Special guest post

We've been very busy celebrating the most important holiday of the year (according to my husband)--St. Patrick's Day of course. More on that tomorrow.

I'm posting something my dear friend, Anthony Marr (founder & president of H.O.P.E.). He's a wonderful writer with a brilliant mind. He actually makes me a little jealous, because he's damn good at everything. Really, everything! He's an altogether amazing person who has made this world an infinitely better place.

To my horror, I just watched in one of the MySpace bulletins an extremely graphic video of witch-burning in Kis, West Africa, showing about five people being beaten with sticks, then pushed into a fire pit and actually burnt to death, while onlookers threw wood and leaves into the pit to keep the fire going. The perpetrators were reportedly "Christians". But when I tried to repost the video, it had by then been yanked.Still, it has caused me to write the following short piece, which I will post anyway:
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Yesterday I posted a piece titled "Scientists Driven to Confront Politicians on Global Warming". There is a separation of Church and State, but Science is the whipping boy for both, and has been for as long as Science has stood up for truth.

The first case of religious persecution of science, of a scientist, of a female scientist named Hypatia, occurred in Alexandria in 415 AD. The then Christian bishop Cyril condemned Hypatia for her "heretical" teachings, experimental science and pagan practices. She was denounced as "a woman who did not know her place". Cyril's preaching against Hypatia incited a mob led by fanatical Christian monks to have her dragged from her chariot, stripped, and flayed alive with oyster shells unto death. Her story needs to be told.

In the 3 centuries spanning 1400-1700 AD, the Church burnt 450, 000-9,000,000 people at the stake for witchcraft (predominantly women) and heresy (predominantly men).

My own personal hero Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) was one such heretic, whose heresy being to teach what we now know to be true (thank you, Science!): that the Earth is not fixed at the center of the Universe as the "infallible" Church then taught as "inerrant" truth, but that it moves in a Universe without a meaningful center, that the Sun does not revolve around the Earth as the Church then taught, but the Earth around the Sun, and that the stars are not pin-holes in some sky-vault through which heavenly light shone as the Church then taught, but distant suns, many with their own planets, some possibly with life and some even with civilization. Bruno was seized at age 44, tortured for 8 years throughout which he steadfastly refused to recant, at the end of which he, then a wrecked invalid, was burnt alive at the stake.(For a photo essay see the global warming section of www. HOPE-CARE. org)

Most of the "witches" were single or widowed women with estate. The Church persuaded their neighbors to turn them in as witches, tortured them hideously until they confessed, burnt them alive as certified witches, and confiscated their estates.(How do you think the Church became so filthy rich? Tax exemption?)

Finally, after some residual witch-hunts in America, the persecution has died down. Now, it's just Creationists berating Evolutionists as "evil".But the persecution did not die out.If you have the stomach for it, here is a video of "Christians" burning "witches" alive in West Africa, as we speak! (This was written while the video was still up. I think it immoral to yank such truth-revealing videos which the videographer might have risked his/her life to take, just because it offends some apathetic people's sensitivity. These people do not have to watch it.)

Speaking of evil, in my humble opinion there is nothing more evil than human arrogance and cruelty in the name of God..

Anthony Marr, founder and presidentHeal Our Planet Earth (HOPE)
www. HOPE-CARE. org
www. MySpace. com/AnthonyMarr
www. YouTube. com/AnthonyMarr
www. HomoSapiensSave YourEarth. blogspot. com
www. ARConference. org