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READ and THINK IF you have not yet lost such an ability as a result of the pastors' brain washing:
Muslim inventions that shaped the modern world - CNN.com
Yeah hold that thought while I first read CNN's "Christian inventions that shaped the modern world" article. Can you help me find it?
I FOUND it!!!
Persecuting Witches and Witchcraft
The current unattractiveness of most Western European women, that, of course, could not but affect American society, most likely, as one of my graduate students believes, is the result of the genetic extermination of beautiful women by the Christian Church (beautiness is a SIN!), by the monks who sexually harassed beautiful women who had denied sexual services to them. Or if a woman who was forced to have sexual relations with the "Wholly fathers" was later eliminated as an unnecessary witness.
The history of Christian America is no less shameful.
Persecuting Witches and Persecuting Women
Source: Jupiter Images
The subservience of women to men was a common theme in early Christian writings -- an outgrowth of both traditional patriarchal attitudes and the extreme hierarchical nature of the church itself. Groups which did not hold to hierarchy in any form were attacked immediately. There is no shared authority between the genders in traditional Christianity, either in the church or in the home. Homosexuality would be particularly threatening to this ideology, as it raises the potential of redefining gender roles, especially in the home.
Witness how the recent attacks upon homosexuality in society has progressed hand-in-hand with the mindless promotion of vague "traditional family values," particularly those which "put women in their place" and reinforce male dominance in the home. With a married couple of two women or two men, who exactly is supposed to be in charge and who meekly obedient? Never mind that the Christians who fear such relationships will never be asked to make those decisions themselves -- the mere fact that people are making such decisions on their own rather than obeying someone else's religious proclamations is quite enough to give them fits of apoplexy.
The
perception of women as inferior to men, and possibly the enemy of proper religious or social order, has survived down through this day in the most conservative and fundamentalist religious movements around the world. Religious institutions and doctrines are a primary repository for ancient beliefs about the social, physical, political, and religious inferiority of women. Even if the rest of society is moving on and improving women's status, religion remains the main source of beliefs and attitudes which retard that progress in the hopes of reversing it completely. And, where women cannot be attacked directly, they are attacked indirectly through negative stereotypes about "feminine" values as compared to positive stereotypes of "manly" or "masculine" traits.
It would be a mistake to assert that the Christian persecution of
witches and
witchcraft was nothing but an attempt to suppress women and feminine influences. Christian society, politics, and
theology at the time simply weren't that simplistic. At the same time, it's hard to overestimate the role of misogynistic attitudes and repressed male sexuality played in the persecution of witches. It seems likely that if they didn't exist, the extreme violence directed at women and alleged witches probably wouldn't have occurred.
witches reached its zenith at a time when Christianity's attitudes against sex had long since turned into full-blown misogyny. It is amazing how
celibate men became obsessed with the sexuality of women. As it is stated in Malleus Maleficarum: "All
witchcraft comes from carnal
lust, which is in women insatiable." Another section describes how witches were known to "...collect male organs in great numbers, as many as twenty or thirty members together, and put them in a bird's nest."
Evidently, they were not entirely stingy with their collections -- there is the story of a man who went to a witch to have his lost penis restored: "She told the afflicted man to climb a certain tree, and that he might take which he like out of a nest in which there were several members. And when he tried to take a big one, the witch said: You must not take that one; adding, because it belonged to a parish priest."
And some people say that religion isn't really all about wishful thinking!
These sentiments were nothing unique or unusual -- indeed, they are a result of centuries of mean-spirited sexual pathology on the part of church theologians. The philosopher Boethius, for example, wrote in
The Consolation of Philosophy that "Woman is a temple built upon a sewer." Later, in the tenth century, Odo of Cluny stated:
To embrace a woman is to embrace a sack of manure.
Women were regarded as impediments to true spirituality and union with God, which helps explain why investigators focused on women more than men. The church had a long-standing prejudice against women, and this was given vent when the doctrine of devil worship was emphasized as an enemy which the church had to confront and destroy. This animus hasn't entirely disappeared even today. Women aren't persecuted and tortured, but they are deliberately kept out of positions of authority and responsibility reserved exclusively for men.
witchcraft, extracted under torture or threat of torture, commonly came attached to denouncements of other possible
witches, keeping the Inquisitors in business.
In Spain, church records tell the story of Maria of Ituren admitting under torture that she and sister witches turned themselves into horses and galloped through the sky. In a district of France, 600 women admitted to copulating with demons. Some entire villages in Europe were may have been exterminated.
Although the children of heretics and Jews had never experienced much in the way of mercy from Inquisitors, the children of convicted witches suffered even more horribly. These kids were themselves prosecuted for witchcraft—girls after the age of nine and a half, boys after the age of ten and a half. Even younger children could be tortured to elicit testimony against parents.
A French judge is reported to have regretted being so lenient when he sentenced young kids to be flogged while they watched their parents burn instead of sentencing them to burn as well. Children may not be easily culpable for
heresy or their parents' heresy, but they could certainly be influenced by or even possessed by Satan. The only hope of saving their souls was to torture their bodies to drive out the satanic influences.
Voluntary testimony from someone as young as two could be admitted despite it not being treated as valid in other cases. This was a sign of just how serious the threat of witches was perceived to be. Witches and witchcraft, both of which were in the service of Satan, threatened the very existence of Christian society, the Christian church, and Christians themselves. Normal standards of justice, evidence, and trials were abandoned because no one wanted to take the chance that respecting traditional rights and standards would allow the guilty to escape punishment.
witches followed many standard Inquisition procedures, but with some added bonuses. Accused witches were all stripped naked, had all of their body hair shaved off, and then "pricked."
The sexually neurotic
Malleus Maleficarum had become the standard text on how to deal with witches, and this book stated authoritatively that all witches bore a numb "devil's mark" which could be detected by sharp prodding. Inquisitors were also quick to search for the purported "witches' tits," blemishes which were supposed to be extra nipples used by witches to suckle demons.
Red-hot tongs were applied to womens' breasts and genitalia. Researcher Nancy van Vuuren has written that "The women's sex organs provided special attraction for the
male torturer." It should not be surprising that just about every torture victim eventually confessed.
especially when the torture involves sexual abuse, it doesn't take long for the victim's world to become reduced to nothing but the pain and a desire for the pain to end.
When the only important thing is the cessation of pain, the victim will tell the torturer whatever they want to hear. It may not be the truth, but if the pain ends that's all that matters.
Unique case in history
On February 16, 1568, the entire population of the Netherlands - at that time it amounted to three million people - was sentenced to death.
On this day, Philip II submitted a special memorandum stating that "with the exception of the selected list of names, all the inhabitants of the Netherlands were heretics, distributors of heresy, and therefore were guilty of treason." The Inquisition Court accepted this proposal, and on February 26, Philip confirmed the decision with a document in which he ordered the execution of the order to be executed immediately and without concessions.
Do you want MORE INFO on contribution of Christianity into the human history???
Than read my a series of my articles
"The Road to Auschwitz Ran Through American Genocide", on Part VI I'm still working...
Why are you taking the Forum off the topic of discussion?
Where is Bloomberg, where is Trump and where is Christianity ???
