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EdHieron said:
richardhutnik said:
Aielyn said:
richardhutnik said:
The focus of the Inquisition was on heretics primarily, not the hunting of witches.  And the top worst trademark of the Inquisition was torture, not burnings.

Wrong inquisition. That was...

Nobody expects the spanish inquisition.

But seriously, there have been many inquisitions.

Also, for the record, witch burnings are mostly urban myth. It was rare for witches to be burned - they were usually drowned or hanged. I simply took "witch burnings" to really be referring to witch-hunts and the resulting killings of witches.

It is one of those iconic things that stands out, like the Inquisition being seen as only torture.  It is most memorable, even if it isn't true.  The worse iconically represents what had happened.  There are risks, when trying to correct things, particularly in the context of someone saying someone is drawn to the Catholic church due to witch burning and molestation (and that isn't even so), to end up sounding like one is akin to those who deny the Holocaust.  It was a concern of mine when responding.  Any amount of excesses is horrible actually. 

What gets to be a mess is trying to sort out what the official stand of the Catholic Church is, and the ideals held, from that which governments did, and individual communities did.  

Yeah, let's always white wash what the Catholic Church did like a good little atheist.  Not.

If you have concern for truth, you seek to accurately represent things, out of respect for truth.  If you have an agenda, then your idea is an agenda.  I would say it would most likely be in the interest of an atheist to represent truth as accurately as possible, because atheism, which is a lack of a belief, can't have an agenda to it.  You gain nothing for misrepresenting things. If you want to get sloppy, then I can go with what Marxist government did last century, and blame all atheists today, and see they are also into killing people with religious beliefs, because of what Marxists governments did.  This is not fair to Marxism, atheism or atheists today.