{"id":1872,"date":"2011-08-05T07:44:44","date_gmt":"2011-08-05T12:44:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/?p=1872"},"modified":"2011-09-14T11:14:07","modified_gmt":"2011-09-14T16:14:07","slug":"withces-and-wages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/2011\/08\/withces-and-wages\/","title":{"rendered":"Witches and Wages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 02 August 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

The folks at Prometheus Books<\/a> sent me the book The End of Christianity<\/em><\/a>, edited by John Loftus. They sent it to me for free, on the condition that I write a review of it.<\/p>\n

It’s a decent book. Certainly not great. Not even good, in fact. But it’s not horrible and I intend to finish it. I’m currently about 2\/3 of the way through, and I wanted to write about a curious analogy I read on pages 207-217. Those pages are from chapter 8, and the author of that chapter, Dr. Matt McCormick, argues that if anyone accepts Jesus’ resurrection based on the evidence provided in the gospels, then they should also accept that there really were witches in Salem during the late 17th century.<\/p>\n

The doctor points out that 150 people were accused of witchcraft in Salem. Using several passive sentences, he notes that the folks in Salem set up a court, conducted investigations, and gathered evidence. People confessed. Community members transcribed the proceedings and accompanied their texts with affidavits, original court documents, and interviews.<\/p>\n

Unlike the gospels, this was all documented in real-time (not decades later) by eyewitnesses (not people like Mark, Luke, and Paul who – even if they were the real authors – weren’t present). Community members recorded their sworn statements of witnessing acts of sorcery. Of course, we might claim that everyone was lying, but they had so much to lose. Some of these people provided statements against their spouses, children, parents, and neighbors. “Accusing a friend or wife of being a witch would very likely have the horrible outcome of getting them executed,” the doctor says on page 208.<\/p>\n

He claims that if all the documentation from Salem’s witchcraft trials were gathered into one place, it would fill a truck.<\/p>\n

The surviving evidence we have that Salem was full of witches far outweighs the evidence we have that Jesus was resurrected.<\/p>\n

The doctor notes that if this line of reasoning is pointed out to a Christian, they’re likely to just respond that both the resurrection and the witchcraft in Salem were real events. I wonder if this is true. I can’t recall ever discussing the Salem event with my fellow Witnesses (when I was a Witness), but I wonder if they think their really were acts of sorcery back then. They might. They believe in demons, and they think things like Ouija boards, Ozzy Osbourne records, and the Smurfs have mystical Satanic powers.<\/p>\n

The problem with accepting the Salem accounts at face-value, Dr. McCormick notes, is that there are many other tales of the supernatural that are also better documented than the resurrection. So, if people are willing to accept the Salem event as true, then they also need to accept the miracles of Judaism (such as the Hanukkah miracles), Hinduism, Mormonism, and Catholicism (these last two involve much more recent miraculous claims).<\/p>\n

As I said, the book is not remarkable, but these few pages were the most intriguing of the bunch. Am I missing something, or is this a pretty damn good argument?<\/p>\n

Wednesday, 03 August 2011<\/strong><\/p>\n

Today at work, I walked to the cafeteria to get some ice. While there, I found a dime sitting on the floor. Yes!<\/p>\n

As I mentioned back on January 4th<\/a>, I am keeping track of the money I find this year. One thing I was interested in determining was if I would be able to find enough money to equal minimum wage. Currently, minimum wage is set at $7.25. Well, as you’ve probably guessed by now, today I passed that milestone.<\/p>\n

My total was one cent short since Monday. On that day, I also found a dime and my yearly total rang up to $7.24. Today’s dime, therefore, allows me to comfortably surpass that mark. In just over seven months, I found – just lying there for anyone to see – enough money to equal one hour of minimum wage work.<\/p>\n

And my pay wasn’t even taxed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Tuesday, 02 August 2011 The folks at Prometheus Books sent me the book The End of Christianity, edited by John Loftus. They sent it to me for free, on the condition that I write a review of it. It’s a decent book. Certainly not great. Not even good, in fact. But it’s not horrible and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1872"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2122,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1872\/revisions\/2122"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/zimmerscope.com\/Verbisaurus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}