Ignorance taught and enforced by the Church Flashcards

1
Q

CARD # 1: Up until about 300 years ago with the reformation, all knowledge was passed down to the public by the church. In fact, the very first colleges in the United States were solely for religious education. Ben Franklin started the first University that was secular.

Church doctrine was full of superstition and ignorance. The church was all powerful and gave only a parochial, that is a very limited and vetted, knowledge to the general people. Mostly the people were kept in the dark and discouraged from learning anything more than what the church presented to them. In fact the services were in Latin and people could not understand anything that was being said. People were forbidden to read the scriptures, (most were illiterate anyway). Anyone who translated the scriptures to English or another understood language were quickly guilty of treason and brutally killed and many were burned at the stake.

Queen Mary was famous for the hundreds of people she had burned at the stake for simply going to a church where the scriptures were spoken in a language they could understand. This is why she went down in history as “Bloody Mary”.//In the old days, nations were conquered and made to worship the Gods of their captors. The Jewish people were captives an amazing fifteen times! As a result, when they wrote the Old Testament about 600 BCE, it was a blend of many mythological Gods and exaggerated stories that all were merged into the Jewish history of the Old Testament.

When they did actually write the Old Testament, they condensed the dozens of mythological Gods and stories into one God that was anthropomorphic (looked like a human being). This synthesized God is the Jewish and Christian God of today.

A

What follows is a small listing of the beliefs forced upon people of the church for thousands of years.

  1. The Earth is flat.
  2. The Earth is the center of the universe.
  3. The water of the oceans is left over from the great flood.
  4. Dinosaurs never existed. The fossils and bones were put there by the devil. God allowed it to test our faith.
  5. All the animals in the discovered new world either swam there or were transported there by sailors.
  6. The Planets are moved through the heavens by Angels.
  7. Sunspots were kept a secret for many centuries because the church did not want the people to see any sort of imperfection in God’s work.
  8. The forests were filled with monsters.
  9. The darkness was filled with ghost, devils and dead spirits.
  10. The Swiss Alps had dragons living there and had to be chased away by priest before it was safe for humans.
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2
Q

CARD # 2: Church teachings

  1. The church taught that the business of this life was to prepare for death. It insisted that a certain belief was necessary to ensure salvation. Anyone who doubted in the least would suffer eternal pain in hell.
  2. This life is a period of probation, a time to prepare, to become spiritual, to overcome the natural, to become dead to the world.
  3. Do not question the church, why investigate, why discuss, why think when you know?
  4. The church was the deadly enemy of medicine. Have faith for healing.
  5. Disease was produced by devils and could be cured only by priests, decaying bones, and holy water.
  6. The church opposed the study of anatomy and was against the dissection of the dead.
  7. Man had no right to cure disease, God would do that through his priests.
  8. Diseases were sent by God as judgments.
  9. The church opposed inoculation, vaccination, and the use of chloroform and ether.
  10. It was declared to be a sin, a crime for a woman to lessen the pangs of motherhood.
A
  1. The insane were inhabited by devils. Insanity was not a disease. It was produced by demons.
  2. Insanity could be cured by prayers, gifts, amulets and charms. All these had to be paid for. This enriched the church.
  3. It taught the awful doctrine of witchcraft.
  4. Old women were convicted for causing storms at sea. For preventing rain and for bringing frost.
  5. Girls were convicted for having changed themselves into wolves, snakes and toads. These witches were burned for causing diseases, for selling their souls and for souring beer.
  6. It made the wife a slave, the property of the husband, and it placed the husband as much above the wife as Christ was above the husband.
  7. It taught that a nun is purer, nobler than a mother.
  8. It induced millions of pure and conscientious girls to renounce the joys of life, to take the veil woven of night and death to wear the habiliments of the dead (MN: like a Burka), and made them believe that they were the brides of Christ.
  9. It denounced the taking of interest for money. Without taking interest for money, progress is impossible. All businesses were built with borrowed money paid with interest.
  10. The church was opposed to fire insurance, to life insurance. The church said it was as gambling, as immoral. To insure your life was to declare that you had no confidence in God. For you to insure your life was to insult heaven.
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3
Q

CARD # 3: Epidemics

  1. The church regarded epidemics as the messengers of the good God.
  2. The “Black Death” was sent by the eternal Father, whose mercy spared some and whose justice murdered the rest.
  3. The church was the enemy of art and literature. It destroyed the marbles of Greece and Rome. Beauty was Pagan. It destroyed so far as it could the best literature of the world.
  4. The church burned dozens of gospels and any book or script that was not in agreement with the church dogma.
  5. What about the insane people? It established asylums for the insane. The insane were treated as criminals. They were regarded as devils. They were persecuted and tormented. Chained and flogged, starved and killed. The asylums were prisons, dungeons. They were not trying to help men, they were fighting devils.
A
  1. The church founded schools where facts were denied, where science was denounced and philosophy despised. Schools, where priest were made, where they were taught to hate reason and to look upon doubts as the suggestions of the Devil. Schools in which lies were sacred and truths profane. Schools to prevent thought, to suppress knowledge.
  2. Solar eclipses were caused by the wrath of God.
  3. The church started inquisitions. Torturing people to confess sins they did not commit.
  4. Beheading thousands upon thousands of neighboring nations that held a different belief.

(continue onward with Galileo, Bruno, the Saxons, St. Bartholomew massacre. the thousands that died. The hidden room at the Vatican.

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4
Q

CARD #4: Preface:

Trial by Ordeal was given if a person could not be proven guilty or innocent in a court system. So then the Church took over with torture and horrible trials by ordeal. The thinking was that if the person was innocent, God would heal him or save his life from the results of trials of ordeal. Later on in history, the court system took a back seat to trials and the Church went crazy with it. Torturing, Witch hunts, tearing breast off women to get them to confess. Invading rival countries and raping women, killing men, women and children just because they believed things a little different. Many times it was Christians killing other Christians that actually believed the same things, but spoke a different language. It was horrible beyond belief!

What follows is from Wikipedia. Much more is in detailed Anthologies which I will put in this deck later.

Trial by ordeal:

Trial by ordeal was an ancient judicial practice by which the guilt or innocence of the accused was determined by subjecting them to a painful, or at least an unpleasant, usually dangerous experience. The test was one of life or death, and the proof of innocence was survival. In some cases, the accused was considered innocent if they escaped injury or if their injuries healed.

In medieval Europe, like trial by combat, trial by ordeal was considered a “judgment of God” (Latin: judicium Dei): a procedure based on the premise that God would help the innocent by performing a miracle on his behalf. The practice has much earlier roots, attested to as far back as the Code of Hammurabi and the Code of Ur-Nammu.

Types of Ordeal:

By combat

Main article: Trial by combat

Ordeal by combat took place between two people in a dispute. They, or, under certain conditions, a designated “champion” acting on their behalf, would fight, and the loser of the fight or the party represented by the losing champion was deemed guilty or liable. [How stupid is that?]

A notable case was that of Gero, Count of Alsleben, whose daughter married Siegfried II, Count of Stade.

By fire

After being accused of adultery Cunigunde of Luxembourg proved her innocence by walking over red-hot ploughshares.

Ordeal by fire was one form of torture. Ordeal of fire typically required that the accused walk a certain distance, usually 9 feet (2.7 meters) or a certain number of paces, usually three, over red-hot ploughshares or holding a red-hot iron. Innocence was sometimes established by a complete lack of injury, but it was more common for the wound to be bandaged and re-examined three days later by a priest, who would pronounce that God had intervened to heal it, or that it was merely festering—in which case the suspect would be exiledor put to death. One famous story about the ordeal of ploughshares concerns Edward the Confessor’s mother, Emma of Normandy. According to legend, she was accused of adultery with Bishop Ælfwine of Winchester, but proved her innocence by walking barefoot unharmed over burning ploughshares.

Peter Bartholomew undergoing the ordeal of fire, by Gustave Doré.

During the First Crusade, the mystic Peter Bartholomew allegedly went through the ordeal by fire in 1099 by his own choice to disprove a charge that his claimed discovery of the Holy Lance was fraudulent. He died as a result of his injuries.[2]

Trial by ordeal was adopted in the 13th century by the Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epirus; Michael Angold speculates this legal innovation was most likely through “the numerous western mercenaries in Byzantine service both before and after 1204.”[3] It was used to prove the innocence of the accused in cases of treason and use of magic to affect the health of the emperor. The most famous case where this employed was when Michael Palaiologos was accused of treason: he avoided enduring the red-iron by saying he would only hold it if the Metropolitan Phokas of Philadelphia could take the iron from the altar with his own hands and hand it to him.[4] However, the Byzantines viewed trial of ordeal with disgust and considered it a barbarian innovation at odds with Byzantine law and ecclesiastical canons. Angold notes, “Its abolition by Michael Palaiologos was universally acclaimed.”[5]

In 1498, Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, the leader of a reform movement in Florence who claimed apocalyptic prophetic visions, attempted to prove the divine sanction of his mission by undergoing a trial by fire. The first of its kind for over 400 years, the trial was a fiasco for Savonarola, since a sudden rain doused the flames, canceling the event, and was taken by onlookers as a sign from God against him. The Holy Inquisition arrested him shortly thereafter, with Savonarola convicted of heresy and hanged at the Piazza della Signoria in Florence.

Ordeal by fire (Persian:ور ) was also used for judiciary purposes in ancient Iran. Persons accused of cheating in contracts or lying might be asked to prove their innocence by ordeal of fire as an ultimate test. Two examples of such an ordeal include the accused having to pass through fire, or having molten metal poured on his chest. There were about 30 of these kinds of fiery tests in all. If the accused died, he was held to have been guilty; if survived, he was innocent, having been protected by Mithra and the other gods. The most simple form of such ordeals required the accused to take an oath, then drink a potion of sulphur (Avestan language saokant, Middle Persian sōgand, Modern Persian sowgand). They thought fire has an association with truth, and hence with asha.[6]

In Ancient India, the trial by fire was known as agnipariksha, in which Agni, the Fire God, would be invoked by a priest using mantras. After the invocation, a pyre is built and lit, and the accused would be asked to sit on it. According to Hindu Mythology, the Fire God would preserve the accused if he was innocent, if not, he would be burned to ashes.[citation needed]

By water

Hot water

First mentioned in the 6th-century Lex Salica, the ordeal of hot water required the accused to dip his hand in a kettle or pot of boiling water (sometimes oil or lead was used instead) and retrieve a stone. The assessment of the injury and the consequences of a miracle or lack of one, followed a similar procedure to that described above. An early (non-judicial) example of the test was described by Gregory of Tours in the late 6th century. He describes how a Catholic saint, Hyacinth, bested an Arian rival by plucking a stone from a boiling cauldron. Gregory said that it took Hyacinth about an hour to complete the task (because the waters were bubbling so ferociously), but he was pleased to record that when the heretic tried, he had the skin boiled off up to his elbow.

Legal texts from reign of King Athelstan provide some of the most elaborate royal regulations for the use of the ordeal in Anglo-Saxon England, though the period’s fullest account of ordeal practices is found in an anonymous legal text written some time in the tenth century.[7]According to this text, usually given the title Ordal, the water had to be close to boiling temperature, and the depth from which the stone had to be retrieved was up to the wrist for a ‘one-fold’ ordeal and up to the elbow for a ‘three-fold’ ordeal.[8] The distinction between the one-fold and three-fold ordeal appears to be based on the severity of the crime, with the three-fold ordeal being prescribed for more severe offences such as treachery or for notorious criminals.[9] The ordeal would take place in the church, with several in attendance, purified and praying God to reveal the truth. Afterwards, the hand was bound and examined after three days to see whether it was healing or festering.[10]

This was still a practice of 12th-century Catholic churches. A suspect would place his hand in the boiling water. If after three days God had not healed his wounds, the suspect was guilty of the crime.[11]

Water-ordeal. Engraving, 17th century.

Trial by ordeal mostly took place in a church because it was believed that God could watch over and decide if they were innocent.

A

Cold water

The ordeal of cold water has a precedent in the Code of Ur-Nammu and the Code of Hammurabi, under which a man accused of sorcery was to be submerged in a stream and acquitted if he survived. The practice was also set out in Frankish law but was abolished by Louis the Pious in 829. The practice reappeared in the Late Middle Ages: in the Dreieicher Wildbann of 1338, a man accused of poaching was to be submerged in a barrel three times and to be considered innocent if he sank, and guilty if he floated.

Witch-hunts

Ordeal by water was later associated with the witch-hunts of the 16th and 17th centuries, although in this scenario the outcome was an accused who sank was considered innocent, while floating indicated witchcraft. Demonologists developed inventive new theories about how it worked. The ordeal would normally be conducted with a rope holding the subject connected to assistants sitting in a boat or the like, so that the person being tested could be pulled in if he/she did not float; the notion that the ordeal was flatly devised as a situation without any possibility of live acquittal, even if the outcome was ‘innocent’, is a modern exaggeration. Some argued that witches floated because they had renounced baptism when entering the Devil’s service. Jacob Rickius claimed that they were supernaturally light and recommended weighing them as an alternative to dunking them; this procedure and its status as an alternative to dunking were parodied in the 1975 British film Monty Python and the Holy Grail.[12] King James VI of Scotland (later also James I of England) claimed in his Daemonologie that water was so pure an element that it repelled the guilty. A witch trial including this ordeal took place in Szeged, Hungary as late as 1728.[13] The ordeal of water is also contemplated by the Vishnu Smrti,[14] which is one of the texts of the Dharmaśāstra.[14]

By cross

The ordeal of the cross was apparently introduced in the Early Middle Ages in an attempt to discourage judicial duels among Germanic peoples. As with judicial duels, and unlike most other ordeals, the accuser had to undergo the ordeal together with the accused. They stood on either side of a cross and stretched out their hands horizontally. The one to first lower his arms lost. This ordeal was prescribed by Charlemagne in 779 and again in 806. A capitulary of Louis the Pious in 819[15] and a decree of Lothar I, recorded in 876, abolished the ordeal so as to avoid the mockery of Christ.

By ingestion

Main article: Corsned

Franconian law prescribed that an accused was to be given dry bread and cheese blessed by a priest. If he choked on the food, he was considered guilty. This was transformed into the ordeal of the Eucharist (trial by sacrament) mentioned by Regino of Prüm ca. 900:AD; the accused was to take the oath of innocence. It was believed that if the oath had been false, the person would die within the same year.

Both versions are essentially the opposite of ordeals, as they rely on the guilty parties’ self-incrimination, while providing what amounts to a presumption of innocence. They are designed to be harmless and merciful. For how it was used in Anglo-Saxon England, see Corsned.

Numbers 5:12–27 prescribes that a woman suspected of adultery—one called a Sotah in later commentaries—should be made to swallow “the bitter water that causeth the curse” by the priest in order to determine her guilt. The accused would be condemned only if ‘her belly shall swell and her thigh shall rot’. One writer has recently argued that the procedure has a rational basis, envisioning punishment only upon clear proof of pregnancy (a swelling belly) or venereal disease (a rotting thigh).[16]

By poison

A 19th-century artist’s depiction of the tangena ordeal in Madagascar

Some cultures, such as the Efik Uburutu people of present-day Nigeria, would administer the poisonous Calabar bean (Physostigma venenosum; known as esere in Efik) in an attempt to detect guilt. A defendant who vomited up the bean was innocent. A defendant who became ill or died was considered guilty.[17]

Residents of Madagascar could accuse one another of various crimes, including theft, Christianity, and especially witchcraft, for which the ordeal of tangena was routinely obligatory. In the 1820s, ingestion of the poisonous nut caused about 1,000 deaths annually. This average rose to around 3,000 annual deaths between 1828 and 1861.[18]

In early modern Europe, the Mass was unofficially used as a form of poison ordeal: a suspected party was forced to take the Eucharist on the grounds that, if he was guilty, he would be eternally damned, and hence his willingness to take the test would give an indication of his guilt.[19]

By boiling oil

Trial by boiling oil has been practiced in villages in certain parts of West Africa, such as Togo.[20] There are two main alternatives of this trial. In one version, the accused parties are ordered to retrieve an item from a container of boiling oil, with those who refuse the task being found guilty.[21] In the other version of the trial, both the accused and the accuser have to retrieve an item from boiling oil, with the person or persons whose hand remains unscathed being declared innocent.[20]

The ordeals of fire and water in England likely have their origin in Frankish tradition, as the earliest mention of the ordeal of the cauldron is in the first recension of the Salic Law in 510.[23] Trial by cauldron was an ancient Frankish custom used against both freedmen and slaves in cases of theft, false witness and contempt of court, where the accused was made to plunge his right hand into a boiling cauldron and pull out a ring.

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5
Q

CARD # 5: Triple Ordeal:

untrustworthy men were to be sent to the triple ordeal, that is, an ordeal of hot iron where the iron is three times heavier than that used in the simple ordeal, unless his lord and two other knights swear that he has not been accused of a crime recently, in which case he would be sent to an ordinary ordeal of hot iron.[32]

A

Blank

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6
Q

CARD #6: WITCH HUNTS, TORTURE AND CRUSADES

REF: Christianity is not great: How faith fails

Witch mania in Europe was the most persistent and wide-spread instance of extraordinary social behavior in human history.

Witch hunts were an infliction of horrific cruelties over a period of three centuries, lead by the Christian church and overflowing into different governments. The witch culture against which the Christian Church took up arms was an artificial construct created by their theologians.

The killing of thousands of supposed witches over the course of hundreds of years by Christians, both Catholic and Protestant is egregious. A perfectly good, all knowing, all powerful God would surely not allow the Christian Church as an institution to torture and kill so many innocent people for being witches.

The Biblical texts inspired the early modern European witch hunts, roughly from 1450-1750. The Salem, Massachusetts witch trials 1692-1693, and the witch beatings and burnings currently taking place in Sub-Saharan Africa today.

Between 45,000 and 60,000 people, mostly women, were killed as witches in Europe.

Witches were blamed for many things, namely the Black Death, which killed around 100 million people between 1348-1350. People did not know anything about germs and diseases, so they blamed everything on the black-magic spells cast by witches.

[Think about this] Tens of thousands of innocent people, mostly women, suffered intensely and were killed needlessly because this God didn’t do anything to help them.

President Trump on his state of the union address 2018 pointed to the motto “In God we trust”,** in the senate chamber and stated, “This is our protection”. Two weeks later the 17 students were gunned down in Florida’s “Douglas High School”. **[MN: When are people going to realize there is no protection from any God or supernatural forces to protect us.]

A

More about Ordeal trials:

In 13th century Europe, the accuser must prove the accused is guilty before a judge. If they could not prove it then the court would look to some sign from God. The most common method was trial by ordeal. The accused would carry a very hot iron or be forced to stick one’s hand in very hot water, then, after a few days, the accused would be declared innocent if God had healed the hand.

Accused people could also be tied up and cast into water. If they sank they were innocent, but if they floated they would be guilty. Some innocent people drowned from this, of course.

Accused people could also be forced to swallow a big morsel of food in one gulp. If they did not choke, they were innocent.

Or they might have a duel challenge. The winner of the contest would be judged correct in the court. [MN: This was the kangeroo courts of the earlier centuries.]

May 15, 1252, Pope Innocent IV authorized inquisitors to use torture against heretics. Almost everyone tortured confessed to any crimes to stop the torture, even though they were completely innocent.

One 16th century witch, Maria Hollin from Germany, refused to confess to witchcraft, even after having endured 56 torture sessions over an 11 month period, so they were forced to release her.

The Strappado was the most common method of torture. A victim’s hands would be tied behind the back and hoisted up using a pulley system. The victim would then be left hanging in excruciating pain while being interrogated. Meanwhile, torturers would jerk the ropes on occasion. Sometimes the torturer would hang various weights to the victim’s feet to add to the pain.

Sleep deprivation was one of the most effective bloodless tortures. Keeping victims awake for extended days at a time rendered them open to suggestion by the interrogators, who used leading questions.

The “Judas Cradle” was a tall, thin stool with a pointed wooden or metal pyramid on top. The victim would be stripped and suspended above it, then lowered onto it, making the pyramid enter the vagina or anus, or crush the scrotum. Victims could be dropped onto it, and weights could be hung from their legs.

The Pear of Anguish, was a pear shaped device inserted into the vagina for women or the anus for men. It had four metal leaves that spread open from each other as the torturer turned the screw at the bottom.

Then there was the breast ripper.

A four clawed device that would usually be heated. The torturer would then use it to rip off a woman’s breast.

There was the witch’s chair that had hundreds of sharp spikes lining the back, seat, and arm and leg rests. The victim is strapped tightly into it. Usually the chair was heated by a fire below.

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7
Q

CARD # 7: TORTURE

The most extreme tortures killed their victims. They tied the victim’s limbs to the wheel spokes, then slowly turning it while the torturer smashed the victim’s limbs with an iron hammer.

Impalement was a method of torture where a sharp pole was pushed up from the vagina or anus though the body of a victim.

The ultimate torture was burning at the stake while the victim was still alive.

Johannes Junius, the mayor of Bamberg, Germany was being tortured without confessing, his torturer said to him: “I beg you confess something, for you cannot endure the torture which you will be put to.” He was subsequently burned at the stake after deciding to confess.

The Pappenheimer family in Bavaria, Germany in 1600 is one of the most horrific cases ever recorded. They confess under torture that they had flown on broomsticks to the witches’ Sabbath, had sex with the devil and used magic potions that caused storm, then cannibalized the corpses, and committed many robberies, arsons, and murders.

A

On July 29, 1600 thousands came to witness their executions. The executioners ripped at Paul and Anna’s flesh with red hot pincers and cut off both of Anna’s breasts. Then they rubbed them in her face and the face of her two oldest sons. Paul was impaled, and they were all tied to stakes and burned alive. The youngest boy was forced to witness this and later he was also burned at the stake.

It was better to confess and die rather than suffer the tortures and die anyway. One thing we know is that none of these confessions were true, since there is no supernatural reality that lies behind them.

One can only wonder why God had to wait while thousands were brutally tortured and killed.

Note that all these stated above were not done by atheists. They were being done by the Christian Church.

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8
Q
A
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