Your last question is meant for execution, presumably, as opposed to say house fire. In recent memory, and one which troubles my thoughts, obviously, are the untold infants and children tossed on pyres in concentration camps when corpse disposal and gas chambers were backed up, and corraling them and expending bullets was a waste of time. I always calm myself, so to speak, that the end came quicker because the body surface area was so small.
I agree that you would, as no doubt would I. Some somehow don’t, in public social protest self-immolation. (Link is to Wiki.) The classic image is for most of us is the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Durc in Vietnam in the early 1960s. It is surprisingly “common” (very relatively speaking) today.
Watched the video. Fucking disgusting. However, I’m glad I did. I would rather know about this shit than not know about it. It gives me respect for law and order.
A ten (maybe eleven) year old boy was burned at the stake in Munich in 1600. It’s okay though. The rest of his family had been executed and burned at the stake a few months earlier. Look up the Pappenheimers sometime.
Just chiming in to say that Bishop John Hooper (mentioned upthread) is apparently a distant ancestor of my wife; if you go to Gloucester Folk museum you can still see the (alleged) stake. http://mary-tudor.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/hooper-stake.html
Our collective human history is wrought with countless, unimaginable terror. No snark intended, but have you not heard of the Holocaust, Nanking, Rwanda? These are just in our most recent history. The list goes on and on.
Furthermore, on this topic, is an element of religion almost always involved in these things? I know I’ve never heard of torture being carried out in the name of Atheism, but is it the De-facto rule that religion always plays a part?
Sometimes it’s just plain sadism / racism / economic envy. Rwanda IIRC was more social than any religious component.
The Irish situation for example was more a nationalist movement, it just happened that one side was catholic and one side was protestant. The English Catholics were not really considered “brothers” by the Irish IIRC from the news. Then the IRA degenerated into a mafia-organization, liberating money from banks, collecting protection money, etc - since it costs money to pay rent and buy bullets and beer for all those guys.
Cambodia, OTOH - probably fits your scenario of an atheistic group setting out to destroy religion, along with any other signs of western influnece like actual education. (If you wore glasses, it meant you were likely using them to read - therefore, you are fertilizer.)
Come to think of it, most communist purges were atheist against others - most recently the Falung Gong persecution in China, but there’s the Soviet suppression of religion, gulags, and their starvation of 3 million Ukrainian peasants who did not agree to the collectivisation; but I suppose starving babies over weeks and months is prefereable to tossing them on a fire.
Sadism is an equal opportunity employer - religion has little to do with it.
The story goes that a noted British historian was once very ill and bedridden, and complained to a nurse that his feet were too hot. The nurse testily said, “Well, no one ever died from having their feet too hot.” The historian shot back, “Latimer and Ridley did!”
I’ve seen the monument in Oxford on the spot where they were executed.
You did say that you expected people to watch it if they were going to comment on its veracity. I see no logical reason for this: Watching it will not make anyone any more informed as to its veracity. I imagine that there are quite a few videos showing people burning to death on YouTube, and the vast majority of them would be fakes.
Now, if you want to argue that it’s real because there are news sources reporting on the incident, that’s reasonable. But why wasn’t that your criticism in the first place? And why not include information on finding those news stories? “Africa” is a big place, and wouldn’t do much to narrow down a search.