, laughed at, and probably got a bag full of death threats on a daily basis.
We might as well have been carrying torches.
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Ignorance has caused more immoral behaviour throughout history than anything else, I think.
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It would be ludicrous to claim that the Salem Witch Trials were not, at least, partially caused by the Bible. However, that was not their sole cause.
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The Salem Witch Trials had nothing to do with the Bible, except superficially. It was sociopathic teenage girls attempting to get rid of anyone who they didn't like by the easiest means available - by playing on the general fear and paranoia of witchcraft. If the community feared aliens, it would have been the Salem Alien Trials. If communists, the Salem Communist Trials. Admittedly the situation was set up through extreme religiosity, but the end result was a separate beast.
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Jade Margery
Stranger in a strange land
Max, are you using 'sociopathic teenage girls as a metaphor for something else or not? It's hard to tell but I must say I haven't heard that explanation before.
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The center of the Salem Witch Trials was sociopathic teenage girls, I'm not using a metaphor at all. Although there is speculation they may have been used by others, the point is moot, at the heart of it is simply someone's desire to remove others. The people in salem were, like most people in colonial America at that time, extremely religious and superstitious. They were scared of witches, and when these girls began their accusations, very possibly to get rid of personal, family enemies, and perhaps even people they just didn't like, the Puritans of the town were deceived by blind fear. The Bible and the witches were just a vehicle, not a driver. Granted, the vehicle of hate and fear should not have existed, but where does such a vehicle not exist, even today?
The girls got an unprecendented amount of attention in the trials as well, perhaps thats why they went on so long.
The girls got an unprecendented amount of attention in the trials as well, perhaps thats why they went on so long.
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MoonLancer
The Moon is a reflection of the MorningStar
*flips to page 8 of Witches: History of a Persecution*
"The devil was abroad in new England in 1692. The colonial powers England and France were at war. The Indians were on the warpath. Pirates were hindering trade. Smallpox was raging. The winter was cruel and Taxes Were rippling. To the Puritans of new England, such a litany of misfortune could only be the work of the devil and his agents on earth - witches.
The first inkling that there was a witch problem surfaced when a group of young girls gathered in the house of Reverend Samuel Parris in Salem village to listen to the west Indian tales of Tituba, the Parris' Carib Indian slave women. Two of the girls, The reverend's daughter Elizabeth and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams, got so excited they that they suffered fits of sobbing and convulsions, and Elizabeth threw a Bible across the room. This was not the first that the two girls had drawn attention to themselves, both being known as somewhat willful and headstrong: it would, however, gain them more attention then they had perhaps bargained for.
The two girls' hysteria spread to others. Ten girls, aged between twelve and twenty, began making odd gestures, striking poses and making ridiculous speeches that neither they nor others could understand. one, 17 year-old Elizabeth Hubbard, was the niece of a local physician Dr William Griggs, who on examining the girls, began to believe that they were possessed; it was not long before the local ministers diagnosed witchcraft. "
So thats how it started.
"The devil was abroad in new England in 1692. The colonial powers England and France were at war. The Indians were on the warpath. Pirates were hindering trade. Smallpox was raging. The winter was cruel and Taxes Were rippling. To the Puritans of new England, such a litany of misfortune could only be the work of the devil and his agents on earth - witches.
The first inkling that there was a witch problem surfaced when a group of young girls gathered in the house of Reverend Samuel Parris in Salem village to listen to the west Indian tales of Tituba, the Parris' Carib Indian slave women. Two of the girls, The reverend's daughter Elizabeth and her 11-year-old cousin Abigail Williams, got so excited they that they suffered fits of sobbing and convulsions, and Elizabeth threw a Bible across the room. This was not the first that the two girls had drawn attention to themselves, both being known as somewhat willful and headstrong: it would, however, gain them more attention then they had perhaps bargained for.
The two girls' hysteria spread to others. Ten girls, aged between twelve and twenty, began making odd gestures, striking poses and making ridiculous speeches that neither they nor others could understand. one, 17 year-old Elizabeth Hubbard, was the niece of a local physician Dr William Griggs, who on examining the girls, began to believe that they were possessed; it was not long before the local ministers diagnosed witchcraft. "
So thats how it started.
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And the girls are the ones who identified who were the "witches," afflicting them, and testified in the trials. Ann Putnam alone claimed to have been tormented by 62 different "witches." She later apologized, but she's the only one.
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Alencon
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The whole Salem witch thing was an example of ignorance fanned to a white hot pitch by mass hysteria.
So I have to say, in spite of the Bible. Although Exodus 22:18 certainly didn't help any.
So I have to say, in spite of the Bible. Although Exodus 22:18 certainly didn't help any.
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SiderealExalt
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I'll go with, inspired by it. Without belief in the supernatural, these things don't happen.
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Mankind also doesn't need to believe in the supernatural to hate and fear people and groups.
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Verv
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What is really interesting about the Salem Witch trials is that if they confessed, they got off scott free...
That is like saying: "I communed with evil spirits and caused great pain in other people's lives," and not getting punishment.
In the US, today, even if someone were to have confessed to being a witch and through whatever means killed another person they would not get off free.
It was oddly this strange sense of Christian forgiveness that surprisingly would spare the lives of obvious criminals.
But more than that... One has to consider that every culture and society has had strange epochs within it where dastardly things were done.
After all, Charles Manson was a hippie. He obviously isn't representative of all hippies but that is who he associated with and what he did.
The Bible has an 'Old' testament and a 'New' testament.
Do you know how the New Testament expands upon the Old, and how the new covenant that we have entails us to lead our lives?
You do not care whether MJ was guilty? If he was, he was a bona fide pedophile who molested children and got off only because of his fame.
That is like saying: "I communed with evil spirits and caused great pain in other people's lives," and not getting punishment.
In the US, today, even if someone were to have confessed to being a witch and through whatever means killed another person they would not get off free.
It was oddly this strange sense of Christian forgiveness that surprisingly would spare the lives of obvious criminals.
But more than that... One has to consider that every culture and society has had strange epochs within it where dastardly things were done.
After all, Charles Manson was a hippie. He obviously isn't representative of all hippies but that is who he associated with and what he did.
The Bible has an 'Old' testament and a 'New' testament.
Do you know how the New Testament expands upon the Old, and how the new covenant that we have entails us to lead our lives?
You do not care whether MJ was guilty? If he was, he was a bona fide pedophile who molested children and got off only because of his fame.
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Code:
you speak of ignorance.
are you 100% sure you have a very good grasp on what it was like to be a person in that time and place?
sounds to me like there were some mind altering drugs involved, the kind that occur naturally.
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What is it to you if JM doesn't care whether or not Michael Jackson was guilty of certain allegations? I don't care either. I prefer to concentrate on some of the negative things closer to home with which I might assist rather than on frenzied media hype from thousands of miles away.
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MoonLancer
The Moon is a reflection of the MorningStar
It was not a unique occurrence. Events such as these were happening all across the Colonies and Europe
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