Woman burned alive for 'sorcery' in Papua New Guinea

[Drich]

What I'm saying is that yes, there are biblical literalists out there who disagree with you that the old testament has nothing for them.

4th time who are they?

There are also varying degrees of this; churches that follow some of the old testament without following all of it. Seventh Day Adventists and Southern Baptists do this. It's not a matter of cartoonish extremes; your religion is one of immense subtlety, in terms of who and what its adherents decide to follow.

So it is your belief that the churches mention burn witches? Wrong, who else you got?

Let me put it this way: there are 30,000 different christian denominations. When they die, the followers of 29,999 of those are going to be shocked to find they haven't been worshipping exactly the right god, at a minimum. What basis do you have to believe that you're a part of the one group who got it right?

We are talking about burning witches red herring monger, Not about what day christians goto church.

Again show me a Christ centered Chruch that worships the God of the bible by burning witches.

This is one of those things you have to prove. You say that, but at the same time you have religious leaders even in America calling for gay people to be put to death, something that probably falls under this "don't murder" rule you're clinging to here. Just do a search for Curtis Knapp: here's a guy whose message is completely contradicting your own, but he's able to provide scriptural bases for it.

Show me one that does. Show me a church that fires up an alter and burns gays.

And there were christians not that long ago who murdered witches in Salem. Why were they wrong and you right? What makes your position correct?

Again Acts 8. We are the New Testament Chruch and it is by this covenant that our church was established. (Acts 8 and Peter's example sets the example for all Christian Chruches) If the Salem Church was following the OT example then quite logically they were not a NT Church were they? Then by Defination they were NOT a Christian Church! As Christ was not apart of the OT 'church' was He?

You can spin the bible so it's for any position you care to mention; my question to you is, why is your interpretation correct? So far, all you've done is assert that it is, over and over. Prove it.

Proof what does this proof look like?

I am saying the NT Repersents Christianity, and the OT repersents Judaism. The bible is the proof of that. Read the bible! Show me some thing that says the NT does not repersent Christianity. Show me that I am wrong. IF That is your assertion now you proove it!

Except the ones that did, historically. You can't say it's impossible when it did literally happen. Besides which, my point here is that the burden of proof is on you in terms of your scriptural interpretations. Why are you correct to begin with?

There is no interpertation here. The instructions on how to deal with witches are Found in Acts 8.. What are you even talking about?

Beyond that, here you go: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/10/18...24943.html

Proof enough for you?

No. It's not. The preacher supposedly identified the boy as a witch. that ends the church involvement. Everything else that happened to the boy was on his father.
Was there a church held cermony? Are their any biblical examples of what the father did to the boys?? No! The Father did what he did out of his own ignorance and fear. Where will this man's heart be when he reads acts 8, and our instructions on how to deal with suspected witches? how will he reconcile the gap between what he did and what the bible teaches?

Okay, you've stated your original position again. Good. Now, can you please prove it, finally?

Yes in the fact out of 30,000 different denominations of the church there are no church that activly burn witches as a means of worship or as an obligation to 'god.'
Even in the two cases discussed here in this thread Neither witch burnings happened as a command handed down to through the offical church. These were events that happened to people outside of the church.

Does this mean those in that church did not share in the blood spilled? absolutly not. But even so the leadership that spawned these witch hunts, did so outside the authority of the church because they knew these were not sanctioned acts. Otherwise why not do it on saturday or sunday mornings like they did in salem?

Where do you draw the line? When does a "ceremonial difference" become a "branch difference?" Let me guess, you're the one who decides that? You're just ignoring the evidence because it doesn't suit your purposes.

where do we draw the line? HOW ABOUT BURNING PEOPLE, I hope for your sake you are truly not this dense. I established this like 10 posts ago. When denominational differences was first brought up. The differences/divisions in the church are cermonial/doctrinal. (when/how to worship) What is known as the 'moral law'

The direct Thou shalt nots of the New testament are seldomly disputed amongest bible centered churches Their will always be some, but Even so There are No 'christian/bible centered Churches that burn people for witch craft as a means/obligation of worship.

Not really, because like I've said, not everyone agrees with you. Sometimes the text is spun a different way.

again no spinning here. Because there are no bible centered churches that burn witches. Otherwise prove me wrong or admit your arguement fails.

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Book chapter and verse.

Why would there be a book chapter and verse explicityly defining "sorcerer" in the bible?

In the bible, magic is real. We have:

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Acts 8:9
Simon the Sorcerer

9 Now for some time a man named Simon had practiced sorcery in the city and amazed all the people of Samaria. He boasted that he was someone great,

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Acts 16:16

Paul and Silas in Prison

16 Once when we were going to the place of prayer, we were met by a female slave who had a spirit by which she predicted the future. She earned a great deal of money for her owners by fortune-telling.

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Exodus 7:10-11

10 So Moses and Aaron went to Pharaoh and did just as the Lord commanded. Aaron threw his staff down in front of Pharaoh and his officials, and it became a snake. 11 Pharaoh then summoned wise men and sorcerers, and the Egyptian magicians also did the same things by their secret arts:

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Exodus 8:6-7

6 So Aaron stretched out his hand over the waters of Egypt, and the frogs came up and covered the land. 7 But the magicians did the same things by their secret arts; they also made frogs come up on the land of Egypt.

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How can you call yourself a sorcerer if you can't at least make frogs come out of the ground? They're obviously not True Witches™.

...but seriously, though, where did all of these magical powers go? My original thread on the topic never reached an answer...

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You have failed to show me one. you have pointed to cermonial differences but you have not once named a single branch of biblically based Christianity who has adopted a witch burning doctrine.

Adopted? Thay just never got rid of the old one...

Actually there is. there are a couple of stories that identifies sourcerers/witches and tells of their 'power.'

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I am not insisting on a damned thing from a fictional character. That would be like me expecting Superman to save me. You don't expect anything from Mickey Mouse do you? You don't demand that Harry Potter buy you a broom do you?

I am talking about YOU and your absurd logic, in the same ignorance that kept me believing for so long. I am talking about the bad use of logic that leads humans to make up gods and swallow what sounds pretty to them.

Meh, Meh...

[Darkstar]

Why would there be a book chapter and verse explicityly defining "sorcerer" in the bible?

In the bible, magic is real. We haveHow can you call yourself a sorcerer if you can't at least make frogs come out of the ground? They're obviously not True Witches™.

...but seriously, though, where did all of these magical powers go? My original thread on the topic never reached an answer...

Actually there is. there are a couple of stories that identifies sourcerers/witches and tells of their 'power.'

So, wait, you're agreeing with me that you need magical powers to be a real witch?

[Esquilax]

Drich, I wish to apologize: I didn't realize I was dealing with someone who is insane/mentally challenged/otherwise defective. I thought I was dealing with a completely conscious human being, but it's become apparent I've actually been talking to some kind of sponge with a bible lodged in it.

I refuse to believe that a fully functional human being could be this dense and idiotic on their own. You couldn't have missed the point of any one of my salient arguments more if you tried. I've come to believe, in fact, that you don't have a consistent viewpoint at all, because nothing in your inane and pathetic ramblings even hints at one, beyond "durr, bible good!"

So fuck off. I'm done with you. And I don't usually do this, but I'm willing to call this debate in favor of me, by dint of the fact that I was the only one here actually thinking before he spoke. Try developing a working brain, and then we might talk.

[Brian37]

Meh nothing, you have no evidence for your invisible friend. Keep deluding yourself but there is no such thing as invisible friends, not yours not theirs not any. It is merely a product of your own self inflicted delusion.

And there are no such thing as witches, and that poor woman was murdered because believers thought she was. Otherwise if they didn't believe witches existed they would not have murdered her.

AND churches do not have alters where they murder gays,(mainly because secular law wont let modern churches practice the same barbarity they did in the past). The dark ages had plenty of churches where all sorts of accusations of "evil" from demons, to illness, to being accused of being a witch to using sorcery, to blasphemy to disobeying the church, all those things could get you murdered by the church. And I am quite sure there were countless gays murdered back then, just like White Christian slave owners had the legal right to murder a slave if they tried to escape.

And I am quite sure the gays and transgendered people here can tell you about the abuse they go through and the bigotry they face all the time. They risk getting beaten up, ostracized by their families, the community and get fired or lose their housing, all the time, even today.

Religious murder goes on all over the world because people buy stupid ancient myths and superstitions and use that crap to justify harm to others. In Iran the government denies the existence of gays, like fucking idiots, but mass media has allowed pictures of gays being murdered by mobs in public under watch of their government. They murder in the name of religion too. But you are bat shit insane to say Christianity has always been, and still is not today, civil. Christianity in the west is forced to be civil, it did not become civil on its own.

[Drich]

Actually there is. there are a couple of stories that identifies sourcerers/witches and tells of their 'power.'

So, wait, you're agreeing with me that you need magical powers to be a real witch?

why do you assume the passages I mention in the bible (ones you did not even know about) agree with your assessment of what a witch is?

[Darkstar]

So, wait, you're agreeing with me that you need magical powers to be a real witch?

why do you assume the passages I mention in the bible (ones you did not even know about) agree with your assessment of what a witch is?

I don't know if they do or don't, and maybe the sign that you didn't show me these passages isn't indicative of their being against your agrument but more of you not tending to present such things.

Let's see what google has to say about your missing passage:
http://bible.cc/exodus/22-18.htm

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Clarke's Commentary on the Bible
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live - If there had been no witches, such a law as this had never been made. The existence of the law, given under the direction of the Spirit of God, proves the existence of the thing. It has been doubted whether מכשפה mecash-shephah, which we translate witch, really means a person who practiced divination or sorcery by spiritual or infernal agency. Whether the persons thus denominated only pretended to have an art which had no existence, or whether they really possessed the power commonly attributed to them, are questions which it would be improper to discuss at length in a work of this kind; but that witches, wizards, those who dealt with familiar spirits, etc., are represented in the sacred writings as actually possessing a power to evoke the dead, to perform, supernatural operations, and to discover hidden or secret things by spells, charms, incantations, etc., is evident to every unprejudiced reader of the Bible.

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Gill's Exposition of the entire Bible
Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. Such that had familiar spirits, and conversed with them, and by means thereof got knowledge of many things relating to persons, at least pretending they did; and who did or seemed to do many strange and surprising feats, as even to raise the spirits of departed persons, to converse with them and gain knowledge by them, though in reality they did not, and could not do such things, but used some juggling tricks to deceive the people, and in which they might be assisted by evil spirits

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Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live;" witchcraft being, on the one hand, "the vilest way of injuring a neighbour in his property, or even in his body and life" (Ranke), whilst, on the other hand, employment of powers of darkness for the purpose of injuring a neighbour was a practical denial of the divine vocation of Israel, as well as of Jehovah the Holy One of Israel. The witch is mentioned instead of the wizard, "not because witchcraft was not to be punished in the case of men, but because the female sex was more addicted to this crime" (Calovius). תחיּה לא (shalt not suffer to live) is chosen instead of the ordinary יוּמת מות (shall surely die), which is used in Leviticus 20:27 of wizards also, not "because the lawgiver intended that the Hebrew witch should be put to death in any case, and the foreigner only if she would not go when she was banished" (Knobel), but because every Hebrew witch was not to be put to death, but regard was to be had to the fact that witchcraft is often nothing but jugglery, and only those witches were to be put to death who would not give up their witchcraft when it was forbidden.

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Wesley's Notes
22:18 Witchcraft not only gives that honour to the devil which is due to God alone, but bids defiance to the divine providence, wages war with God's government, puts his work into the devil's hand expecting him to do good and evil. By our law, consulting, covenanting with, invocating or employing any evil spirit to any intent whatever, and exercising any enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby hurt shall be done to any person, is made felony, without benefit of clergy; also pretending to tell where goods lost or stolen may be found, is an iniquity punishable by the judge, and the second offence with death. This was the case in former times. But we are wiser than our fore - fathers. We believe, no witch ever did live! At least, not for these thousand years.

---

Now, which of these os the True Christian™ interpretation?

[Drich]

Drich, I wish to apologize: I didn't realize I was dealing with someone who is insane/mentally challenged/otherwise defective. I thought I was dealing with a completely conscious human being, but it's become apparent I've actually been talking to some kind of sponge with a bible lodged in it.

I refuse to believe that a fully functional human being could be this dense and idiotic on their own. You couldn't have missed the point of any one of my salient arguments more if you tried. I've come to believe, in fact, that you don't have a consistent viewpoint at all, because nothing in your inane and pathetic ramblings even hints at one, beyond "durr, bible good!"

So fuck off. I'm done with you. And I don't usually do this, but I'm willing to call this debate in favor of me, by dint of the fact that I was the only one here actually thinking before he spoke. Try developing a working brain, and then we might talk.

Your position:
I can't possiable repersent the whole Christianity, because you believe thier are so many versions of it correct?

This is not what this thread is about. Look at the title again. It about burning witches.

Now if you believe that I can not repersent the whole of Christianity and that some churches are activly burning witches as a form of worship to the God of the bible then it is on you to provide proof that there are churches that activly do this. Other wise know your whole arguement is invalid.

Why?

Because again we are not talking about whether christians are to worship on saturday or sunday, whether or not christians are to celibrate christmas, or whether or not we have musical instruments in our worship services. Or even whether or not gay preachers should be allow. We are Specifically talking about Burning people or even killing them for practicing witchcraft. I told you out of 30,000 some odd churches not one incoperates a witch burning cermony in it's corperate/offical worship model.

If you say otherwise, it is on your to provide PROOF.

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why do you assume the passages I mention in the bible (ones you did not even know about) agree with your assessment of what a witch is?

I don't know if they do or don't, and maybe the sign that you didn't show me these passages isn't indicative of their being against your agrument but more of you not tending to present such things.

Let's see what google has to say about your missing passage:
http://bible.cc/exodus/22-18.htm

---

Clarke's Commentary on the Bible
Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live - If there had been no witches, such a law as this had never been made. The existence of the law, given under the direction of the Spirit of God, proves the existence of the thing. It has been doubted whether מכשפה mecash-shephah, which we translate witch, really means a person who practiced divination or sorcery by spiritual or infernal agency. Whether the persons thus denominated only pretended to have an art which had no existence, or whether they really possessed the power commonly attributed to them, are questions which it would be improper to discuss at length in a work of this kind; but that witches, wizards, those who dealt with familiar spirits, etc., are represented in the sacred writings as actually possessing a power to evoke the dead, to perform, supernatural operations, and to discover hidden or secret things by spells, charms, incantations, etc., is evident to every unprejudiced reader of the Bible.

---

Gill's Exposition of the entire Bible
Thou shall not suffer a witch to live. Such that had familiar spirits, and conversed with them, and by means thereof got knowledge of many things relating to persons, at least pretending they did; and who did or seemed to do many strange and surprising feats, as even to raise the spirits of departed persons, to converse with them and gain knowledge by them, though in reality they did not, and could not do such things, but used some juggling tricks to deceive the people, and in which they might be assisted by evil spirits

---

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament
"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live;" witchcraft being, on the one hand, "the vilest way of injuring a neighbour in his property, or even in his body and life" (Ranke), whilst, on the other hand, employment of powers of darkness for the purpose of injuring a neighbour was a practical denial of the divine vocation of Israel, as well as of Jehovah the Holy One of Israel. The witch is mentioned instead of the wizard, "not because witchcraft was not to be punished in the case of men, but because the female sex was more addicted to this crime" (Calovius). תחיּה לא (shalt not suffer to live) is chosen instead of the ordinary יוּמת מות (shall surely die), which is used in Leviticus 20:27 of wizards also, not "because the lawgiver intended that the Hebrew witch should be put to death in any case, and the foreigner only if she would not go when she was banished" (Knobel), but because every Hebrew witch was not to be put to death, but regard was to be had to the fact that witchcraft is often nothing but jugglery, and only those witches were to be put to death who would not give up their witchcraft when it was forbidden.

---

Wesley's Notes
22:18 Witchcraft not only gives that honour to the devil which is due to God alone, but bids defiance to the divine providence, wages war with God's government, puts his work into the devil's hand expecting him to do good and evil. By our law, consulting, covenanting with, invocating or employing any evil spirit to any intent whatever, and exercising any enchantment, charm, or sorcery, whereby hurt shall be done to any person, is made felony, without benefit of clergy; also pretending to tell where goods lost or stolen may be found, is an iniquity punishable by the judge, and the second offence with death. This was the case in former times. But we are wiser than our fore - fathers. We believe, no witch ever did live! At least, not for these thousand years.

---

Now, which of these os the True Christian™ interpretation?

weren't we just talking about what the biblical definations were for a witch or sorcerer? What do your commentaries have to do with anything?

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Meh nothing, you have no evidence for your invisible friend.

But I do have evidence that I do not lable all who disagree with me as a bigot. If you remember 3 or 4 posts back that is what started all of this. Again I do not consider you a religious bigot simply because your beliefs and how you approach theology are benign at best.

The last 3 or 4 posts were just meant to prove that point.

[Brian37]

Drich, don't use the word bigot at all, I don't give one fuck how you define it. You use it to try to prop us up as the bad guys. You do that because you don't want to look in the mirror at your own claims. So you use a loaded word in order to demonize us.

And you STILL have no evidence for your invisible friend. You have a naked assertion, nothing more.

---

Drich, I wish to apologize: I didn't realize I was dealing with someone who is insane/mentally challenged/otherwise defective. I thought I was dealing with a completely conscious human being, but it's become apparent I've actually been talking to some kind of sponge with a bible lodged in it.

I refuse to believe that a fully functional human being could be this dense and idiotic on their own. You couldn't have missed the point of any one of my salient arguments more if you tried. I've come to believe, in fact, that you don't have a consistent viewpoint at all, because nothing in your inane and pathetic ramblings even hints at one, beyond "durr, bible good!"

So fuck off. I'm done with you. And I don't usually do this, but I'm willing to call this debate in favor of me, by dint of the fact that I was the only one here actually thinking before he spoke. Try developing a working brain, and then we might talk.

No no no no, don't write Drich off. The more theists with these horrible arguments display them, the more others can see for themselves how bad the arguments are. It is useful because those who have doubts or those on the fence can see how bad the logic is so they themselves don't get sucked into it like Drich has.

I have been at this for 12 years and I have seen the same skunky arguments repackaged over and over. It seems tiresome but this is long term and not about one person.

I have seen the change the long term can do when you don't let up. I have seen many people leave religion over the years. I know of people who used to be leaders of churches.

It may not change Drich, but it can act as a prevention for others and it can pull people out who have doubts. My own younger sister used to be uber right wing and now she is an atheist. And like me, many others here, maybe not all, got out because of others questioning us.

Drich is exasperating, but so is anyone who has woo or a superstition. I've dealt with crop circle nuts, little green men nuts, Muslims who claim the Koran is scientific, Jews who claim their books are scientific, and even atheists who postulate pantheism and the transporter from Star Trek being a possibility. Mayan crap, you name it, I have dealt with it.

Drich serves a purpose to our advantage.

[Drich]

Drich, don't use the word bigot at all, I don't give one fuck how you define it.

So dictionaries are off limits, even though the actual defination is being played out before me?

You use it to try to prop us up as the bad guys.

Again not "us" Just One person specifically, and then I questions the motives of another because 'she?' wa using the same tatics. You are desperatly tring to make it about 'us' but as I have definativly proven, with your assistance, that 'all of you' do not share the same closed minded/unwilling to acknoweledge proven fact, even if it is demonstrated over and over again.

Which again, is the text book example of the word bigot.

You do that because you don't want to look in the mirror at your own claims. So you use a loaded word in order to demonize us.

Again you were not demonized. You were dismissed as a nuessance. There was only one person being demonized by his very own word thoughts and deeds. I simply pointed out that his efforts reflected the actions of a bigot.

And you STILL have no evidence for your invisible friend. You have a naked assertion, nothing more.

Which is why you can't be taken seriously.

You have been told where to find your 'proof' and yet you will not do anything to seek it out.

Another way of putting it is I do not have any proof of dionsaurs, but i can provide you with an address of a museum with dinosaurs in it or provide you with a web site that talks about them, but in the end I personaly do not have any proof out side of what i read on those websites or what I personally experienced in a museum.

Like wise I have no 'proof' of God other than what I have experienced and what I have read. If you want to read something I can provide that if you want to experience something i can tell you how to prepare yourself to do that. The rest is between you and God.

[Brian37]

Drich, don't use the word bigot at all, I don't give one fuck how you define it.

So dictionaries are off limits, even though the actual defination is being played out before me?

You use it to try to prop us up as the bad guys.

Again not "us" Just One person specifically, and then I questions the motives of another because 'she?' wa using the same tatics. You are desperatly tring to make it about 'us' but as I have definativly proven, with your assistance, that 'all of you' do not share the same closed minded/unwilling to acknoweledge proven fact, even if it is demonstrated over and over again.

Which again, is the text book example of the word bigot.

You do that because you don't want to look in the mirror at your own claims. So you use a loaded word in order to demonize us.

Again you were not demonized. You were dismissed as a nuessance. There was only one person being demonized by his very own word thoughts and deeds. I simply pointed out that his efforts reflected the actions of a bigot.

And you STILL have no evidence for your invisible friend. You have a naked assertion, nothing more.

Which is why you can't be taken seriously.

You have been told where to find your 'proof' and yet you will not do anything to seek it out.

Another way of putting it is I do not have any proof of dionsaurs, but i can provide you with an address of a museum with dinosaurs in it or provide you with a web site that talks about them, but in the end I personaly do not have any proof out side of what i read on those websites or what I personally experienced in a museum.

Like wise I have no 'proof' of God other than what I have experienced and what I have read. If you want to read something I can provide that if you want to experience something i can tell you how to prepare yourself to do that. The rest is between you and God.

Stop it, you know damned well why you used the word "bigot" so stop fucking lying.

Now cut the fucking crap. You ultimately have a pet invisible friend claim. So even before you get to one word of whatever fucking long winded claptrap you still are starting with an unproven naked assertion.

Here is how your logic works.

(Pull shit out of your ass)<=make up an elaborate formula(pull more shit out of your ass)<=coinciding outcome magically meeting your own personal desires.

Take a number, the Ancient Egyptians concocted the shitty claim that the sun was a magical being. The Nordics concocted Thor as their naked assertion starting point. Muslims concocted Allah as their naked assertion starting point.

Hindus have their concocted gods. Shintoists have their concocted gods. Mormons have their concocted crap.

All you have is a naked assertion and I see no fucking purpose in wading in your garbage anymore than I would consider the earth to be flat now that science knows better.