>Burning witches to prevent them from casting spells doesn't work,
>because there are no witches casting evil spells is the first place.
Aha, but how can you be sure? There are thousands of documented cases of people confessing to being witches. Confessions obtained under torture, to be sure. But according to you, that is a reliable way of gaining intelligence. So according to your own argument, it follows that there were thousands of witches back then.
Perhaps the methods used to identify witches (torture) was so effective that this explains why there are no witches nowadays? They were 100% eliminated, like smallpox. Or perhaps there are heaps of them still, but we need to bring back the rack in order to identify the danger?
Which do you think is the most logical explanation? A mere gerbil like me wouldn't presume to be able to answer such an important question.
Bill Bartlett Bracknell Tas