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Post by wdmundt on Jan 17, 2008 15:13:19 GMT -4
And no matter the exact fate of Galileo, Christianity is responsible for uncounted atrocities against science throughout most of the last two thousand years.
What? You're an old woman with knowledge of herbal remedies? Burn the witch!
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 15:58:55 GMT -4
Is burning witches a scientific atrocity? Or just an atrocity? Do you know how many witches were ever actually burned? Can "Christianity" be blamed for burning witches, or did individuals use the excuse of witchcraft to get rid of neighbors they didn't much like?
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 17, 2008 16:14:45 GMT -4
Christianity probably set medicine back a thousand years by killing off people with knowledge of herbal remedies and replacing them with those skilled in blood-letting.
Medicine is a science, is it not?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 16:20:37 GMT -4
So you're saying that knowledge of herbal remedies was entirely confined to women, that "Christianity" actively persecuted them because of their knowledge and burned enough of them to prevent wide dissemination of this knowledge, and that blood-letting was favored instead of herbal cures because of Christian doctrine?
Do you have any actual evidence of this?
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 16:22:33 GMT -4
I know anti-religious types like to harp on witch burnings because they are so dramatic, but do you have any idea of how many actually occurred, and therefore what the practical effect actually was?
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Post by PhantomWolf on Jan 17, 2008 16:27:46 GMT -4
I'm quiote sure the Catholics wiped out more Protestants than so-called "Witches"
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Post by Ginnie on Jan 17, 2008 16:35:18 GMT -4
Christianity probably set medicine back a thousand years by killing off people with knowledge of herbal remedies and replacing them with those skilled in blood-letting. Medicine is a science, is it not? A great book that I have called 'A Healing Hand' documents medicine throughout the ages and from many cultures. While some herbal remedies were useful, most cultures were pretty ignorant of how the body and medicine works. Up until the 1800's most people were in the dark in the area of treatment. But, at least some cultures managed to avoid the bloodletting treatment. ;D
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Post by gillianren on Jan 17, 2008 16:45:06 GMT -4
I'm quiote sure the Catholics wiped out more Protestants than so-called "Witches" And the most notorious of the true witch hunts (leaving out the Inquisiton, which was much more about rooting out Jews, Muslims, and heretics) were in fact Protestant affairs. I'm not an enormous fan of a lot of what the Catholic Church does, nor should I be taken as one. However, I think it's taken a lot more heat than it necessarily should. It has apologized for its policy of silence during the Holocaust instead of pointing out exactly how many priests lost their lives to it, for example. Has the Scottish Kirk apologized for what it did to the "witches"? Has the Church of England apologized for what it did to the Catholics, come to that? And I'm pretty sure the Southern Baptist Church only apologized for slavery within the last ten years, and their denomination was founded to distinguish itself from the Baptists who were opposed to it.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 17, 2008 16:55:42 GMT -4
I, for one, don't distinguish between the various brands of Christian atrocity.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 17:08:13 GMT -4
I, for one, don't distinguish between the various brands of Christian atrocity. No, you just blow all of them entirely out of proportion, blame the religion rather than the indivdiuals, and pay no consideration to how much more severe the many non-Christian atrocities have been.
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Al Johnston
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Post by Al Johnston on Jan 17, 2008 17:38:48 GMT -4
An apparent determination to ascribe every benefit of civilisation to christianity is no service to the truth either...
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 17:50:14 GMT -4
An apparent determination to ascribe every benefit of civilisation to christianity is no service to the truth either... Good thing I don't have such a determination then.
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Al Johnston
"Cheer up!" they said, "It could be worse!" So I did, and it was.
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Post by Al Johnston on Jan 17, 2008 17:53:15 GMT -4
You must have words with whoever's been abusing your log-in then.
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Post by wdmundt on Jan 17, 2008 17:53:24 GMT -4
It would be hard to blow Christian atrocities out of proportion. I have not done so.
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Jason
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Post by Jason on Jan 17, 2008 18:32:34 GMT -4
You must have words with whoever's been abusing your log-in then. If I ascribed all that was good to Christianity then I would be arguing that the Catholic church was right and Galileo wrong, wouldn't I? Arguing that religion has been a generally positive force is not the same as ascribing all good to it.
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