Is The World Getting Better Or Worse?

Global warming is one issue, but changing climate could be minor(aside from the acid problem that would kill most life in the oceans WHICH I WILL IGNORE IN THIS POST) if people accepted migration rights. Just move to the place where the NEW climate allows for good farming and living. It would require open borders. It would be disruptive, and there would be a temporary economic hit. But quick mobility abilities (open borders required!) among the masses would bring economic activity and size back up quickly.Look at this story. What If There Were 42 Million at the Border? The article raises questions, and does not offer answers. But it has some interesting data presented.430 million Latin Americans (not all Hispanic mind you, but all were from our hemisphere and SOUTH of Texas and California) were polled.120 million said they wanted to cross to another country.42 million said they wanted to move to the United States.(5 million said they wanted to in the next year)The article asks what USA citizens would think.

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THE CHAIRMAN'S BLOG
FEBRUARY 8, 2019
What If There Were 42 Million at the Border?
BY JIM CLIFTON

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Here's a good question about caravans: How many more are coming?

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Gallup asked the whole population of Latin America. There are 33 countries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Roughly 450 million adults live in the region. Gallup asked them, "Would you like to move to another country permanently if you could?"

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A whopping 27% said "yes."

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So this means roughly 120 million would like to migrate somewhere.

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The next question Gallup asked was, "Where would you like to move?"

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Of those who want to leave their Latin American country permanently, 35% said they want to go to the United States.

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The question is always what the United States Americans will think and do about it.The answer tells me a lot about the world.(They question is never asked how many of us USA citizens here would like to leave for another country in our hemisphere. That could bring the net USA population increase number down to perhaps 10-35 million as opposed to the 42 million number)(There are 330 million residents presently, so - at most - just a 10% increase in population would result, and that is a long term number that would surely be over a decade, so perhaps 1% a year increase due to hemispheric open borders - a blip)Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

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I listened through the whole thing and I like this guy's point of view. He thinks there's no need for the scare tactics, that there is global warming and that we should be making reasonable changes to cut down on the causes but that it is not the urgent thing that is bringing about panicky recommendations that would only destroy the economy.

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Keep in mind that the global-warming "alarmists" rarely talk about WHAT MIGHT BE the real cataclysmic problem with the record amounts of carbon dioxide: acidic oceans.The global warming skeptics, in turn, almost never cover the issue.The acidic ocean issue wasn't discussed (as it was essentially unknown) at all 3 decades ago.(The first time I brought it up, here at EvC, RAZD was the only one to respond to my post. He seemed to think I was talking about "acid rain", which is an unrelated issue. Personal conversations often have caused the same confusion. RAZD later made a post which showed his awareness to the relatively newly discovered problem)There was just a post, with a Live Science link (which in turn linked to a journal publication), discussing the fact that acidic oceans might have played a major part in past extinctions (like the on 65-66 million years ago). The extinctions could have been part of a chain reaction that really started with the extinction of most sea life.

Arizona Election Results 2016 – The New York TimesMaricopa county gave Trump 747,361 votes to Clinton's 702,901.Arizona gave Trump 1,251,401 (48.1%) to Clinton's 1,161,167 (44.6%)I don't see too much "Trump country" evidence in Phoenix.Phoenix used to be very Republican though.

Faith, in message 597:

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The pogroms against the Jews were the work of the RCC, not Protestants.

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Faith, you have this idea that Luther was tolerant.He was tolerant while he was promoting an upstart offshoot, and was indeed, at an early date, attacking Catholics for intolerance.The Protestant supporters of his were unleashing holy hell upon Jews and others ONCE IN POWER ONLY A SHORT TIME AFTER HIS PROTESTS.See what John the Elector did. (Luther supported, via communication, his persecution and expulsion of Jews. Jews asked Luther for help in changing his friend, Elector John's mind)SAXONY - JewishEncyclopedia.comSebastian Franck (20 January 1499 — c. 1543) was a 16th-century German freethinker, humanist, and radical reformer. He said the Protestant lands has less freedom of thought than the Turkish controlled lands. This was when the Sunni Caliphate STILL EXISTED!Sebastian Franck - WikipediaI will cover these issues later.Faith, you said this in post 603:

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Why do they have to have any religion at all? The government was responsible for the attacks on the Indians.

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Most of what was done could not have been done in the true Spirit of Christianity even if they call themselves Christians which most Americans have over the years. Those truly inspired by Christ don't do such things.

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The rulers of Germany saw Protestantism as enshrining religion into government in a way that went WELL beyond the Roman Catholic church theology mandated.I will cover that later.Faith, in post 599, you said:

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The RCC puts the Pope in the place of God

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Luther out-poped the Popes.He was seen as doing just that, in his day.His Protestantism did become more Popish than Roman Catholicism.Here is the great historical work, The Renaissance, by Will Durantp.453

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VIII. LUTHER'S THEOLOGY
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Though his theology was founded with trusting literalness on the
Scriptures, his interpretation unconsciously retained late medieval
traditions. His nationalism made him a modern, his theology belonged
to the Age of Faith. His rebellion was far more against Catholic
organization and ritual than against Catholic doctrine; most of this
remained with him to the end. Even in his rebellion he followed Wyclif
and Huss rather than any new scheme: like theirs his revolt lay in
rejecting the papacy, the councils, the hierarchy, and any other guide
to faith than the Bible; like them he called the pope Antichrist;
and like them he found protection in the state. The line from Wyclif
to Huss to Luther is the main thread of religious development from the
fourteenth to the sixteenth century.

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....

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He spoke as confidently as
Aquinas about angels as bodiless and beneficent spirits. Sometimes

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he represented man as an endless bone of contention between good and
bad angels, to whose differing dispositions and efforts were to be
ascribed all the circumstances of man's fate- a Zoroastrian
intrusion into his theology. He accepted fully the medieval conception
of devils wandering about the earth, bringing temptation, sin, and
misfortune to men, and easing man's way into hell. "Many devils are in
woods, in waters, in wilderness, and in dark, pooly places, ready to
hurt... people; some are also in the thick black clouds." `0616117
Some of this may have been conscious pedagogical invention of
helpful supernatural terrors; but Luther spoke so familiarly of devils
that he seems to have believed all he said of them. "I know Satan very
well," he said, and detailed their conversations with each
other. `0616118 Sometimes he charmed the Devil by playing the
flute; `0616119 sometimes he frightened the poor Devil away by calling
him filthy names. `0616120 He became so accustomed to ascribing to the
Devil the eerie sounds of walls contracting in the cold of the night
that when he was awakened by such noises, and could confidently
conclude that they were made by Satan rambling about, he could
resume his sleep in peace. `0616121 He attributed to diabolical agency
various unpleasant phenomena- hail, thunder, war, plague- and to
divine action all beneficent events; `0616122 he could hardly conceive
of what we call natural law. All the Teutonic folklore about the
poltergeist, or noise-making spirit, was apparently credited by Luther
at its face value. Snakes and monkeys were favorite incarnations of
the Devil. `0616123

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p.454

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The old notion that devils could lie with women
and beget children seemed plausible to him; in one such case he
recommended that the resultant child should be drowned. `0616124 He
accepted magic and witchcraft as realities, and thought it a simple
Christian duty to burn witches at the stake. `0616125 Most of these
ideas were shared by his contemporaries, Catholic or Protestant. The
belief in the power and ubiquity of devils attained in the sixteenth
century an intensity not recorded in any other age; and this
preoccupation with Satan bedeviled much of Protestant theology.

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pp.511-516:First see this linkhttps://www.patheos.com/...hes-frigid-wives-prostitutes.html

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II. THE INTOLERANT HERETICS
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It is instructive to observe how Luther moved from tolerance to
dogma as his power and certainty grew. Among the "errors" that Leo
X, in the bull Exsurge Domine, denounced in Luther was that "to burn
heretics is against the will of the Holy Spirit." In the Open
Letter to the Christian Nobility (1520) Luther ordained "every man
a priest," with the right to interpret the Bible according to his
private judgment and individual light; `061946 and added, "We should
vanquish heretics with books, not with burning." `061947 In the
essay On Secular Authority (1522) he wrote:
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Over the soul God can and will let no one rule but Himself.... We
desire to make this so clear that everyone shall grasp it, and that
our Junkers, the princes and bishops, may see what fools they are
when they seek to coerce the people... into believing one thing or
another.... Since belief or unbelief is a matter of everyone's
conscience... the secular power should be content to attend to its own
affairs, and permit men to believe one thing or another as they are
able and willing, and constrain no one by force. For faith is a free
work, to which no one can be compelled.... Faith and heresy are
never so strong as when men oppose them by sheer force, without
God's word. `061948

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In a letter to Elector Frederick (April 21, 1524) Luther asked
toleration for Munzer and other of his own enemies. "You should not
prevent them from speaking. There must be sects, and the Word of God
must face battle.... Let us leave in His hands the combat and free

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encounter of minds." In 1528, when others were advocating the death
penalty for Anabaptists, he advised that unless they were guilty of
sedition they should be merely banished. `061949 Likewise, in 1530, he
recommended that the death penalty for blasphemy should be softened to
exile. It is true that even in these liberal years he talked as if
he wished his followers or God to drown or otherwise eliminate all
"papists"; but this was "campaign oratory," not seriously meant. In
January 1521, he wrote: "I would not have the Gospel defended by
violence or murder"; and in June of that year he reproved the Erfurt
students for attacking priests; however, he did not object to
"frightening them" a bit to improve their theology. `061950 In May
1529, he condemned plans for the forcible conversion of Catholic
parishes to Protestantism. As late as 1531 he taught that "we
neither can nor should force anyone into the faith." `061951

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But it was difficult for a man of Luther's forceful and positive
character to advocate tolerance after his position had been made
relatively secure. A man who was sure that he had God's Word could not
tolerate its contradiction. The transition to intolerance was
easiest concerning the Jews. Till 1537 Luther argued that they were to
be forgiven for keeping their own creed, "since our fools, the
popes, bishops, sophists, and monks, those coarse assheads, dealt with
the Jews in such a manner that any Christian would have preferred to
be a Jew. Indeed, had I been a Jew, and had seen such idiots and
dunderheads expound Christianity, I should rather have become a hog
than a Christian.... I would advise and beg everybody to deal kindly
with the Jews, and to instruct them in the Scripture; in such case
we could expect them to come over to us." `061952 Luther may have
realized that Protestantism was in some aspects a return to Judaism,
in its rejection of monasticism and clerical celibacy, its emphasis on
the Old Testament, the Prophets, and the Psalms, and its adoption
(Luther himself excepted) of a sterner sexual ethic than that of
Catholicism. He was disappointed when the Jews made no corresponding
move toward Protestantism; and his hostility to the charging of
interest helped to turn him against Jewish moneylenders, then
against Jews in general. When Elector John expelled the Jews from
Saxony (1537) Luther rejected a Jewish appeal for his intercession. In
his Table Talk he united "Jews and papists" as "ungodly wretches...

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two stockings made of one piece of cloth." `061953 In his declining
years he fell into a fury of anti-Semitism, denounced the Jews as "a
stiff-necked, unbelieving, proud, wicked, abominable nation," and
demanded that their schools and synagogues should be razed with fire.
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And let whosoever can, throw brimstone and pitch upon them; if one
could hurl hell-fire at them, so much the better.... And this must
be done for the honor of Our Lord and of Christianity, so that God may
see that we are indeed Christians. Let their houses also be
shattered and destroyed.... Let their prayer books and Talmuds be
taken from them, and their whole Bible too; let their rabbis be
forbidden, on pain of death, to teach henceforth any more. Let the
streets and highways be closed against them. Let them be forbidden
to practice usury, and let all their money, and all their treasures of
silver and gold be taken from them and put away in safety. And if
all this be not enough, let them be driven like mad dogs out of the
land. `061954
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Luther should never have grown old. Already in 1522 he was
outpapaling the popes. "I do not admit," he wrote, "that my doctrine
can be judged by anyone, even by the angels. He who does not receive
my doctrine cannot be saved." `061955 By 1529 he was drawing some
delicate distinctions:
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No one is to be compelled to profess the faith, but no one must be
allowed to injure it. Let our opponents give their objections and hear
our answers. If they are thus converted, well and good; if not, let
them hold their tongues and believe what they please.... In order to
avoid trouble we should not, if possible, suffer contrary teachings in
the same state. Even unbelievers should be forced to obey the Ten
Commandments, attend church, and outwardly conform. `061956
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Luther now agreed with the Catholic Church that "Christians
require certainty, definite dogmas, and sure Word of God which they
can trust to live and die by." `061957 As the Church in the early
centuries of Christianity, divided and weakened by a growing
multiplicity of ferocious sects, had felt compelled to define her

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creed and expel all dissidents, so now Luther, dismayed by the variety
of quarrelsome sects that had sprouted from the seed of private
judgment, passed step by step from toleration to dogmatism. "All men
now presume to criticize the Gospel," he complained; "almost every old
doting fool or prating sophist must, forsooth, be a doctor of
divinity." `061958 Stung by Catholic taunts that he had let loose a
dissolvent anarchy of creeds and morals, he concluded, with the
Church, that social order required some cloture to debate, some
recognized authority to serve as "an anchor of faith." What should
that authority be? The Church answered, the Church, for only a
living organism could adjust itself and its Scriptures to
inescapable change. No, said Luther; the sole and final authority
should be the Bible itself, since all acknowledge it to be the Word of
God.

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In the thirteenth chapter of Deuteronomy, in this infallible book,
he found an explicit command, allegedly from the mouth of God, to
put heretics to death: "Neither shalt thine eye pity him, neither
shalt thou conceal him," even though it be "thy brother, or thy son,
or the wife of thy bosom... but thou shalt surely kill him, thy hand
shall be the first upon him to put him to death." On that awful
warrant the Church had acted in annihilating the Albigensians in the
thirteenth century; that divine imprecation had been made a
certificate of authority for the burnings of the Inquisition.
Despite the violence of Luther's speech he never rivaled the
severity of the Church in dealing with dissent; but he proceeded,
within the area and limits of his power, to silence it as peaceably as
he could. In 1525 he invoked the aid of existing censorship
regulations in Saxony and Brandenburg to stamp out the "pernicious
doctrines" of the Anabaptists and the Zwinglians. `061959 In 1530,
in his commentary on the Eighty-second Psalm, he advised governments
to put to death all heretics who preached sedition or against
private property, and "those who teach against a manifest article of
the faith... like the articles children learn in the creed, as, for
example, if anyone should teach that Christ was not God but a mere
man." `061960 Sebastian Franck thought there was more freedom of
speech and belief among the Turks than in the Lutheran states, and Leo
Jud, the Zwinglian, joined Carlstadt in calling Luther another pope.

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We should note, however, that toward the end of his life Luther
returned to his early feeling for toleration. In his last sermon he
advised abandonment of all attempts to destroy heresy by force;
Catholics and Anabaptists must be borne with patiently till the Last
Judgment, when Christ will take care of them. `061961

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Other reformers rivaled or surpassed Luther in hounding heresy.
Bucer of Strasbourg urged the civil authorities in Protestant states
to extirpate all who professed a "false" religion; such men, he
said, are worse than murderers; even their wives and children and
cattle should be destroyed. `061962 The comparatively gentle
Melanchthon accepted the chairmanship of the secular inquisition
that suppressed the Anabaptists of Germany with imprisonment or death.
"Why should we pity such men more than God does?" he asked, for he was
convinced that God had destined all Anabaptists to hell. `061963 He
recommended that the rejection of infant baptism, or of original
sin, or of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, should be
punished as capital crimes. `061964 He insisted on the death penalty
for a sectarian who thought that heathens might be saved, or for
another who doubted that belief in Christ as the Redeemer could change
a naturally sinful into a righteous man. `061965 He applauded, as we
shall see, the execution of Servetus. He asked the state to compel all
the people to attend Protestant religious services
regularly. `061966 He demanded the suppression of all books that
opposed or hindered Lutheran teaching; so the writings of Zwingli
and his followers were formally placed on the index of prohibited
books in Wittenberg. `061967 Whereas Luther was content with the
expulsion of Catholics from regions governed by Lutheran princes,
Melanchthon favored corporal penalties. Both agreed that the civil
power was in duty bound to promulgate and uphold "the law of God"-
i.e., Lutheranism. `061968 Luther, however, counseled that where two
sects existed in a state the minority should yield to the majority: in
a predominantly Catholic principality the Protestants should yield and
emigrate; in a prevailingly Protestant province the Catholics should
give way and depart; if they resisted, they should be effectively
chastised. `061969

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The Protestant authorities, following Catholic precedents,
accepted the obligation of maintaining religious conformity. At

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Augsburg (January 18, 1537) the town council issued a decree
forbidding the Catholic worship, and banishing, after eight days,
all who would not accept the new faith. At the expiration of the
period of grace the council sent soldiers to take possession of all
churches and monasteries; altars and statues were removed, and
priests, monks, and nuns were banished. `061970 Frankfurt-am-Main
promulgated a similar ordinance; and the seizure of Catholic church
properties, and the suppression of Catholic services, spread through
the states controlled by Protestants. `061971 Censorship of the press,
already established in Catholic areas, was adopted by the Protestants;
so Elector John of Saxony, at the request of Luther and Melanchthon,
promulgated (1528) an edict that prohibited the publication, sale,
or reading of Zwinglian or Anabaptist literature, or the preaching
or teaching of their doctrines; "and anyone who is aware of such being
done by anybody, whether a stranger or an acquaintance, must give
information to the... magistrates of the place, in order that the
offender may be taken up in due time and punished.... Those who are
aware of such breeches of the orders... and do not give information,
shall be punished by loss of life or property." `061972
Excommunication, like censorship, was adopted by the Protestants
from the Catholics. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 proclaimed the
right of the Lutheran Church to excommunicate any member who should
reject a fundamental Lutheran doctrine. `061973 Luther explained
that "although excommunication in popedom has been and is shamefully
abused, and made a mere torment, yet we must not suffer it to fall,
but make right use of it, as Christ commanded." `061974

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p.534

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By
1530 the new faith had won Hamburg, Bremen, Rostock, Lubeck,
Stralsund, Danzig, Dorpat, Riga, Reval, and almost all the Imperial
cities of Swabia. Iconoclastic riots broke out in Augsburg, Hamburg,
Brunswick, Stralsund. Probably some of this violence was a reaction
against the ecclesiastical use of statues and paintings to inculcate
ridiculous and lucrative legends.

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The princes, gladly adopting Roman law- which made the secular ruler
omnipotent as delegate of the "sovereign people"- saw in Protestantism
a religion that not only exalted the state but obeyed it; now they
could be spiritual as well as temporal lords, and all the wealth of
the Church could be theirs to administer or enjoy. John the Steadfast,
who succeeded Frederick the Wise as Elector of Saxony (1525),
definitely accepted the Lutheran faith, which Frederick had never
done; and when John died (1532) his son John Frederick kept
Electoral Saxony firmly Protestant. Philip the Magnanimous,
Landgrave of Hesse, formed with John the League of Gotha and Torgau
(1526) to protect and extend Lutheranism. Other princes fell in
line: Ernest of Luneburg, Otto and Francis of Brunswick-Luneburg,
Henry of Mecklenburg, Ulrich of Wurttemberg. Albert of Prussia,
Grand Master of the Teutonic Knights, following Luther's advice,
abandoned his monastic vows, married, secularized the lands of his
order, and made himself Duke of Prussia (1525). Luther saw himself,
apparently by the mere force of his personality and eloquence, winning
half of Germany.

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Edited by LamarkNewAge, : No reason given.

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Why Europe was overrun by witch hunts in early modern history Quartz

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In 1572, the killings began. That year, authorities in the tiny settlement of St Maximin, in present-day Germany, charged a woman named Eva with using witchcraft to murder a child. Eva confessed under torture; she, along with two women she implicated, were burned at the stake.

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The pace of prosecution picked up from there. By the mid-1590s, the territory had burned 500 people as witchesan astonishing feat, for a place that only had 2,200 residents to begin with.

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Why is it that early modern Europe had such a fervor for witch hunting? Between 1400 to 1782, when Switzerland tried and executed Europe’s last supposed witch, between 40,000 and 60,000 people were put to death for witchcraft, according to historical consensus. The epicenter of the witch hunts was Europe’s German-speaking heartland, an area that makes up Germany, Switzerland, and northeastern France.

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see:https://www.patheos.com/...hes-frigid-wives-prostitutes.htmlAnd What about Servetus in Calvin's Geneva?And so many more...

dwise1, you have a story of an event that included an initial 1287 event (and it was part of an ongoing situation, that was something more than just a 1287 event, indeed).And it was very informative.But Faith says that the Roman Catholics were the only ones who persecuted Jews and "witches", and the Protestants came to save the day. Faith talks about the Protestants as if they were the same thing as humanists, who were another growing force in the days before, during, and after the "Reformation".But, why does the Jewish Encyclopedia have a different view (at least in part, if not in the whole)?

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During the period of the Reformation they fared still worse. The elector Maurice of Saxony (1521-1553) expelled them from Zwickau, where they had been gladly received in 1308 by Frederick the Joyous; and a year later, in 1543, they were expelled from Plauen. The police regulation of John Frederick the Younger from the year 1556 decreed the body-tax, the interdiction against the stay of foreign Jews on Saxon soil longer than one night, and the prohibition of trade and traffic. Still more severe were the regulations issued by Elector August, who forbade foreign Jews to remain on Saxon soil even one night, on pain of having one-half the property found in their possession confiscated. These regulations remained in force for fully a century, until Oct. 2, 1682, when John George III. of Saxony issued a new decree, in which the onerous regulations relating to Jews passing through the country were somewhat modified, since those regulations were found to be detrimental to the yearly fairs at Leipsic. The condition of the Jews continued to improve under Frederick August the Strong, who was favorably disposed toward them on account of his court Jew Behrend Lehmann; he granted letters of protection to several Jewish families, with permission to settle at Dresden, and Leipsic. They were also permitted to maintain prayer-houses. August II. revived (April 4, 1733) the decrees of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, ordering in addition that the body-tax be paid thenceforth by all Jews, regardless of sex or age, though Elijah Behrend succeeded in securing the exemption of children under ten years of age. Behrend furthermore obtained permission for all Bohemian, Moravian, and Hungarian Jews to travel on any road through Saxony and secured the repeal of the edict forbidding them to remain in any place longer than one day.

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SAXONY - JewishEncyclopedia.com

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Faith refused to read anything about Luther and his pal Elector John.She only will accept a narrative about Protestant persecution of Anabaptists.The protestant towns killed the most witches too, but Faith says the Protestants saved the witches from the "RCC".

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The witch-hunt followed the course of the Protestant Reformation
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Discuss

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Few periods in the history of Europe have seen such dramatic change as those decades within the Protestant reformation. From 1517 to the early 18thcentury the religious heart of many European nations was challenged and changed by either the Protestant reformation or under the Catholic counter-reformation. Beginning with Martin
Luther’s(1483-1546) personal challenge to the Catholic Church and his relationship with god and following many years of change, bloodshed and warring was finally ended with a period of peace and almost prosperity that lead to a period of enlightenment. To reach this point though, Europe had to adjust to change and one of the unfortunate side effects of this change was the craze of witch trials, many of them under the guise of religious righteousness. Many of the innocent people put on trial or executed in the name of the witchcraft trials were victims of doctrinal insecurity and uncertainty created by the changes of the reformations. While the belief in witchcraft has played a part in Christianity since its origins, it was Luther and his challenge of the Catholic Church and the continuing Protestant reformation that we see an increase in the number of witch trials. Previously the thoughts of witches and magic were thought of as the beliefs of the superstitious and remnants of a European pagan past, through the reformation it evolved into an attack on the general population and the Church itself. The increase in witch trials were not so much as a result in the belief that there was an increase in the amount of witches, but more so the Devils power was controlling more of the population under the new view of Christianity created by the reformation .

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However the Protestant reformation was not the singular cause for the witch persecution as trials did occur pre-
reformation, be it on a much smaller scale, and that factor’s such as environment,
weather, economy and food supply need to be recognised as contributing to the sudden rise in witch trials.

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....

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The Protestant reformation has not always been seen as a progressive force and some argue that The Renaissance was a revival not only of pagan letters but of pagan mystery-religion. The Reformation was a return not only to the unforgettable century of the apostles but also to the unedifying centuries of the Hebrew Kings.5 It was these returns to old ways during the periods of reformation that re-established or reinterpreted Exodus 22:18: "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. The importance of post reformation Protestantism dictated that the world of the Bible must be followed exactly and this included the assumption that the translation meant that witches must be killed. While the translation itself has often caused a stir, with some suggesting the translation by Luther and King James Bibles being mistranslated and that the original intention was to not suffer a poisoner to live and certainly was not gender specific 6. It can be argued then that the Reformation damaged the existing view of the Bible and created confusion amongst those that thought they ollowed a strictly Christian life and could explain the sudden change in people’s attitudes towards witches. The Protestant reformation followed the strict rule of enacting the rules of scripture and meant a much more dogmatic and exact approach to the teachings of the old and new testaments. For this reason Protestant followings of the sections of the Bible concerning witches were given much more emphasis than the Catholic Church did in the belief that witches or witchlike behaviour should not be tolerated. The increase in the availability of the Bible at this time, particularly incorrectly translated versions, allowed the teachings of the Bible to be interpreted in many new ways and often in the case of witchcraft allowed persecutors or witch hunters, under the guise of godliness, to make personal gains and improve their own personal standing. An example being that of Matthew Hopkins (c. 1620-1647), the self-titled witch finder general who while from a well-educated legal background fell on hard times following the death of his father and established himself as a gentleman to better conduct his newfound business of witch hunting
7. Hopkins would charge villages and towns in East Anglia to conduct his witch finding and became very wealthy from the process, one recorded visit to Stowmarket cost the town 23 (3,300 as of 2015) plus his travelling expenses
8, a clear indication and incentive as to why such a large amount of trials and executions were linked to his name all using religious rhetoric to bolster his financial gains

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(PDF) The witch-hunt followed the course of the Protestant Reformation | Myles Cooper-Bradley - Academia.edu

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Exodus 22:18 was held up as some divine law once the masses had it shoved down their throats by the Reformers.No wonder the reformation is confused with humanism.It was the Reformers that damaged the Bible's reputation.The Bible really did HAVE TO BE PARSED and looked at critically once the Reformers beat the Bible to death, cherry-picking their favorite verses (to hammer/kill easy targets with), as if their ex cathedra declarations of "divine authority" proved that the text was not actually placed in an unhistorical context (THE HAND OF MOSES!).Now, the Catholics and Protestants both enjoyed the "non-price competition:

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A dark era

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Witch trials in the context of the Reformation

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A new study by two economists argues that witch hunts were a result of non-price competition

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LAST year, as Europe marked the 500th anniversary of the Reformation, thousands of words were penned by people trying to figure out that grim era when the continent found itself plunged into bloody conflict between the Catholic and Protestant versions of Christianity.

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Peter Leeson and Jacob Russ, two American economists, have come up with an unlikely take by focusing on one particular aspect of the conflict: witch trials. The so-called great age of witch trials began around 1550, as the Reformation was gathering pace, and did not end until around 1700. By that time 80,000 people had been tried for sorcery, and half of them executed. The great majority of the victims were female.

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Messrs Leeson and Russ believe that an upsurge in trials reflected non-price competition between the Catholic and Protestant churches. That competition was for the hearts and minds of a population that was pious, superstitious and easily persuaded of the need to stamp out evil.

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In the preceding centuries, ordinary folk had believed no less strongly in the existence of dark forces, and of individuals who had the power to conjure them up, but the church discouraged people from holding this belief or acting on it. (In 1258, for example, Pope Alexander IV issued a canon aimed at preventing witchcraft trials.)

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Another feature of that pre-Reformation period, the authors note, was that the Catholic church generally felt powerful enough to deal with pockets of opposition by isolating and neutralising its ideological opponents. Dissident sects like the Cathars were denounced as heretics and eventually crushed.

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All that changed when the the Reformation gained ground in Europe’s Teutonic heartland, a patchwork of small states. Some local rulers embraced the new Protestant faith; others did not. In this very fluid situation, local Catholic authorities felt a need to impress the faithful with their effectiveness in stamping out evil; Protestant authorities made similar displays of their own zeal and prowess. This is how the authors sum up their theory in a paper for the Economic Journal:

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"Europe’s witch trials reflected non-price competition between the Catholic and Protestant churches for religious market share in confessionally contested parts of Christendom. By leveraging popular belief in witchcraft, witch-prosecutors advertised their confessional brands’ commitment and power to protect citizens from worldly manifestations of...evil."

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This is not a completely original hypothesis but the authors lend weight to it by applying some of their own wizardry as number-crunching economists. (Mr Leeson is a professor of economics and law at America’s George Mason University; Mr Russ was his student.) They collected data on more than 43,000 people prosecuted for witchcraft between 1350 and 1850 across 21 countries. They also looked at 400 instances of Protestant-Catholic rivalry. They find that surges in witch trials correlate closely, in both time and location, with intense sectarian competition.

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Putting people on trial and executing them publicly is a burdensome but worthwhile way for a ruthless authority to flex its muscles and impress ordinary folk, the authors note. They compare this with Stalin’s trials of his political enemies. The outcome was never in doubtand Stalin could just as easily have had them quietly assassinatedbut public trials served the purposes of education and propaganda.

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Only briefly do the authors touch on another notorious episode of witchcraft mania: the trials in Salem, Massachusetts in the late 17th century. There, too, they suggest that competition was at work. In this case it was not between sects or doctrines, but between individual Puritan (i.e. hard-line Protestant) ministers for congregations.

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Any modern practitioner of the Protestant or Catholic faiths will shudder at the horrific purposes to which their beliefs were once put. Of course, they will say, it was all a very long time ago, and (as the emollient, inter-faith commemorations of last year brought home) doctrinal differences within Western Christianity are no longer seen as a reason to burn one another. (Even in Belfast, it is only effigies of the pope, and other Catholic paraphernalia, which are committed to the flames during zealous Protestant celebrations.) These days, German Protestants and Catholics are more likely to meet one another as fellow workers for the same charities than as contestants in an ideological battle.

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What has changed? As a general rule of thumb, it might be said that religion either makes people look inward, in search of a better understanding of their own weaknesses, or it makes them look outward, in a quest (which can easily become fanatical) for external sources of evil. One impulse can tip over into the other very easily, and that danger never goes away.

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Witch trials in the context of the Reformation | The Economist

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We can look at the actual historical situation, but Faith has problems with that.Why?

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Do you dismiss leprechauns based on lack of objective evidence? Or Zeus? Or the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Or six-foot rabbits? Or unicorns? Or Quetzalcoatl? Or hobbits?

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Consider the "general human awareness" issue in the stories.Did the Greek Mythological stories say that Zeus & the Titans were observed to walk on Earth by the larger population?Were the Sons of God in Genesis 6 unknown by the world?Should we be aware of these "Fallen Angels" and their offspring (not just "in those days" but "after") or will they simply be laughed at as fiction?(The "New Testament" has "faith" as a major issue, so I suppose that throws out the apparently visible (?) human/gods/titans interface issues among the old myths, and replaces it with issues of blind belief in whatever stories on must hold dear & vital to "the faith" among "the faithful")

I said:

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The "New Testament" has "faith" as a major issue...

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Ringo asked:

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Does it? Or has that doctrine been superimposed on it?

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I will avoid parsing the New Testament (which did not exist during the first century, and only came to be FOR EUROPEAN CHRISTIANS in the period roughly from 140-180, while Aramaic speaking Christians were not about to begin to drink the cool-aid until a bit later) into its separate parts.I will just say that Jesus definitely did not teach the "faith" that churches teach everywhere.He did teach the mustard seed thingy though, but it is a monstrous imposition for a 21st century preacher to read today's "faith" doctrines into whatever Jesus was (briefly) talking about.

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I'll point out what I keep telling Phat: In John 20, Jesus offered concrete evidence to the disciples and than He offered the same evidence to Thomas.

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As a whole, the Gospel of John is hardly a reliable witness to much Jesus said or did, though parts could be "somewhat" historical.But your point is well taken.

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I'm assuming, for the sake of argument, that you label yourself more of a descendant of Aramaic Christians. That whole Zoroaster thing. Comments?

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I have trouble convincing people that things have changed a lot since the days of the founders (of the various religions).I don't really know what exactly Zoroaster actually taught.It seems he actually did have a problem with animal sacrifices (due to the suffering), so that it all I can say for sure.I kinda like him, whoever he actually was.I don't assume that too many of his followers really "know him", though.(Overall, they might "get him" better in India than Iran, ironically, but that might have more to do with Hindu and, perhaps, Theosophical, influences)(Today's Aramaic Christians simply follow the European religion, BUT what a treasure trove it would be to find some actual cache of documents from before 180. It would shake the earth.)