"During the Salem, Massachusetts witch trials of 1692, 13 women were executed." http://www2.ari.net/rjohnson/articles/FEAR.MUP.html
I remember reading somewhere that this wasn't witches at all. It was Christian women who caught the elite using witchcraft and they were burned at the stake instead.
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So much fail...where to start, where to start. Oh, how about with this: there were no witch burnings in the United States. Hangings, crushing to death with stones, no burnings.
There was no witchcraft involved in Salem, except for one African slave who showed some little voodoo rituals to the teenaged daughter of her "owner". Teenager got eaten up with religious guilt over the voodoo...which I believe involved predicting whom she was going to marry...and started babbling about witchcraft. Then people went crazy and started executing all the unpopular people in town.
Try reading something besides Xtian websites and books, you might not sound so stupid.
Yes, the christians are ALWAYS the victims. I know Jesus said "take up my cross" but have you fundies ever considered getting down off your crosses, taking the wood, building a bridge, and getting over it?
@freako104
U.... The only part you got right is that they were Christian women. They were not using witchcraft, they were innocent. In fact Salem offered an apology (though it wasn't enough IMO) to those who suffered.
Well, he didn´t say that said women were using witchcraft.
He said these women caught other people (the elite of the community) using witchcraft. And therefore the elite accused the women of witchcraft to protect themselves.
I´m not familiar with the Salem cases (I only know they happend) so I don´t dare to say anything about it. But the posting doesn´t sound too fundamentalist to me (aside from the probable fact that there wasn´t any witchcraft involved on either side, as others already stated)
:: rubs temples ::
Alright, look...
There were no witches in Salem. What they had was a town full of paranoid fundies, terror of anyone or anything different and the stupidity to act upon the outrageous claims of a bunch of teen girls who were either acting or out of their minds from ergot poisoning.
The truth is that your christian brethren became hysterical and began imprisoning and executing their own. That is reality. Another reality is that the church had every reason to keep stirring the pot for as long as possible because once someone was accused their property was taken by the church. Nice little cut for those in power, no?
And not a single one of them was burned. Look it up again, and this time don't seek out christian sources for correct information. That's like reading the Weekly World News or the National Enquirer.
Try as you might, you can not prove the ultimate good of christianity. For reference, see: Spanish Inquisition, European Witch Hunts/Hysteria of the middle ages, The Crusades, The Holocaust, Jonestown, The Branch Davidians and/or Heaven's Gate.
Altering reality does not make it true. You cannot claim persecution when it so obviously did not happen; not to christians, anyway. Those accused of witchcraft, however, were persecuted to the full extent of the word.
Time for you to go back to the drawing board, Robert.
Since there's no such thing as witchcraft, using witchcraft would be impossible. Pretty much everyone in the colony (including the "elite", whatever that means) were a Christian, so it was Christians executing each other.
Well, part of this comment was correct. It's very likely that none of the people in Salem executed for witchcraft were actual witches. In fact, most if not all of them were Christian.
But the thing about the "elite" being witches is pretty silly.
Christian presecution complex in full bloom.
P.S. Not LSD, ergot poisoning.
P.P.S. No one was burned are the stake in the Sealem incident. Crushed or hanged, but not burned.
Uh, last I checked since Salem is not that far away from me (about 2 hours away), 19 people were executed, 18 hung, 1 pressed.
The only use of witchcraft as well was possibly by a slave named Tituba, who was acutally told to do so to try to find the "witch" who was causing all the trouble. In fact, the craze only got worse after this because she claimed she saw other women meeting the devil when she did before they flew to Boston on sticks.
It's in the book entitled Tituba: The Reluctant Witch of Salem by Elaine Breslaw.
Salem Witch Trial analysis: YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG. I knew more about the Salem Witch Trials when I was 12 than this asshat does now.
Then again, I'm practically FROM Salem, so that might have something to do with it.
Sadly, I could see how that would have played right into the hands of the "witch hunters". RH is right that the women executed were good Christian women, but most of the accusations were exaggerated, and often targeted towards the "undesirables" of the community, or towards those a person had a personal beef with.
Didn't the whole thing start because a slave named Tituba showed some Salem girls "magic", and then one or two got sick and it was blamed on witchcraft? To save her own skin, Tituba claimed that she wanted to go back to God and started naming people as witches. The aforementioned girls jumped on the bandwagon and ending up holding great power over the community as they could name anyone as a witch.
Eventually the people figured out that it was bogus. Some of the girls fled, including the ringleader - Abigail Williams, who later turned up as a Boston prostitute.
The only thing that "Robert Howard" got at least marginally right: It is true that suing an innocent woman for witchcraft was a popular method to get rid of somebody with knowledge which was inconvenient to the authorities.
For example, midwifes were a constant target of witch hunts in late-medieval Europe. They had knowledge of contraceptive and abortion methods, which was a thorn in the churches' side.
Of course this wasn't witches at all, as there is no such thing as witchcraft or magic. It's usually someone who get's in a tiff with her neighbor and accuse her of witchcraft, and someone else joins in, and the "snowball" keeps on rolling...
One thing they'll never face, there was evil deviance in those puritan villages, and it did come from the top.
It's the corruption of absolute power on the people.
There were no witches, they don't exist, but powermad, unchecked Christians result in things similar today.
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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