Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic Comparisons between the Bible and the Koran

This is a picture of a witch burning in Europe, probably in the 16th or 17th century. The people who made the witch burnings happen were Christians, too. Why didn't they rein themselves in?

And why don't we burn witches? Is it because the Bible tells us that we shouldn't? No. The only thing that the Bible says, in Exodus 22:18, is that we should kill witches. It might be argued that this is a command. And even though Paul says that Christians don't have to obey Mosaic law, and therefore are under no obligation to burn witches, it doesn't say anywhere in the Bible that we are not allowed to do so.

So why don't we do it? It has nothing to do with the Bible. Rather, it was the general mood in Europe that turned against witch burnings in the 17th and 18th centuries. Eventually the witch trials were completely discredited. Rational scholars pointed out that the accused women were given no chance to prove themselves innocent, because the tests that might prove their innocence almost invariably killed them. For example, an accused woman was usually cleared of the charges against her if she was thrown into deep water and drowned. However, if she floated she had to be a witch, because it was believed that only the Devil could protect her from sinking.

In Sweden, a scholar demanded that those who accused a particular woman of being a witch should be cross-examined themselves. When and where did they see the accused woman do something suspicious? What exactly had she done? The testimony of the witnesses should be written down, and then they should be asked the same questions again a week later. This manner of interrogation quickly revealed that the witnesses couldn't remember what they themselves had said a week before, and when they they were questioned again they told quite different stories. It became clear that the witnesses lied. Worse, it was a revealed that a small group of orphaned young boys had travelled around in Sweden and made a living by accusing women of being witches and then witnessing against them for a small fee. One such boy had sent his own mother to the stake by accusing her of being a witch.

Well, even though these facts were revealed, quite a few Swedes still believed in witches. However, juridical Sweden was outraged, the King was embarrassed, the parliament was embarrassed, and the Church was embarrassed. The King and the parliament together a passed a law making witch trials illegal. Eventually, the very expression "witch trial" came to signify an outrageously unfair legal trial or some sort of horribly unfair treatment of a person. Now witch trials were not only illegal, they had also become impossible to "sell" to the general public. And I'm sure that more or less the same thing happened in the rest of Europe.

So that is why I don't believe that people rein themselves in. We grow up with all sorts of written and unwritten laws around us, and we quickly learn what is socially acceptable and what isn't.

No rampaging Christians will overrun Washington for now, and they won't ever do so as long as our societies stay the way they are now. But that is just it, the way I see it. The thing is, we want to follow the law. Most of us really want to do that. And we particularly don't want to break the laws that everybody consider, well, self-evident and "holy", for lack of a better word. We are so rarely proud of doing something that almost all other people find totally shocking and outrageous. There aren't many guys around who'd be telling everybody around them, 'Hi, I'm Stan, and I'm a pedophiliac and proud of it! Can I babysit your baby?'

And that's why you won't find a church anywhere in the United States whose members will tell you that they stone adulteresses and are proud of it. You can't do that in the United States. If you make a claim like that, the government will do their utmost to stop you, and the general public and all the media will cheer the government on. Everyone will want to see your downfall. Try to stone adulteresses or burn witches in the United States or Europe, and everyone will pounce on you and do whatever they can to stop you. Seriously.

That is what I mean when I say that our western societies rein the Christian fundamentalists in. But in some Muslim countries it is socially acceptable to stone adulteresses, which is why such things happen. (Actually, though, I heard on the radio a few months ago that there have been no documented cases of actual stonings of women anywhere in the world in recent years, even though there have certainly been other forms of executions of women for sexual crimes in Muslim countries.)

And my point is still that if we allow the teachings of the Bible to be our only guiding rule, then there is no obvious reason why we should not be allowed to burn witches and stone adulteresses.

Ann