DanArmak comments on The Problem Of Apostasy - Less Wrong

10 Post author: Raw_Power 19 July 2012 10:27AM

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Comment author: APMason 19 July 2012 02:22:40PM 9 points [-]

I don't think that question's going to give you the information you want - when in the last couple thousand of years, if Jews had wanted to stone apostates to death, would they have been able to do it? The diasporan condition doesn't really allow it. I think Christianity really is the canonical example of the withering away of religiosity - and that happened through a succession of internal revolutions ("In Praise of Folly", Lutheranism, the English reformation etc.) which themselves happened for a variety of reasons, not all pure or based in rationality (Henry VIII's split with Rome, for example) but had the effect of demystifying the church and thereby shrinking the domain of its influence. I think. Although it's hard to interpret the Englightenment as a movement internal to Christianity, so this only gets you so far, I suppose.

Comment author: DanArmak 19 July 2012 10:03:37PM 2 points [-]

when in the last couple thousand of years, if Jews had wanted to stone apostates to death, would they have been able to do it?

Unless we're talking about apostates who converted to Christianity (or Islam etc.) and claimed that society's protection, then Jews could probably have stoned apostates at any point until civil rights were granted to Jews. Which happened in different European countries at any point between, offhand, 15th and 20th centuries.