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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5638003" data-attributes="member: 4937">Without addressing the parts of your post which aren't addressable in this forum, I would just note that Socrates was executed for teaching heresy.  Heresy, in general, is treated not only as a crime of thought, but as a crime against the peacefulness and order of the state whenever the state backs a particular orthodoxy.  It's important to keep in mind that most ritual autocracies, whether monarchy or some other form, rooted their right to rule in a particular set of religious beliefs.   Thus, any attack on the religious orthodoxy was also defacto an attack on the secular rule of these authorities.  The framework in which the legal crime of heresy is important is their is no separation between the institutions of the state and the institutions of religion.  In practice, the charge of Heresy is simply the charge of Sedition or Treason by another name.  Thus, you can find documents in Song China, of various groups being legally prosecuted either because their religious beliefs were associated with uprising against the secular authorities or were believed to be associated with such dissent.  For example, it was illegal to be a vegetarian, because practicing vegatarianism was seen as a challenge to the holiness of the Emporer. It was illegal on penalty of beheading to teach astronomy or to own an astronomy text, because the Son of Heaven and his designated agents were supposed to have a monopoly on divination magic generally and knowledge of the stars in particular.  And these are just a few examples of the hetrodox religious practices that could get you killed in medieval China.The important thing to note about Heresy is that it is always dissent not only against the truth of a certain religious statement, but also dissent against the authority of the secular powers that derive their mandate to rule from a certain religious orthodoxy.  Provided that the debate doesn't challenge the right of secular rule, there can be quite lively debates on various points within a religion.  It's only when such debate challenges, for example, whether the Emporer is really a god where you get people getting thrown to lions for their beliefs.  Or, when the debate challenges whether the Pope has temporal authority, that the debate moves from the academic field and becomes a political one.   Compare for example how Luther was treated, to how Erasmus was treated, even though they had in many cases promulgated the same beliefs. So, in the examples I gave above of the sorts of teachings that were widely considered heretical, the key element is that the secular authorities agree that such teachings are a danger to public order (and perhaps public safety as well!).</blockquote>

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