How can the 17th Century "logic" of this not be disputed?

[peacewithoutgod]

It's still the twilight of the Dark Ages, but then it isn't the Paleolithic! The genes of people who achieved amazing feats of logic lived on in that generation. True it is that these people didn't read much, as the diabolically clever clergy saw to that, but nothing could have erased the basic sense of logic which humans have possessed since at least the time of the ancient Greeks. If a woman is capable of causing sickness and death, and a man spends years torturing and killing her, then why has no truly evil one with such powers simply killed off her torturer or executioner with her majik http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6QgNpYg0IOU?

[drunkenshoe]

If a woman is capable of causing sickness and death, and a man spends years torturing and killing him, then why has no truly evil one with such powers simply killed off her torturer or executioner with her majik

Because when you evaluate 'witch' burning case by case, it serves as a deflection from the common set of conditions and factors that actually started this form of systematic violence against women.

This goes waaay back from 17th century. These women defined as witches or people thought to be possessed, capable of power of doing good or bad to people are coming from a very powerful traditional position in their little communities holding.

People of that community are born to these women's hands (midwifery), they go to them when they get sick or get and accident, or their live stock all their lives (medicine), their judgement is listened when people get into conflicts, and they have the authority to give punishment (law), they lay out people when they die (religion, divinity). They are in a very powerful posiiton although they have nothing to do with administration or being a ruler.

Now look at that^. Medicine, law, religion. Greatest industries and source for man power, money-trade, war,..later will become fundamental branches of businesses in a society.

-Why would anyone living in a village go to a doctor he didn't even meet before in town and pay money when he has the 'witch' around the corner who knows him since his birth and will take care of him provided he fixed her roof once a year, cut his wood or bring her some eggs?

-Why would anyone go to a lawyer in town, again, to someone they have no idea who he is, pay tons of money -something they don't even use much as long as they need something extraordinary- while the old woman they respected like a mother all their lives can fix it for them by a simple "you give two pigs to him and next spring he'll give the first born calf to you and you'll no longer will be in conflict"?

And if they do not go to town, what will happen to these new born industries? And why would they even obey unless they fear for their lives and lands? It's a self functional community. Independent.

Well, I am trying to keep it simple of course, but just the religious casue is even far more complicated than male dominant dogmas starting to kill these women for any reason and in time it somehow becomes a tradition and collective reflex to stop anything bad that happened to community. In simple terms as an act of killing, you could even define it as revenge or paying blood for anything bad happened that they can't explain.

It's too long, I don't kow how to get into it. But basically, the first few hundred years of Christianity, before church becomes a great power zone, various paganist groups -majority of the people- who converted to christianity kept their original belief systems' dos and don'ts. Because almost all paganist systems are perfectly in sync with nature and daily life from dealings of harvest to marriage and most ancient rituals which are designed pragmatically to get work done around a calender of a one year in natural cycle. Before industrial revolution, this worked to some point everywhere. It's also why Christianity had to convert eids and symbols and countless  pagan traditions into is own. Not just because people believe in them, because they were functional. Later they gain another function through time.

However in centuries to come, when demography, wars, new borders, threats, trades, geopolitical balances changed and emerged; evolved and centripetal forces caused a power zone like Vatican, because there was a movement and space, everything starts to change for the worse. Centralisation, which was of course not something new, took a new turn. After a tipping point it became a machine. Then as every zones of power must constantly gain power to stand their ground as a power zone, because if they lose another zone will gain the power, church started to kill systematically. (I don't mean centripetal and centrifugal forces work mutually exclusive. No. They are at work together all the time, however in history we observe there are times more suitable for one to gain more speed than the other. Hence times of empires and times of fragmentation of forces. History is not a linear progress.)

Witch burning is one of the results of this. It's NOT about religion, it is about controlling the domestic industries and sources in a given region. Economy, trade...

Exactly like kings and emperors often attacked big monestries by making excuses, because they were independent structures capable of feeding and defending themselves. They were a threat. Like those women holding power in self functioning communities.


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When we handle scientific progress by discoveries, solely through extraordinary individuals and see the religion as one homogenous obstacle before them, we always run the risk of missing other very important factors behind.

I'll always stand on what I said in Pickel's The Question thread. Because there is actually nothing done in the name of religion or god if you get the bottom of it, but it always always a catch behind it in bigger; societal or an individual level. That's why I don't accept that anyone believes -or can actually believe- in any god.


PS Also printing is invented in China, not in Europe. Erothestenes calculated that world was a sphere around 300 BCE. See, even looking from this angle, why the knowledge got a hold on where and started to work at some point, but not before anywhere else is a very important piece of knowledge fighting with religion. Also it helps not to get into the mistake of seeing world from a myopic lense in one culture's perspective as progress.

[peacewithoutgod]

Very interesting, thank you.

Because when you evaluate 'witch' burning case by case, it serves as a deflection from the common set of conditions and factors that actually started this form of systematic violence against women.

This goes waaay back from 17th century. These women defined as witches or people thought to be possessed, capable of power of doing good or bad to people are coming from a very powerful traditional position in their little communities holding.

People of that community are born to these women's hands (midwifery), they go to them when they get sick or get and accident, or their live stock all their lives (medicine), their judgement is listened when people get into conflicts, and they have the authority to give punishment (law), they lay out people when they die (religion, divinity). They are in a very powerful posiiton although they have nothing to do with administration or being a ruler.

Now look at that^. Medicine, law, religion. Greatest industries and source for man power, money-trade, war,..later will become fundamental branches of businesses in a society.

-Why would anyone living in a village go to a doctor he didn't even meet before in town and pay money when he has the 'witch' around the corner who knows him since his birth and will take care of him provided he fixed her roof once a year, cut his wood or bring her some eggs?

-Why would anyone go to a lawyer in town, again, to someone they have no idea who he is, pay tons of money -something they don't even use much as long as they need something extraordinary- while the old woman they respected like a mother all their lives can fix it for them by a simple "you give two pigs to him and next spring he'll give the first born calf to you and you'll no longer will be in conflict"?

And if they do not go to town, what will happen to these new born industries? And why would they even obey unless they fear for their lives and lands? It's a self functional community. Independent.

Well, I am trying to keep it simple of course, but just the religious casue is even far more complicated than male dominant dogmas starting to kill these women for any reason and in time it somehow becomes a tradition and collective reflex to stop anything bad that happened to community. In simple terms as an act of killing, you could even define it as revenge or paying blood for anything bad happened that they can't explain.

It's too long, I don't kow how to get into it. But basically, the first few hundred years of Christianity, before church becomes a great power zone, various paganist groups -majority of the people- who converted to christianity kept their original belief systems' dos and don'ts. Because almost all paganist systems are perfectly in sync with nature and daily life from dealings of harvets to marriage and most ancient rituals which are designed pragmatically to get work done around a calender of a one year in natures cycle. Before industrial revolution this worked to some point everywhere. It's also why Christianity had to convert eids and symbols and countless  pagan traditions into is own. No just because people believe in them, because they were functional. Later they gain another function through time.

However in centuries to come, when demography, wars, new borders, threats, trades, geopolitical balances changed and emerged; evolved and centripetal forces caused a power zone like Vatican, because there was a movement and space everything starts to change for the worse. Centralisation, which was of course not something new, took a new turn. After a tipping point it became a machine. Then as every zones of power must constantly to gain power to stand their ground as a power zone, because if they lose another zone will gain the power, church started to kill systematically. (I don't mean centripetal and centrifugal forces work mutually exclusive. No. They are at work together all the time, however in history we observe there are times more suitable for one to gain more speed than the other. Hence times of empires and times of fragmentation of forces. History is not a linear progress.)

Witch burning is one of the results of this. It's NOT about religion, it is about controlling the domestic industries and sources in a given region. Economy, trade...

Exactly like kings and emperors often attacked big monestries by making excuses, because they were independent structures capable of feeding and defending themselves. They were a threat. Like those women holding power in self functioning communities.


--------

When we handle scientific progress by discoveries, solely through extraordinary individuals and see the religion as one homogenous obstacle before them, we always run the risk of missing other very important factors behind.

I'll always stand on what I said in Pickel's The Question thread. Because there is actually nothing done in the name of religion or god if you get the bottom of it, but it always always a catch behind it in bigger; societal or an individual level. That's why I don't accept that anyone believes -or can actually believe- in any god.


PS Also printing is invented in China, not in Europe. Erothestenes calculated that world was a sphere around 300 BCE. See, even looking from this angle, why the knowledge got a hold on where and started to work at some point, but not before anywhere else is a very important piece of knowledge fighting with religion. Also it helps not to get into the mistake of seeing world from a myopic lense in one culture's perspective as progress.

[Baruch]

Don't underestimate the desire of doctors to put women midwives out of business.  Also apothecaries wanted to put women herbalists out of business too.  This is no different than Donald Trump putting the squeeze on a property owner of a property he needs to clear to build his own project.  Also in Germany, women could inherit property ... and the rest of the family wanted them dead (old women in widows weeds ... a familiar image?) to get the inheritance.  The actual manual of the Catholic church that was directed at witchcraft mentions abortionists ... women herbalists were thought to be poisoners and abortionists ... and that war against women continues today.