I wonder if pedophilia has become something like witchcraft in our society — an especially heinous offense. However deplorable pedophilia may be, I wonder if much of the response to it goes beyond all reason.

Believe it or not, I was strongly considering a discussion of that very comparison in this post, before I ultimately decided that the issue would be better served by a separate post of its own.

I think it's a good comparison in that both witchcraft and pedophilia have been considered crimes so serious that people didn't think we even needed evidence to prove the guilt of someone accused of either of them. I had a chance to watch Indictment late last year, a fictionalized portrayal of the famous McMartin preschool case. It was astonishing how easily hysteria was drummed up in response to the mere possibility that children had been sexually abused, and how that hysteria prevented virtually everyone in the community from seeing the obvious evidentiary holes in the abuse story.

And I wouldn't call the idea of sorcery having real effects "theist" nonsense -- superstitious nonsense maybe, something metaphysically related to theism perhaps, but not necessarily theist nonsense. I've added the qualifier "having real effects" to distinguish between practicing sorcery and sorcery successfully doing something. Like the distinction between placing a picture of Mother Teresa on one's belly and doing so successfully curing stomach cancer inside.

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I think that it is worth noting that many "primitive" people had believed that nearly all sickness and death is due to malicious sorcery. Travelers in Africa had noted how common it was for Africans to do "witch smelling" after people's deaths. These people had maintained belief in the sorcery theory alongside of awareness of other causes, like a collapsing granary or being attacked by an elephant that one was hunting. Of course, a sorcery apologist could claim that the sorcerer had cast a spell of "Sic 'em!" on that elephant.

So I wonder if there is something psychological involved, like whatever it is that causes some people to invent and believe in conspiracy theories.

It may be due to a tendency to attribute intention even where no intention is present, a theory proposed for the origin of religion.

The belief in "witches" is just more theist nonsense. "Suffer not a witch to live". Anytime you can blame someone or thing i.e. Satan for your problems, it allows you to keep up the lie.

And get rid of people you don't like in a humiliating fashion that will slander their reputation in the community (and perhaps their families' as well) forever even above and beyond their deaths, leave you with no risk of reprisal (as opposed to bashing their heads in with a hoe), and maybe let you get your hands on some of their stuff. This certainly seemed to be a major motivation for accusations of witchcraft in medieval Europe.

I think that only time will sort out Africa's problems. In the mean time we can only hope that the Western democracies don't go the way of the Roman Empire and another Dark Age fall over the Earth.