Witch

True story: once a rather pathetic man found that he couldn't maintain an erection, but he didn't want to accept his loss of virility as the due course of nature. So he accused a poor illiterate woman of being a witch, and blamed his impotence on her sorcery. She was sentenced to death.

In what year did this take place? 1440? 1693?

Try 2005.

BBC: Pleas for condemned Saudi 'witch'

The illiterate woman was detained by religious police in 2005 and allegedly beaten and forced to fingerprint a confession that she could not read.

Among her accusers was a man who alleged she made him impotent.

Witchcraft.

It's the year 2008, and people are still being sentenced to death for witchcraft.

Sadly, backwards nonsense like this can still pass as legitimate in certain parts of the world, thanks to religion's enduring power to advocate even the most astonishing kinds of ignorance and injustice.

It's no coincidence that the witch trials of Salem and the Spanish Inquisition were also motivated by religious belief. As H. L. Mencken pointed out, "Any half-wit, by the simple device of ascribing his delusions to revelation, takes on an authority that is denied the rest of us." Would accusations of witchcraft in the modern day be taken as anything but ridiculous, if it weren't for that they are sponsored by a religion?