Science; The Original Witchcraft

Religious topics are always complicated, and the resulting discussions often get heated and ugly. In light of the first fact, I'm only going to lightly touch on this topic, as narrowly as possible, and then hope that readers will confirm what I say as true for themselves. In light of the second fact mentioned, I may not respond to all responses in the comments.

Most Christians and Jews I know are otherwise wonderful, productive, loving people. Same goes for several of my Muslim friends. I've met good and bad folks from all walks of life.

This topic isn't to attack followers. I'm here to discuss the origins of the various religions. I can only speak to Christianity and Judaism since I do not have enough experience with the idiocy and ignorance of Islam to address that religion's silly little book of weird tales. (One set of dogmatic beliefs at a time, please, but let's all be clear: The founders and pushers of Islam are equally guilty. All religions are the enemy of knowledge and the understanding of objective reality.)

Way back in the days of old, when false allegations of "witchery" were spread by the "Holy" Roman Catholic Church against their enemies (anyone who didn't fall in line with their dogma), those targets were comprised of two main groups, (1) Those people who practiced any religion other than Christianity (specifically Catholicism) and (2) those who tried to advance human knowledge of the cosmos around us - which usually meant contradicting the stories in the Bible.

That first group was easy enough to handle. All that was needed was absorption or eradication. For example, the festivals of Saturnalia, Passover and Samhain were usurped by the church and renamed Christmas, Easter and Halloween, respectively.

Other religions were a relatively easy obstacle for the various church leaders to overcome through history. It was simple for the church to convince primitive people to fear their magic (translation: gangs of armed thugs) over the magic of their forefathers. Those who did not convert were often brutally slaughtered, or at least branded as "witches." These tactics brought the church both more celebrants and of course, more money.

The biggest obstacles for the advancement of any religion though, has always been science. Superstition tends to wither in the light of knowledge. This was unacceptable to various religions throughout history, so a campaign of propaganda to vilify anyone attempting to promote information which contradicted the myths and fables of any particular "holy writ" - which ultimately lined the pockets of religious leaders - was implemented.

For example, if readers will look into the origins of the words of the Judeo-Christian guidebook, they'll see that one of the original words from the ancient Greek for witchcraft was "pharmakeia." While the word's usage occurs three times in the "New Testament," readers must know that those authors were referencing beliefs, customs and traditions already in existence at the time. What is the practice of the ancient apothecary, if not the empirical process of determining what medicines work on what conditions, if not science, after all?

Even as far back as the book of Genesis, the mythical talking serpent's great crime was allegedly to have introduced mankind to knowledge (Genesis 2:15 and Genesis 3:1-6). The presumption here is that knowledge itself is evil. So dependent on the masses remaining ignorant of reality are religious leaders that, the Bible may be nothing more than a reverse-engineered set of propaganda fables, to keep people afraid of questioning dogma and/or church decrees.

All we really know about that book is what its promoters say about it (and what archeology contradicts). This is not to let the religious leaders of the ancient Hebrews off the hook. They did, after all, start this nonsense of attacking knowledge. Remember my referencing the book of Genesis in the previous paragraph? Yup. That was the first book of the Pentateuch. The ancient Jewish religion bears as much responsibility for holding back humanity's advance as any other religion does. Let's be fair.

Humanity, morality and reality have existed long before the inventions of any religious texts. And while the increase of human knowledge has provided mankind with more food, comfort, security and pleasure than ever before in human history, religion tends to offer little more than fear of knowledge. Sure. Many good things are done by people in the name of religion. But let's not hold back the advancements in medical science for the sake of a book.