Questioninggeller
26th June 2007, 05:37 PM
"In Defense of Witchcraft"
By Sam Harris
June 26, 2007
Huffingtonpost.com
Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.
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What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter? In the following essay, I present excerpts from actual reviews of recent atheist bestsellers, replacing terms like "religion," "God," and "atheist" with terms like "witchcraft," "the Devil," and "skeptic." Observe how much intellectual progress we have made in the last five hundred years:
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Full: huffingtonpost.com (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-witchcraft_b_53865.html) or richarddawkins.net (http://richarddawkins.net/article,1338,In-Defense-of-Witchcraft,Sam-Harris)
By Sam Harris
June 26, 2007
Huffingtonpost.com
Imagine that the year is 1507, and life is difficult. Crops fail, good people suffer instantaneous and horrifying turns of bad luck, and even the children of royalty regularly die before they have taken their first steps. As it turns out, everyone understands the cause of these calamities: it is witchcraft. Not all witchcraft is at fault, of course -- there are "white" witches who use their powers to heal -- but there is no question that some witches have formed an alliance with the Devil. Happily, the Church has produced many learned and energetic men who are equal to this challenge, and each year hundreds of women are put to death for casting spells upon their innocent neighbors.
...
What sort of criticism would these misguided authors likely encounter? In the following essay, I present excerpts from actual reviews of recent atheist bestsellers, replacing terms like "religion," "God," and "atheist" with terms like "witchcraft," "the Devil," and "skeptic." Observe how much intellectual progress we have made in the last five hundred years:
...
Full: huffingtonpost.com (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sam-harris/in-defense-of-witchcraft_b_53865.html) or richarddawkins.net (http://richarddawkins.net/article,1338,In-Defense-of-Witchcraft,Sam-Harris)