Actually, I'll cut to the chase here: I was mainly thinking you were going with Bill EE claiming
Bill EE wrote:Just a nit but the Salem Witch trials were not about witchcraft being bad on religous reasons
Enzo wrote: Aside from your fact that the name Wicca was of recent manufacture, I was asserting that the "witches" of old were not some monolithic group of some consistent belief set, but were instead random people who did something the locals didn;t like, that being enough to brand one as a witch. In other words all it took to be a witch was to do something witch like - IN THE EYES OF THE COMMUNITY. One did not have to be a member of a particular group.
Well, agreed. I don't know why I was assuming you were arguing Bill EE's point instead of saying that.
But in response: If I kill a soldier, you could reason, gee, Muslims kill soldiers, therefore Enzo is a Muslim. Not logically valid, nor factually correct, but it is the parallel of the witch persecution reasoning. Just because someone thinks I am a Muslim doesn't mean I am one. And for that matter, if a Sunni kills a Shiite, it isn't necessarily a religious killing, the Sunni could simply be a criminal, and religious affiliation a mere coincidence.
But my point was, even if you share their religion (and aren't, say, a Christian vs. a Muslim), and the Christians decide to go and do something to you negatively based on their religious beliefs, it's still a matter of religious oppression.
Witchly acts might be real or imagined, and their connection to satan would have been in the eye of the beholder. The potential witch didn't need to be an overt satan worshiper or anything so fancy.
Agreed. I know all this.