Pope: Atheism to blame for "greatest forms of cruelty&q

[K. A. Pital]

Because then they would've killed more people than they did.

Meaning they would've killed more without a torture manual? Good god. Are those people insane? How does a torture manual prevent murder in any way?

[PeZook]

Meaning they would've killed more without a torture manual? Good god. Are those people insane? How does a torture manual prevent murder in any way?

No, no. His (ill)logic went like this:

Me: How can you say the Inquisition's crimes were not institutional? They published a goddamned torture manual!

Him: If they were institutionally cruel, they would've killed far more people than they did. It doesn't matter what they published on torture, they didn't kill as many people as some claim.

And, you know, this manual did prevent murder. Torquemada was very careful in crafting instructions on how to torture without killing the subject...which, of course, is completely irrelevant: You can be despicably cruel without killing someone, or even leaving any physical marks.

[K. A. Pital]

And, you know, this manual did prevent murder.

You mean it prevented murder for the period of torture, of course. As soon as the heretic or witch outlived their usefulness in "condemning" other "unfaithful"... he was dead.

If they were institutionally cruel, they would've killed far more people than they did. It doesn't matter what they published on torture, they didn't kill as many people as some claim.

That's... shocking.

[PeZook]

You mean it prevented murder for the period of torture, of course. As soon as the heretic or witch outlived their usefulness in "condemning" other "unfaithful"... he was dead.

Not always, though. Many lower-level heretics were allowed to live after "repenting", if they condemned enough people and weren't much of a threat...and only after going through a horrifying ordeal, where torture was considered a standard investigative practice.

That's... shocking.

Isn't it? Especially when the same guy turns around and starts claiming moral superiority over us godless heathens.

[mr friendly guy]

Did you ask him how not killing MORE people magically makes them not cruel. Doesn't that just oh, I don't know, make them less cruel? Perhaps he is one of those Christian retards who doesn't seem to understand that certain words, *shock* actually have certain meanings.

[PeZook]

Did you ask him how not killing MORE people magically makes them not cruel. Doesn't that just oh, I don't know, make them less cruel? Perhaps he is one of those Christian retards who doesn't seem to understand that certain words, *shock* actually have certain meanings.

He was obsessed with bodycounts. Torture didn't matter to him unless you killed somebody - well, there's no "Thou shalt not torture people in horrible ways" commandment, now is it?

[K. A. Pital]

He was obsessed with bodycounts.

Actually I think the Inqusition's bodycount is rather huge. And if we look at it not in absolute terms (like, "the bodycount here is X million while here Y million, X > Y, therefore, Catholics were not as cruel as they could be") but in relative terms, given the damn small populations of medieval countries, it might very well be on par with stuff like Pol Pot or Sukharto.

[PeZook]

Actually I think the Inqusition's bodycount is rather huge. And if we look at it not in absolute terms (like, "the bodycount here is X million while here Y million, X > Y, therefore, Catholics were not as cruel as they could be") but in relative terms, given the damn small populations of medieval countries, it might very well be on par with stuff like Pol Pot or Sukharto.

Yeah, I thought about measuring it this way.

Various sources give estimates as low as 30 thousandish, and some go as high as 350 thousand during the period of 1480-1808.

With 950 million people or so alive in the beginning of the XIXth century, we can estimate a high end death toll of 0,00036 total world population.

Hmm...it does correspond roughly to Pol Pot's exploits - two million dead, out of 6 billion, that gives 0,00033.

This is back of the envelope and done in a hurry, though - I could be wrong. Also, a more precise measurement would probably use the median world population between XVth and XIXth century, rather than the population at the start of the XIXth century, and a more accepted death toll for the Inquisition.

[K. A. Pital]

Documented cases of heretic execution of it's own records (both by Church and external tribunals) amount to some 30,000, but one needs to recall that this is a localized phenomena. 30,000 would mean a 0,5% of the population of Spain. A rather wide thing - for example, the US penal system houses around 2% of it's total population, and that's the largest penal system in the world. Imagine if the US suddenly killed off all of it's prison population. In relative scale, the Inquisition would take around 2-3 million in a modern and highly populated state, just as I thought it would be.

Of course, the Catholic church is smart to claim that the Church only condemned 3000, forgetting the actions of extraneous legal bodies which contributed to most of the death toll!

I mean, look, the Great Plague of Spain had an immediate death toll of 60,000, and it's considered a great tragedy (even though it was followed by even more enormous plagues towards the end of the century)...

[Enforcer Talen]

One of my profs (Barbara Walker fan, believed in the Burning Times) stated the body count was some 9 million women and children over several centuries.

Make of that as you will.

[K. A. Pital]

One of my profs (Barbara Walker fan, believed in the Burning Times) stated the body count was some 9 million women and children over several centuries.

Make of that as you will.

That's the inflated witchhunt bodycount, not the Inquisition bodycount.

This high a deathtoll is unlikely, the consequential Great Plagues in Spain, with immediate death tolls around 500 thousand - in the end, they contracted the population by 1,25 million and this sent it into deep recession half a century. The destruction of such a high humber, even over the course of several centuries, would cause enormous population volatility in Europe and force populations down a lot harsher than the Plagues did.

[DavidEC]

Torture, or murder. For the logic to even begin to work, those have to be the only two choices.

[K. A. Pital]

Isn't "murder with pre-applied cruelty" like torture worse than simply offing the person you want to kill anyway? So it seems that even if some of those tortured escaped death, others were tortured prior to killing, which is a damning circumstance.

[DavidEC]

I was thinking that you neither torture them nor kill them but, er... you get the idea. Any way you cut it, it's not flattering for the Church.

[K. A. Pital]

I was thinking that you neither torture them nor kill them

The question was the degree of cruelty, i.e. if the Church tortured but didn't kill, that would per the argument make it less cruel than it could be.

[Adrian Laguna]

You can't trial for that bullshit, much less torture. Of course it's possible to "perform it", but so?

What do you mean by this statement? Can't physically? Can't morally? Can't legally (using modern standards, I presume)?

Obviously physically it can be done as it has been done. Morally you are right. Legally it depends entirely on whether the charge is performing witchcraft or attempting to do so, thought that's for holding a trial, torture never holds-up.

Oh, and of course that's justification to hang people.

I don't recall ever saying it was.

Hol-ee shit. You think this constitutes a defense of the Church?

To a degree yes. Just because I say that attempting witchcraft can be a prosecutable crime does not mean that I believe it should be one. I am mostly defending them in comparison to Protestant witch hunts, I think the Catholics were marginally better.

A higher standard of evidence that some women have Evil Magic Powers and need to be tortured and killed? Really? How does an organization have a higher standard of evidence for proving claims that they, themselves, made up?

The statement is only technically true, Catholics have a higher standard of evidence than the Protestants merely by having one at all. That it barely existed, and that for the vastly greater part it did not, does not make my statement untrue. If I have one grain of sand and you have none, it might be argued that neither has sand, but technically I have more sand than you.

What do you expect; Adrian Laguna is from South America. The whole region is infested with fundie stupidity.

It depends. The country I am from is fairly secular. I'd say that I'm assaulted by religion more in the US than in Venezuela.

In any case, my statements do not arise from fundie stupidity. My words here have no meaning other than the literal and technical one, there are no implications behind them.

[Elfdart]

Daaamn, how much Christian torture was the result of sexually repressed men honestly not knowing what the female crotch looks like?

I'm of the opinion that all torture is the work of perverts who get a sexual thrill out of inflicting harm on others. Watching torture enthusiasts gloat over water torture for the last couple of years bears this out, the way they smack their lips with glee.

[Elfdart]

Actually I think the Inqusition's bodycount is rather huge. And if we look at it not in absolute terms (like, "the bodycount here is X million while here Y million, X > Y, therefore, Catholics were not as cruel as they could be") but in relative terms, given the damn small populations of medieval countries, it might very well be on par with stuff like Pol Pot or Sukharto.

Yeah, I thought about measuring it this way.

Various sources give estimates as low as 30 thousandish, and some go as high as 350 thousand during the period of 1480-1808.

With 950 million people or so alive in the beginning of the XIXth century, we can estimate a high end death toll of 0,00036 total world population.

Hmm...it does correspond roughly to Pol Pot's exploits - two million dead, out of 6 billion, that gives 0,00033.

This is back of the envelope and done in a hurry, though - I could be wrong. Also, a more precise measurement would probably use the median world population between XVth and XIXth century, rather than the population at the start of the XIXth century, and a more accepted death toll for the Inquisition.

I think the Earth's population in the mid-1970s was 4 billion. I don't know how one would spread the numbers for 30,000 killed over 328 years, but most of those who were killed died during the late 1400/early 1500s, with the world's population estimated at 500 million by 1600. If my math is correct, the death toll would be 0.00006 -or roughly twice as bad as what Pol Pot did, even though it was spred over a longer period of time.

[Morilore]

What do you mean by this statement? Can't physically? Can't morally? Can't legally (using modern standards, I presume)?

Try can't logically.
"You attempted to cast Force Lightning on a guy on the street. You will be tried for attempted murder."
"Your honour, there is no such fucking thing as Force Lightning."
"He tried to murder him, didn't he?"
Do you see the problem with this?

[Molyneux]

Daaamn, how much Christian torture was the result of sexually repressed men honestly not knowing what the female crotch looks like?

I'm of the opinion that all torture is the work of perverts who get a sexual thrill out of inflicting harm on others. Watching torture enthusiasts gloat over water torture for the last couple of years bears this out, the way they smack their lips with glee.

...ugh. So sexual repression causes yet more misery in the world...damn it, if they just visited an S&M club now and then they'd work it out of their systems!

[K. A. Pital]

What do you mean by this statement?

You can't logically trial for something that is scientifically impossible. Neither can you even call that a crime, from a rationalist position. Sorry, but the whole witch and heretic thing is irrationalist bullshit of the highest order.

[hawkwind]

Try can't logically.
"You attempted to cast Force Lightning on a guy on the street. You will be tried for attempted murder."
"Your honour, there is no such fucking thing as Force Lightning."
"He tried to murder him, didn't he?"
Do you see the problem with this?

Ufortunatelly you can be tried for the intent to kill, whatever impotence you actually exhibit during the attempt. Hovever by modern standarts person who would claim such thing as written above would be found nuts. (Well, perhaps not in Texas...)

...ugh. So sexual repression causes yet more misery in the world...damn it, if they just visited an S&M club now and then they'd work it out of their systems!

*They cant visit SM club, obviously because god forbids dwelling in "sexuall perversion" and harmless vent of sexuall deprivation with person of consent. Its evil, cant you just see it! Torturing people is on the other hand o.k., because as we can deduce from fundie rant torture is not explicitly forbidden and the rules apply on fellow christian brothers and not for some blasphemous heathen anyway.....

Frankly sadism has long standing tradition, both in christian congregationall life and religious educational institutions. And that applies to all religions which supress healthy sexuality. One could actually just list famous religious sadist as they go.. Jean Calvin comes to mind....


J.

[hawkwind]

You can't logically trial for something that is scientifically impossible.

Absolutelly. But then nobody is accusing cannonical trial of logic.

Frankly, I would like to know what actually stands for "higher standart of evidence" when it comes such trial in the era, when "torture first, ask later" was universally adopted practice.
Does it mean people were actually tortured more to get more convincing confessions, or that there were three, not two witnesses needed to confess that person in question is witch?

Let us not forget, that amazingly small procento of these trials were about anything like practicing witchcraft. The usual motivations were greed, jelaoussy of succes, sexual desire of atractive female by the authority or good old fashioned silencing of persons found disruptive to flock.


J.

[Morilore]

Ufortunatelly you can be tried for the intent to kill, whatever impotence you actually exhibit during the attempt. Hovever by modern standarts person who would claim such thing as written above would be found nuts. (Well, perhaps not in Texas...)

Okay, you're right, bad example. I should have written something like:
"You attempted to cast Force Lightning. You will be tried for the use of the Dark Side of the Force."
"Your honour, there is no such thing as the Force."
"But using the Dark Side is recklessly irresponsible; it leads to predictable sociopathy and violence, and we as a society are well-served banning it."
"But it doesn't fucking exist!"
Now, does that clear your nitpick radar?

[hawkwind]

In which (?) Joseph Conrad roman, the man is acussed of drowning wife in the lake? It cannot really be proven if he in the end was ruthless enough to actually push her into water, or whatever she fell there by accident because of stormy weather. But his intent to murder her is clearly proved during the trail and he is then sentenced too death.
I even think it was actually based on real events of 1930´america.

Relativelly modern case then.

Understand, I m not arguing you that by using rules of logic, you cannot possibly be tried for conducting misdemeanor by means which do not exist - e.g. magic. But as I said, to expect logic from religious tribunall is somehow too much....

But doesnt it somehow slips to Orwellian crime of "malicious thinking" so well prosecuted in all totalitarian regimes.

But as I wrote in my previous post witch hunts were welcomed oportunity to get rid of uncomfortable people, out of which miserable procento actually did anything which could be possibly considered "witchy" - such as performing (harmless) magic ritual.


J.