Simple question?

Quote: Dalex64

I think Bob in particular will find this site to be a good read:
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/DebunkingChristians/Contents.htm

Enjoyable so far. It takes only 3 pages before he
mentions brainwashing. It's interesting because
he's a recovering Christian. He makes a good point
that it's much easier to convert than to deconvert.
Most find getting away from the clutches of
the cult to be very difficult. I'm so thankful every
day that I got away from the group I was involved
with so many years ago.

Quote: Evenbob

Yet the Church believed so much that they
were guilty, they killed thousands, some
say 10's of thousands, over a period of
hundreds of years. Thousands of poor,
innocent, screaming for their lives women.
All murdered because of a Church that
can't tell the difference between fact and
self delusion.

I really feel sorry for you that you think this, I imagine if I thought this I would be as confused and angry as you are. However there has been great progress in historical study on this issue that I think you might find enlightening. Here is a link to an article written by a woman who practices Wiccan and who has an MA in Medieval History: Recent Developments in the Study of the Great European Witch Hunt

Here is a quote from the article, "Christianity's Role in the Persecution For years, the responsibility for the Great Hunt has been dumped on the Catholic Church's door-step. 19th century historians ascribed the persecution to religious hysteria. And when Margaret Murray proposed that witches were members of a Pagan sect, popular writers trumpeted that the Great Hunt was not a mere panic, but rather a deliberate attempt to exterminate Christianity's rival religion.

Today, we know that there is absolutely no evidence to support this theory. When the Church was at the height of its power (11th-14th centuries) very few witches died. Persecutions did not reach epidemic levels until after the Reformation, when the Catholic Church had lost its position as Europe's indisputable moral authority. Moreover most of the killing was done by secular courts. Church courts tried many witches but they usually imposed non-lethal penalties. A witch might be excommunicated, given penance, or imprisoned, but she was rarely killed. The Inquisition almost invariably pardoned any witch who confessed and repented."

She goes on to say that from 1300-1500 AD 137 Witches were killed by Inquistional or Church courts. While even one person killed is a tragedy I think you can see how far off your conception is from reality. I also think it would do you well to know more about those times to understand what was often really going on, it was complicated.

Quote: Dalex64

All you have to do is use Google to search for Christian Totalitarianism for several examples, such as:
http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Religion/Christian%20Totalitarianism.htm

I looked at the site you linked to and it is indeed disturbing and incorrect. I can imagine an honest and intelligent person can see when something is written with a strong agenda in mind. I did also as you said and googled Christian Totalitarianism and found and interesting article that I hope you also read. Here is a quote from the article from Truth magazine talking about the requirement of Christians to fight against any totalitarianism.

"Jesus, His apostles, and His church lived, died, and remained victorious under the most despotic, corrupt, and long lived totalitarian regimes that has ever existed on earth. The social peace and order brought about by its despotism provided the church opportunity to grow and prosper. It was that same benign totalitarianism that turned rapidly against the church and pursued it, drunk with the blood of the saints, for two hundred years. God's people did not perish from the face of the earth, but were made strong in adversity."

I also saw on that search the Wikipedia article about Totalitarianism and found no reference to Christianity at all in its treatment of this topic and in its list of examples of totalitarianism. Maybe Nareed could point out the instances referenced that Nareed seems to know about.

What is incorrect on that site?

It looks like the word totalitarianism wasn't really used before 1938, so any usage of it on an older regime is necessarily applied to it much after the fact. You can understand why they wouldn't even bother to do so, since there already were labels on those other regimes.

The basic concept, total control over everything and all information, certainly existed before the word came in to common use.

Quote: Dalex64

What is incorrect on that site?

Just the first few paragraphs the following things are incorrect. Christianity was made the state religion of Rome in 380 not 395 AD and it was made so by Constantine and not Church leaders. The "Roman Totalitarianism" the site mentions is NOT a reign like the world has never seen and to state that is laughable and insulting. There were no non-Catholic Christians at that time. The Library of Alexendria was not destroyed by Christians and was burned in 270 AD. There was no established Canon Law at the time referenced. What is most incorrect though is the list of Bible quotes used to back up this illusion of Christian totalitarianism. There is barely a quote from the New Testament and the quotes from the OT are atrociously misused and taken out of context. There is no way you can use the teachings of Jesus Christ to support totalitarianism. I mean that site is embarrassingly incorrect.

What about the gist of the rest of it, that

Quote:

Laws were passed that enshrined Christianity as the official and sole religion of the Roman Empire. All other religions were outlawed and practitioners of them were killed or severely persecuted. Pagan temples were torn down by both temporal authorities and mobs incited by Christian officials. Pagan priests were killed by mob violence,

Is that inaccurate?

I think that is the important part in evaluating whether or not the roman empire became a totalitarian christian regime.

It also didn't say that there was canon law at the start. It says " It was a system of persecution that created a large body of Church law (Canon Law) and secular laws,"

I think that you can say that "that this totalitarian reign of terror in religion was a very new event in history" because I don't think before this that the christians were in a position to outlaw and persecute the other religions. So the christians going on a reign of terror in religion was a first for them.

As for taking the bible "out of context" - it seems everyone does that when it serves their purposes, or they can use it to justify a policy like "make them come in" and just as often the same phrase is interpreted to mean something different, at some other time. Interpretations of the roles of women in society are another good example of this.

Quote: FrGamble

it was complicated.

I really feel sorry you have to be an apologist
for your company. Complicated? Not really.
Catholics and Protestants both used the
killing of women for political reasons. You
can candy coat it any way you like, the Church
was in the witch hunts up to their necks.
They killed or saw killed or approved of the
killing of 10's of thousands, all with the blessings
of Jesus. He had to instruct them, just like he
instructs you. Right?

"1450: The first major witch hunts began in many western European countries. The Roman Catholic Church created an imaginary evil religion, using stereotypes that had circulated since pre-Christian times. They said that Pagans who worshiped Diana and other Gods and Goddesses were evil Witches who kidnapped babies, killed and ate their victims, sold their soul to Satan, were in league with demons, flew through the air, met in the middle of the night, caused male impotence and infertility, caused male genitals to disappear, etc. Historians have speculated that this religiously inspired genocide was motivated by a desire by the Church to attain a complete religious monopoly, or was "a tool of repression, a form of reining-in deviant behavior, a backlash against women... Witches were a scapegoat for God. Religious leaders felt that they had to retain the concepts of both an omnipotent and an all-loving deity. Thus, they had to invent Witches and demons in order to explain the existence of evil in the world."

"Modern scholarly estimates place the total number of executions for witchcraft in the 300-year period of European witch-hunts in the five digits, mostly at roughly between 40,000 and 50,000... By choosing to give their souls over to the devil witches had committed crimes against man and against God. The gravity of this double crime classified witchcraft as crimen exceptum, and allowed for the suspension of normal rules of evidence in order to punish the guilty."

"The old-school take on Europe’s witch hunts attributed them to excesses of Catholic fanaticism.. focuses on witch crazes in small German towns, and Protestants of many denominations could be just as fervent and murderous in their campaigns. The need to eradicate witches was one of the few doctrinal things Catholic and Protestant crusaders agreed on."

http://www.religioustolerance.org/wic_burn2.htm

Are witches and their supernatural powers real?

Quote: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch-hunt

Belief in witchcraft has been shown to have similarities in societies throughout the world. It presents a framework to explain the occurrence of otherwise random misfortunes such as sickness or death, and the witch sorcerer provides an image of evil.

Evidence: Similar beliefs across cultures and across the world, and lots of people believed in them, answers important questions such as the cause of evil and sickness, their practices are documented in the bible, there are prohibitions in the bible against it.

Here is a Papal Bull that talks about witches:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summis_desiderantes_affectibus

More on witch hunts:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Witch_trials_in_the_early_modern_period

Thoughts about witches and their power and where it comes from have led me to this follow-up question:

Why does God allow Satan and demons to operate in and interfere with our world and lives?

I don't like duplicate posts. This was a duplicate post, so I am replacing it with something else.

I was wondering why God gave Satan power, and where demons got their power from, which led me to
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorcism_in_the_Catholic_Church

So, what are demons, how and why do they possess people, and where do they get the power to do it?

Follow-up: if incubi and succubi are incarnations of demons on earth, are there other demons or angels incarnating on earth?