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MugaSofer comments on Rationality Quotes November 2012 - Less Wrong
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I always got the impression that it how physical law was being violated (ie selling your soul) that was condemned.
The core idea of laws is that it's morally bad to violate them.
If you make a contract with another person and then violate that contract you are violating "natural law" in addition to violating the "law of the land". You sin and might get judged by God after your death for violating "natural law".
The witch is also violating "natural law". Now there's the problem that God might punish the village in which the witch lives for natural law violations. As a result that village might prefer to get rid of the witch.
The idea that the physical laws of the universe are qualitatively different than natural laws like "honor your contracts" is a later development. The first interest in finding out the natural laws was a very theistic endevour.
Their revolutionary core idea was that it's possible to understand what God wants by studying reality. Empiric research is a better tool than reading old scriptures to understand God's will.
As I have said, I was under the impression that demons were supposed to have a natural ability to produce "miracles" from their angel days, and used them as payment for the souls of witches. That said, there would have been considerable variation anyway.
A demon who might want to corrupt a woman won't start by asking for her soul. To corrupt her he might start by giving her some power without asking anything in return.
Even today there are still Christians who consider certain New Age practices immoral. Hypnosis doesn't involve summoning the devil and making a bargain with him. It's still considered to be a dark practice by many Christians. The catholic church took till 1956 to accept hypnosis as not being immoral.
Genemanipulated food would be a modern example where some Christians object that the practice is violating "natural law". Craig Venter has to defend against the charge of playing God. According to that Christian perspective biologists are supposed to study how nature works instead of changing it.
Similar things are true for opposition to cryonics. The person who get a contract with Alcor isn't a Satanist. He still sins, by trying to escape God's plans for how human's are supposed to live.
And the same applies to all doctors. Study of anatomy and medicine was traditionally illegal.
That was out of respect for corpses, IIRC.
I doubt they had that much respect for corpses of non-human animals. Anyway, trying to heal the sick by whatever method was held to be a sin. Sickness and accidents were believed to be caused by God as a punishment for sin, and a faithful believer would accept the punishment and try to repent. Death itself was a punishment for the original sin, so trying to medically delay death was (at certain times and places) a sin and therefore illegal.
As I recall, executed criminals were often kosher as well.
I'm going to call BS on that one. To my knowledge, no-one ever has banned attempting to cure the sick. Certain methods of doing so, perhaps, but then I myself am not in favor of legalizing mercury injections.
But that would be the ultimate goal, yes?
(Why specify a woman?)
So is karate. What's your point?
... Huh.
So ... metallurgy is also sinful because God intended ores to be impure and buried? ALL OF MEDICINE is evil because we're messing up His plans for that disease? Interracial marriage is bad because God created the races separate? (That last one is both the least plausible and also the only one that was actually made, AFAIK.)
EDIT: fixed some typos.