Contents
Preamble
Post 1
Post 2
Post 3
Post 4
Post 5
Post 6
Post 7
Note
These documents have been slightly updated in terms of format from the original November 2000 posts, as part of an overall site redesign. Interpolations after the original postings are restricted to footnotes, and identified as such. Updated versions posted July 2002.
The Screwtape Posts
Post 3 — November 26, 2000
This is the third post. The so-called 'WitchHunter's answered comments again inline. Posted, originally, directly to the forum. Do note the strikingly misplaced rhetoric about other groups that have done this sort of thing — it seems another conceit among these groups that everyone persecutes them; so naturally the assumption here, despite everything I've clearly said to the contrary, is I'm just criticizing Christians specifically. I should comment that if we enlarge the context a little, this seems to be a rather widespread conceit among religions — a persecution complex of sorts flowing, I might hypothesize, from the originally cultlike structure of most mystical religions, the necessity that there be an us and a them, and in particular, a them that will hate us. Thus the 'others do this too, and you don't pay attention to them' becomes a stock rejoinder, employed generally regardless of its inapplicability. There will be much more of this, and it's the most repetitive element in the sequence. (This annotation added after original posting.)
Note, also the bit about the Brazilian 'Satanic cults' bugaboo. I'll have more to say about the obvious (and rather frightening) parallel with the demonization of the alleged 'witches' as a pattern in the years of the hunts in the next post. (This annotation added after original posting.)
Original post here.
[WH] "Perhaps I have a bad taste for nicknames."
And a remarkable talent for understatement.
[WH] "I just think that IF the witch hunters were wrong 99% of the time, still not fair to say that they were wrong 100% of the time."
Seems straightforward enough. Trouble is, it's a big if. As previously stated, I feel they were wrong 100% of the time, pretty much by definition. Perhaps you'd like to explain to me how I'm wrong here. Are you still justifying the excruciating torture and burning of 1 percent of the those who so died? Presumably because they really were witches, and that was reason enough?
Remember that part in my last post about how entering into such calculations is to risk losing your very humanity. You do like your humanity, don't you?
[WH] "They should not be also a "historical scape goat" for the acts of cruelty practiced for SEVERAL DIFFERENT nations, religions, cultures through human history. What about several cases of children being sacrificed by vodoo and newage religious cults in Brazil only 10 years ago! Isn't that cruel?"
Care to explain in what sense you feel they're being made a historical scapegoat?
They brutally tortured, then murdered by burning alive hundreds of thousands1 of people. My heart goes out to you, that you feel their reputation has been so besmirched.
And yep, those other cases, assuming I can pick up hard references to them somewhere, are pretty good cases of what mysticism can do too. Thanks for bringing them to my attention.
[WH] "I am also against dogmas. They are satanic. (Oops, said it again!)"
You sure did. Review, at your leisure, my position on evil as an abstraction mechanism (you can find it in my original comment on the survey, at http://www.well.com/ ~ajmilne/thoughtcrimes/beliefnet_says_im_a_period.html -- I believe you saw it in another discussion in this forum).
If you're getting tired of the reading, let me spell it out for you in relatively short sentences: that's a profoundly intellectually dodgy way out. I don't believe for a moment Satan exists. I know very well dogma does. Why do you even bother bringing your sulphurous foil into the discussion, except to put the phenomenon at a safe, abstract distance from yourself? You can blame it on the devil, my friend, but the documents are pretty explicit about who was actually raking the coals.
WitchHunter, don't waste your time with unsupportable and unsupported contentions about mythical characters. Wouldn't you rather have something you can work with in the real world? Do something useful, and just do a little work to free yourself of the dogma, already.
My friend, you are so useful a case study, I'm beginning to suspect you're secretly the fictional creation of a secret ally. Fess up, willya? You're really James Randi, just having a little fun, aren't you?
— 26 November, 2000 / AJM
1 As I note in the fourth post, this was actually the one semi-refutable statement I made in the entire argument — first introduced at the end of the second essay, in the reporting of the most conservative estimate I'd found as hundreds of thousands. S/he didn't catch it, but I reported it anyway, for reasons of intellectual honesty (and just in case my victim might use it to get some wind in their sails). The technical problem was, historians differ widely over how many actually died, and how many were tried — records were poor, and a wide range of jurisdictions tried witches. Reports of a few hundred thousand victims of the Inquisition (which did not just try witches) were common a few decades ago; later historiography suggests the figure may be inflated. Reports among Wiccan groups claim holocaust proportions — 600,000 to nine million women, but I can't find a published historian who takes this especially seriously. The recent work I quote in the fourth post was the most conservative scholarly estimate I found, and estimates slightly over 100,000 trials, and around 50,000 deaths for witchcraft specifically, which would have made the comment on hundreds of thousands hyperbole. Note, however, the earlier hundreds of thousands (in the earlier scholarly estimates) are not entirely unsupportable, as yet, just generally disputed. (notes added after original post).
