Making Sense - Sam Harris - #46 — The End of Faith Sessions 3

In the shadow of God, you were seized and brought before a judge. Did you create a thunderstorm and destroy the village harvest? Did you kill your neighbor with the evil eye? Do you doubt that Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist? You will soon learn that questions of this sort admit of no exculpatory reply. You are not told the names of your accusers, but their identities are of little account. For even if they were to recant their charges against you, they would merely be punished as false witnesses, while their original accusations would retain their full weight as evidence of your guilt. The machinery of justice has been so well-oiled by faith that it can no longer be influenced. But you have a choice, of sorts: You can concede your guilt and name your accomplices. No confession will be accepted unless other men and women can be implicated in your crimes. Or you can maintain your innocence, which is almost certainly the truth. You now face punishment proportionate to the severity of your crimes: flogging, a pilgrimage on foot to the Holy Land, forfeiture of property, or a period of long imprisonment, or, more likely, a time of imprisonment, probably for life. In the interest of saving your soul, you may be imprisoned in total darkness for months or years at a time, repeatedly beaten and starved, or stretched upon the rack. Thumbscrews may be applied, and then you can be made to confess to the truth, or you may soon be rounded up for torture... or you can keep your innocence for a time...or you can burn at the stake. And there s no doubt that you are a heretic. or you will soon be sentenced to the stake, which, in the end, may yet spare you the agony of the stake . a sentence that sores you of your soul from the pain of the stoning you ve already been inflicted by the torture you ve suffered in the light of the fire of the torch. Because the stain of heresy and you will be slowly roasted to keep you alive until you burn to death because the heat of the flame is so intense that it will burn you to a crisp and burn you for eternity. . . . If you enjoy what we're doing here, please consider becoming a member of the cult of The End of Faith? you'll need to subscribe to our private RSS feed to access full episodes of the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the Making Sense Podcast.

00:00:08.820 This is Sam Harris.

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00:00:46.600 The End of Faith, Chapter 3

00:00:48.840 In the Shadow of God

00:00:51.160 Without warning, you were seized and brought before a judge.

00:00:55.920 Did you create a thunderstorm and destroy the village harvest?

00:01:00.240 Did you kill your neighbor with the evil eye?

00:01:03.540 Do you doubt that Christ is bodily present in the Eucharist?

00:01:07.020 You will soon learn that questions of this sort admit of no exculpatory reply.

00:01:12.320 You are not told the names of your accusers, but their identities are of little account.

00:01:17.520 For even if, at this late hour, they were to recant their charges against you, they would

00:01:22.100 merely be punished as false witnesses, while their original accusations would retain their

00:01:26.660 full weight as evidence of your guilt.

00:01:29.160 The machinery of justice has been so well-oiled by faith that it can no longer be influenced.

00:01:34.980 But you have a choice, of sorts.

00:01:37.760 You can concede your guilt and name your accomplices.

00:01:41.400 Yes, you must have had accomplices.

00:01:43.840 No confession will be accepted unless other men and women can be implicated in your crimes.

00:01:48.420 Perhaps you and three acquaintances of your choosing did change into hares and consort with

00:01:54.060 the devil himself.

00:01:55.560 The sight of iron boots, designed to crush your feet, seems to refresh your memory.

00:02:01.520 Yes, Friedrich, Arthur, and Otto are sorcerers, too.

00:02:05.940 Their wives? 0.99

00:02:07.300 Witches all. 0.99

00:02:09.100 You now face punishment proportionate to the severity of your crimes. 0.99

00:02:12.720 Flogging, a pilgrimage on foot to the Holy Land, forfeiture of property, or, more likely,

00:02:19.600 a period of long imprisonment, probably for life.

00:02:23.480 Your, quote, accomplices will soon be rounded up for torture.

00:02:27.380 Or you can maintain your innocence, which is almost certainly the truth.

00:02:31.580 After all, it is a rare person who can create a thunderstorm.

00:02:35.160 In response, your jailers will be happy to lead you to the furthest reaches of human suffering,

00:02:40.060 before burning you at the stake.

00:02:41.440 You may be imprisoned in total darkness for months or years at a time, repeatedly beaten 0.97

00:02:47.780 and starved, or stretched upon the rack.

00:02:51.500 Thumbscrews may be applied, or toe screws, or a pear-shaped vice may be inserted into your 0.99

00:02:57.360 mouth, vagina, or anus, and forced open until your misery admits of no possible increase. 0.99

00:03:03.180 You may be hoisted to the ceiling on a strapato, with your arms bound behind your back and attached 1.00

00:03:08.800 to a pulley, and weights tied to your feet, dislocating your shoulders.

00:03:13.760 To this torment, squasation might be added, which, being often sufficient to cause your death,

00:03:19.140 may yet spare you the agony of the stake.

00:03:21.160 And there's an end note here describing squasation, which was essentially putting someone in the

00:03:28.840 strapato with their arms bound behind their back, and hoisting them to the ceiling on the 0.96

00:03:35.700 rope, and then dropping them and stopping them before they reach the floor so that their

00:03:41.260 arms are wrenched backwards.

00:03:43.100 No doubt breaking the shoulders and much else.

00:03:48.240 Back to the text.

00:03:50.180 If you're unlucky enough to be in Spain, where judicial torture has achieved a transcendent

00:03:55.620 level of cruelty, you may be placed in this Spanish chair, a throne of iron, complete with 1.00

00:04:01.740 iron stocks to secure your neck and limbs.

00:04:04.900 In the interest of saving your soul, a coal brassiere will be placed beneath your bare feet, 0.98

00:04:09.520 slowly roasting them.

00:04:10.600 Because the stain of heresy runs deep, your flesh will be continually larded with fat to

00:04:16.760 keep it from burning too quickly.

00:04:19.160 Or you may be bound to a bench, with a cauldron filled with mice, placed upside down upon your

00:04:24.780 bare abdomen.

00:04:26.120 With the requisite application of heat to the iron, the mice will begin to burrow into your

00:04:30.480 belly in search of an exit. 0.96

00:04:32.840 Should you, while in extremis, admit to your torturers that you are indeed a heretic, a sorcerer, 0.99

00:04:37.840 or a witch, you will be made to confirm your story before a judge, and any attempt to recant,

00:04:43.500 to claim that your confession has been coerced through torture, will deliver you either to

00:04:47.740 your tormentors once again or directly to the stake.

00:04:51.520 If, once condemned, you repent of your sins, these compassionate and learned men, whose concern

00:04:57.200 for the fate of your eternal soul really knows no bounds, will do you the kindness of

00:05:01.940 strangling you before lighting your pyre.

00:05:03.900 The medieval church was quick to observe that the good book was good enough to suggest a

00:05:08.840 variety of means for eradicating heresy, ranging from a communal volley of stones to cremation

00:05:15.240 while alive.

00:05:16.580 A literal reading of the Old Testament not only permits, but requires heretics to be put 1.00

00:05:21.360 to death. 0.75

00:05:22.380 As it turns out, it was never difficult to find a mob willing to perform this holy office,

00:05:26.780 and to do so purely on the authority of the church, since it was still a capital offense

00:05:31.420 to possess a Bible in any of the vernacular languages of Europe.

00:05:35.220 In fact, scripture was not to become generally accessible to the common man until the 16th

00:05:40.160 century.

00:05:41.040 As we noted earlier, Deuteronomy was the preeminent text in every inquisitor's canon, for it explicitly

00:05:46.960 enjoins the faithful to murder anyone in their midst, even members of their own families, 0.98

00:05:52.140 who profess a sympathy for foreign gods.

00:05:55.240 Showing a genius for totalitarianism that few mortals have ever fully implemented, the author

00:06:00.380 of this document demands that anyone too squeamish to take part in such religious killing must 0.96

00:06:05.900 be killed as well. 0.96

00:06:07.380 Deuteronomy chapter 17, verses 12 and 13.

00:06:11.620 Anyone who imagines that no justification for the Inquisition can be found in scripture

00:06:16.080 need only consult the Bible to have his view of the matter clarified.

00:06:20.340 Quote,

00:06:21.060 If you hear that in one of the towns which Yahweh your God has given you for a home, there

00:06:26.380 are men, scoundrels from your own stock, who have led their fellow citizens astray, saying,

00:06:32.600 Let us go serve other gods, hitherto unknown to you.

00:06:36.540 It is your duty to look into the matter, examine it, and inquire most carefully.

00:06:41.760 If it is proved and confirmed that such a hateful thing has taken place among you, you must put

00:06:46.740 the inhabitants of that town to the sword.

00:06:49.380 You must lay it under the curse of destruction.

00:06:51.580 The town and everything in it. 0.95

00:06:54.240 You must pile up all its loot in the public square and burn the town and all its loot,

00:06:59.920 offering it all to Yahweh your God.

00:07:02.640 It is to be a ruin for all time and never rebuilt.

00:07:06.500 Deuteronomy chapter 13, verses 12 through 16.

00:07:11.160 For obvious reasons, the church tended to ignore the final edict, the destruction of heretic 1.00

00:07:16.220 property.

00:07:16.720 In addition to demanding that we fulfill every jot and tittle of Old Testament law, Jesus

00:07:22.200 seems to have suggested in John 15, verse 6, further refinements to the practice of killing

00:07:27.240 heretics and unbelievers.

00:07:29.360 Quote,

00:07:30.080 If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is withered, and men gather 0.91

00:07:36.020 them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned.

00:07:40.080 End quote.

00:07:41.200 Whether we want to interpret Jesus metaphorically is, of course, our business.

00:07:45.080 The problem with scripture, however, is that many of its possible interpretations, including

00:07:50.820 most of the literal ones, can be used to justify atrocities in defense of the faith.

00:07:56.340 The Holy Inquisition formally began in 1184 under Pope Lucius III to crush the popular movement

00:08:02.960 of Catharism.

00:08:04.540 The Cathars, from the Greek Catharoi, quote, the pure ones, had fashioned their own brand of 0.55

00:08:10.500 Manichaeanism.

00:08:11.320 Mani himself was flayed alive at the behest of Zoroastrian priests in 276, which held that

00:08:17.860 the material world had been created by Satan and was therefore inherently evil.

00:08:22.580 The Cathars were divided by a schism of their own, and within each of their sects, by the

00:08:27.060 distinction between the renunciate Perfecti and the lay Credentes, the believers, who revered

00:08:32.640 them.

00:08:32.800 The Perfecti ate no meat, eggs, cheese, or fat, fasted for days at a time, maintained

00:08:39.740 strict celibacy, and abjured all personal wealth.

00:08:43.800 The life of the Perfecti was so austere that most Credentes only joined their ranks once 1.00

00:08:48.620 they were safely on their deathbeds, so that, having lived as they pleased, they might yet

00:08:53.260 go to God in holiness.

00:08:55.420 St. Bernard, who had tried in vain to combat this austere doctrine with that of the Church,

00:09:00.040 noted the reasons for his failure.

00:09:02.700 Quote,

00:09:03.020 As to the Cathars' conversation, nothing can be less reprehensible. 0.75

00:09:08.220 And what they speak, they prove by deeds.

00:09:11.280 As for the morals of the heretic, he cheats no one. 0.97

00:09:14.620 He oppresses no one.

00:09:16.100 He strikes no one.

00:09:17.760 His cheeks are pale with fasting.

00:09:20.060 His hands labor for his livelihood.

00:09:22.840 End quote.

00:09:23.260 There seems, in fact, to have been nothing wrong with these people, apart from their

00:09:27.260 attachment to certain unorthodox beliefs about the creation of the world.

00:09:31.680 But heresy is heresy.

00:09:33.720 Any person who believes that the Bible contains the infallible word of God will understand why

00:09:38.320 these people had to be put to death.

00:09:40.480 The Inquisition took rather genteel steps at first.

00:09:43.480 The use of torture to extract confessions was not officially sanctioned until 1215 at the

00:09:48.920 Fourth Lateran Council.

00:09:50.000 But two developments conspired to lengthen its strides.

00:09:54.240 The first came in 1199, when Pope Innocent III decreed that all property belonging to a

00:09:59.400 convicted heretic would be forfeited to the Church. 0.73

00:10:02.500 The Church then shared it with both local officials and the victim's accusers as a reward

00:10:07.280 for their candor.

00:10:08.800 The second was the rise of the Dominican Order.

00:10:11.680 St. Dominic himself, displaying the conviction of every good Catholic of the day, announced to

00:10:16.500 the Cathars, quote,

00:10:17.820 For many years I have exhorted you in vain, with gentleness, preaching, praying, weeping.

00:10:24.360 But according to the proverb of my country, where blessings can accomplish nothing, blows

00:10:29.240 may avail.

00:10:30.460 We shall rouse against you princes and prelates, who, alas, will arm nations and kingdoms against

00:10:36.060 this land.

00:10:37.680 End quote.

00:10:39.080 It would appear that sainthood comes in a variety of flavors.

00:10:41.780 With the founding of Dominic's Holy Order of Mendicant Friars, the Inquisition was ready 0.98

00:10:47.040 to begin its work in earnest.

00:10:48.960 It is important to remember, lest the general barbarity of the time inures to the horror

00:10:53.200 of these historical accounts, that the perpetrators of the Inquisition, the torturers, informers,

00:10:58.560 and those who commanded their actions, were ecclesiastics of one rank or another.

00:11:03.440 They were men of God, popes, bishops, friars, and priests.

00:11:07.280 They were men who had devoted their lives, in word if not in deed, to Christ as we find

00:11:13.320 him in the New Testament, healing the sick and challenging those without sin to cast the

00:11:17.640 first stone.

00:11:19.040 Quote,

00:11:19.540 In 1234, the canonization of St. Dominic was finally proclaimed in Toulouse, and Bishop

00:11:25.280 Raymond Dufauga was washing his hands in preparation for dinner when he heard the rumor that a fever-ridden

00:11:30.700 old woman in a nearby house was about to undergo the Cathar ritual. 0.80

00:11:34.700 The bishop hurried to her bedside and managed to convince her that he was a friend, then

00:11:39.800 interrogated her on her beliefs, then denounced her as a heretic.

00:11:44.200 He called on her to recant.

00:11:46.480 She refused.

00:11:47.900 The bishop thereupon had her bed carried out into a field, and there she was burned.

00:11:53.140 And after the bishop and the friars and their companions had seen their business completed,

00:11:57.580 Brother Guillaume wrote,

00:11:58.520 They returned to the refectory and, giving thanks to God and the blessed Dominic, ate

00:12:03.120 with rejoicing what had been prepared for them.

00:12:06.060 End quote.

00:12:07.060 The question of how the church managed to transform Jesus' principal message of loving one's neighbor

00:12:12.600 and turning the other cheek into a doctrine of murder and repine seems to promise a harrowing

00:12:18.300 mystery.

00:12:19.340 But it is no mystery at all.

00:12:20.680 Apart from the Bible's heterogeneity and outright self-contradiction, allowing it to justify

00:12:27.260 diverse and irreconcilable aims, the culprit is clearly the doctrine of faith itself.

00:12:34.100 Whenever a man imagines that he need only believe the truth of a proposition without

00:12:38.460 evidence, that unbelievers will go to hell, that Jews drink the blood of infants, he becomes 0.98

00:12:44.680 capable of anything.

00:12:45.580 The practice for which the Inquisition is duly infamous, and the innovation that secured 1.00

00:12:50.940 it a steady stream of both suspects and guilty verdicts, was its use of torture to extract

00:12:56.400 confessions from the accused, to force witnesses to testify, and to persuade a confessing heretic 0.97

00:13:01.940 to name those with whom he had collaborated in sin.

00:13:05.480 The justification for this behavior came straight from St. Augustine, who reasoned that if torture

00:13:10.580 was appropriate for those who broke the laws of men, it was even more fitting for those 1.00

00:13:14.820 who broke the laws of God.

00:13:16.780 As practiced by medieval Christians, judicial torture was merely a final mad inflection 0.97

00:13:21.740 of their faith.

00:13:23.280 That anyone imagined that facts were being elicited by such a lunatic procedure seems a

00:13:28.360 miracle in itself.

00:13:29.680 As Voltaire wrote in 1764,

00:13:32.780 There is something divine here, for it is incomprehensible that men should have patiently

00:13:37.860 borne this yoke.

00:13:39.700 End quote.

00:13:40.900 A contemporaneous account of the Spanish auto-defe, the public spectacle at which heretics were

00:13:46.220 sentenced and often burned, will serve to complete our picture.

00:13:50.020 The Spanish Inquisition did not cease its persecution of heretics until 1834, the last auto-defe took

00:13:55.860 place in Mexico in 1850, about the time Charles Darwin set sail on the Beagle, and Michael Faraday

00:14:01.660 discovered the relationship between electricity and magnetism.

00:14:04.480 The condemned are then immediately carried to the rebaria, the place of execution, where 0.96

00:14:11.280 there are as many stakes set up as there are prisoners to be burnt, the negative and relapse

00:14:16.120 being first strangled and then burnt, the professed mount their stakes by a ladder, and the Jesuits,

00:14:22.460 after several repeated exhortations to be reconciled to the Church, consign them to eternal destruction 0.95

00:14:27.920 and then leave them to the fiend, who they tell them stands at their elbow to carry them

00:14:32.480 into torments. On this a great shout is raised, and the cry is,

00:14:37.420 Let the dogs' beards be made, which is done by thrusting flaming bunches of furs fastened 0.97

00:14:43.420 to long poles against their beards, till their faces are burnt black, the surrounding populace

00:14:49.260 rending the air with the loudest acclamations of joy.

00:14:52.220 At last fire is set to the furs at the bottom of the stake, over which the victims are chained,

00:14:57.960 so high that the flame seldom reaches higher than the seat they sit on, and thus they are

00:15:02.120 rather roasted than burnt. Although there cannot be a more lamentable spectacle, and the sufferers

00:15:08.060 continually cry out as long as they are able, pity for the love of God, yet it is beheld by

00:15:13.720 persons of all ages and both sexes with transports of joy and satisfaction." 0.79

00:15:20.100 And while Protestant reformers broke with Rome on a variety of counts, their treatment of their

00:15:26.480 fellow human beings was no less disgraceful. Public executions were more popular than ever,

00:15:32.620 heretics were still reduced to ash, scholars were tortured and killed for impertinent displays of 1.00

00:15:38.180 reason, and fornicators were murdered without a qualm. The basic lesson to be drawn from all of

00:15:43.860 this was summed up nicely by Will Durant. Quote,

00:15:47.840 "...intolerance is the natural concomitant of strong faith. Tolerance grows only when faith

00:15:53.540 loses certainty. Certainty is murderous." End quote.

00:15:58.720 There really seems to be very little to perplex us here. Burning people who are destined to burn for 0.98

00:16:04.160 all time seems a small price to pay to protect the people you love from the same fate. Clearly, 0.71

00:16:10.700 the common-law marriage between reason and faith, wherein otherwise reasonable men and women can be

00:16:15.860 motivated by the content of unreasonable beliefs, places society on a slippery slope, with confusion

00:16:22.060 and hypocrisy at its heights, and the torments of the Inquisitor waiting below. 0.99

00:16:26.740 Witch and Jew 1.00

00:16:34.280 Historically, there have been two groups targeted by the Church that deserve special mention.

00:16:40.680 Witches are of particular interest in this context because their persecution required an extraordinary 0.98

00:16:45.380 degree of credulity to get underway. For the simple reason that a confederacy of witches in medieval 0.69

00:16:50.720 Europe seems never to have existed, there were no covens of pagan dissidents, meeting in secret,

00:16:56.180 betrothed to Satan, abandoning themselves to the pleasures of group sex, cannibalism, 1.00

00:17:01.780 and the casting of spells upon neighbors' crops and cattle. It seems that such notions were the

00:17:06.820 product of folklore, vivid dreams, and sheer confabulation, and confirmed by confessions

00:17:12.700 elicited under the most gruesome torture. Antisemitism is of interest here, both for the scale of the

00:17:18.940 injustice that it has wrought and for its explicitly theological roots. From the perspective of Christian 0.86

00:17:24.540 teaching, Jews are even worse than run-of-the-mill heretics. They are heretics who explicitly repudiate 0.99

00:17:30.420 the divinity of Jesus Christ. While the stigmas applied to witches and Jews throughout Christendom

00:17:35.600 shared curious similarities, both were often accused of the lively and improbable offense of murdering

00:17:41.400 Christian infants and drinking their blood. Their cases remain quite distinct. Witches in all likelihood 0.99

00:17:47.560 did not even exist, and those murdered in their stead numbered perhaps 40 to 50,000 over 300 years of

00:17:54.960 persecution. Off text here, in an end note here, I report that the numbers of people killed by the

00:18:02.600 Inquisition is routinely exaggerated. Some people talk about millions of people being killed as witches and

00:18:11.480 warlocks, and that doesn't seem to have occurred. Best current estimate that I'm aware of is somewhere

00:18:18.340 around 40 to 50,000. Back to the text. Jews have lived side by side with Christians for nearly two

00:18:25.740 millennia, fathered their religion, and for reasons that are no more substantial than those underlying the

00:18:31.260 belief in the resurrection, have been the objects of murderous intolerance since the first centuries

00:18:36.240 after Christ. The accounts of witch hunts resemble in most respects the more widespread persecution of

00:18:42.280 heretics throughout the Inquisition. Imprisonment on the basis of accusations alone, torture to extract 0.78

00:18:48.440 confession, confessions deemed unacceptable until accomplices were named, death by slow fire, and the

00:18:55.640 rounding up of the freshly accused. The following anecdote is typical. Quote, in 1595, an old woman residing in a

00:19:04.900 village near Constance, angry at not being invited to share the sports of the country people on a day of

00:19:10.480 public rejoicing, was heard to mutter something to herself, and was afterwards seen to proceed through

00:19:16.180 the fields towards a hill where she was lost sight of. A violent thunderstorm arose about two hours

00:19:21.600 afterwards, which wet the dancers to the skin and did considerable damage to the plantations. This woman, 0.98

00:19:28.480 suspected before of witchcraft, was seized and imprisoned and accused of having raised the storm

00:19:33.980 by filling a hole with wine and stirring it about with a stick. She was tortured till she confessed

00:19:39.880 and burned alive the next evening. End quote. Though it is difficult to generalize about many of the

00:19:46.140 factors that conspired to make villagers rise up against their neighbors, it is obvious that a belief

00:19:51.560 in the existence of witches was the sine qua non of the phenomenon. But what was it, precisely, that people

00:19:57.800 believed? They appear to have believed that their neighbors were having sex with the devil, enjoying nocturnal 0.95

00:20:03.160 flights upon broomsticks, changing into cats and hares, and eating the flesh of other human beings.

00:20:10.060 More important, they believed utterly in maleficium, that is, in the efficacy of harming others by occult

00:20:16.640 means. Among the many disasters that could befall a person over the course of a short and difficult

00:20:21.680 life, medieval Christians seemed especially concerned that their neighbor might cast a spell and thereby

00:20:27.160 undermine their health or good fortune. Only the advent of science could successfully undercut such an idea.

00:20:32.980 Along with the fantastical displays of cruelty to which it gave rise. We must remember that it was not

00:20:38.820 until the mid-19th century that the germ theory of disease emerged, laying to rest much superstition

00:20:45.220 about the causes of illness. Occult beliefs of this sort are clearly an inheritance from our primitive

00:20:51.160 magic-minded ancestors. The four people of New Guinea, for instance, besides being enthusiastic cannibals,

00:20:58.500 exacted a gruesome revenge upon suspected sorcerers. Quote,

00:21:03.140 Besides attending public meetings, four men also hunted down men they believed to be sorcerers

00:21:09.460 and killed them in reprisal. The hunters used a specialized attack called tukubu against sorcerers.

00:21:16.340 They ruptured their kidneys, crushed their genitals, and broke their thigh bones with stone axes,

00:21:21.900 bit into their necks and tore out their tracheas, and jammed bamboo splinters into their veins to bleed them. 0.59

00:21:28.500 End quote. 0.61

00:21:30.060 No doubt each of these gestures held metaphysical significance.

00:21:33.600 This behavior seems to have been commonplace among the four at least until the 1960s.

00:21:38.000 The horrible comedy of human ignorance achieves a rare moment of transparency here.

00:21:43.460 The four were merely responding to an epidemic of kuru, a fatal spongiform infection of the brain,

00:21:49.420 brought on not by sorcerers in their midst, but by their own religious observance of eating the 0.95

00:21:54.200 bodies and brains of their dead. Throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, it was perfectly 0.65

00:21:59.200 apparent that disease could be inflicted by demons and black magic. There are accounts of frail old

00:22:05.000 women charged with killing able-bodied men and breaking the necks of their horses, actions which 1.00

00:22:10.260 they were made to confess under torture, and few people, it seems, found such accusations implausible.

00:22:15.980 Even the relentless torture of the accused was given a perverse rationale. The devil, it was

00:22:22.000 believed, made his charges insensible to pain, despite their cries for mercy. And so it was that

00:22:27.840 for centuries, men and women who were guilty of little more than being ugly, old, widowed, or mentally

00:22:33.700 ill, were convicted of impossible crimes, and then murdered for God's sake. After nearly 400 years,

00:22:41.280 some ecclesiastics began to appreciate how insane all this was. Consider the epiphany of Frederick

00:22:47.280 Spee, quote,

00:22:49.500 Torture fills our Germany with witches and unheard-of wickedness, and not only Germany but any nation 1.00

00:22:55.340 that attempts it. If all of us have not confessed ourselves witches, that is only because we have

00:23:00.060 not all been tortured, end quote. But Spee was led to this reasonable surmise only after a skeptical

00:23:06.780 friend, the Duke of Brunswick, had a woman suspected of witchcraft artfully tortured and 0.58

00:23:12.140 interrogated in his presence. This poor woman testified that she had seen Spee himself on the

00:23:17.340 brocken, shape-shifting into a wolf, a goat, and other beasts, and fathering numerous children by the

00:23:23.560 assembled witches, born with the heads of toads and the legs of spiders. Spee, lucky indeed to be in 0.70

00:23:30.360 the company of a friend, and certain of his own innocence, immediately set to work on his Causcio

00:23:35.580 Criminalis, published in 1631, which detailed the injustice of the witch trials. Bertrand Russell

00:23:42.180 observed, however, that not all reasonable men were as fortunate as Spee. Quote,

00:23:47.480 Some few bold rationalists ventured, even while the persecution was at its height, to doubt whether

00:23:53.180 tempests, hailstorms, thunder, and lightning were really caused by the machinations of women. 1.00

00:23:58.600 Such men were shown no mercy. Thus, towards the end of the 16th century, Flade, rector of the

00:24:05.200 University of Trev, and judge for the electoral court, after condemning countless witches,

00:24:11.000 began to think that perhaps their confessions were due to the desire to escape the tortures of the

00:24:15.320 rack, with the result that he showed unwillingness to convict. He was accused of having sold himself

00:24:20.760 to Satan, and was subjected to the same tortures he had inflicted upon others. Like them, he confessed

00:24:26.880 his guilt, and in 1589 he was strangled and then burnt. End quote. As late as 1718, just as the

00:24:35.820 inoculation against smallpox was being introduced in England, and the English mathematician Brooke

00:24:40.660 Taylor was making refinements to the calculus, we find the madness of the witch hunt still a potent

00:24:46.420 force. Charles McKay relates an incident in Caithness, northeast Scotland. Quote,

00:24:52.600 A silly fellow named William Montgomery, a carpenter, had a mortal antipathy to cats, and somehow or other 0.52

00:25:00.140 these animals generally chose his backyard as the scene for their catawallons. He puzzled his brains 0.98

00:25:06.180 for a long time to know why he, above all his neighbors, should be so pestered. At last he came

00:25:12.480 to the sage conclusion that his tormentors were no cats, but witches. In this opinion he was supported

00:25:18.260 by his maidservant, who swore a round oath that she had often heard the aforesaid cats talking together

00:25:24.300 in human voices. The next time the unlucky tabbies assembled in his backyard, the valiant carpenter

00:25:30.200 was on the alert. Arming himself with an axe, a dirk, and a broadsword, he rushed out among them.

00:25:36.380 One of them he wounded in the back, a second in the hip, and the leg of a third he maimed with his axe.

00:25:42.200 But he could not capture any of them. A few days afterward, two old women of the parish died,

00:25:48.360 and it was said that when their bodies were laid out, there appeared on the back of one

00:25:52.160 the mark as of a recent wound, and a similar scar upon the hip of the other. The carpenter and his

00:25:58.360 maid were convinced that they were the very cats, and the whole county repeated the same story.

00:26:03.780 Everyone was upon the lookout for proofs corroborative. A very remarkable one was soon

00:26:08.680 discovered. Nancy Gilbert, a wretched old creature upwards of 70 years of age, was found in bed with 1.00

00:26:15.140 her leg broken. As she was ugly enough for a witch, it was asserted that she was one of the cats that 0.99

00:26:20.540 had fared so ill at the hands of the carpenter. The latter, when informed of the popular suspicion,

00:26:26.040 asserted that he distinctly remembered his friend.

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00:26:53.660 The Making Sense, Associate for Humanities

Making Sense - Sam Harris - September 28, 2016

#46 — The End of Faith Sessions 3

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