When will the Middle East become majority Atheist?

[abaris]

You can read the argument for yourself, in The Demon-Haunted World..

By the way, are you an academic historian? Just curious.

Today's serious and reasearch based estimates speak of a number between 25.000 to 60.000 vicitims throughout Europe between the years 1400 and 1700. In 1701 the last "witch" had been burned on German soil. There's also the higher number of 100.000 floating around, but this estimate is considered incredible when looking at the sources. Europe around the year 1500 is estimated to have had 81 million inhabitants.

It's not the sheer numbers that make this madness, it's that superstition was the official position of certain reigns. Superstition that could get you killed if some neighbour had so much as grudge against you. Once someone was in the machinery, it was next to impossible to escape the inevitable. People were tortured and the burden of proof was reverted. Also the witch trials had a very secular incentive, since the property of the condemned usually fell to the prosecutors.

This is according to the book "Hexen und Hexenprozesse" (Witches and witch trials) edited by Wolfgang Behringer.