Take the witch trials, for example—to the best of my extremely limited knowledge, most witch trials involved very poorly-defined ideas about what a witch was capable of or what the signs of a witch were.
Consider something like this and notice that our modern “explanations” aren’t much better.
Consider something like this and notice that our modern “explanations” aren’t much better.
And because of those damned atheists we can’t even start a witch hunt to figure out who’s responsible!
Sure we can.
We just need to rephrase “witch” in scientific terms.
(Also sorry about the political link, but with a topic like this that’s inevitable).
UPDATE: This post goes into more details.