The above took place at Caltech on December 9th, 2007 ~ between Dinesh D’Souza and Michael Shermer. I am posting this anew for a discussion I am in where I received the following challenge:

• So you deny inquisitions which really happened?

I respond:

One doesn’t have to deny something in order to k-n-o-w about the truth of something. Firstly, I bet you do not know this but the inquisitions were started to stop “monkey courts” sentencing people to death. Secondly, here are some stats you probably are not aware of. And this isn’t to belittle you… reading history is a hobby of mine. Here they are:

✦ The Inquisition was originally welcomed to bring order to Europe because states saw an attack on the state’s faith as an attack on the state as well.
✦ The Inquisition technically had jurisdiction only over those professing to be Christians.
✦ The courts of the Inquisition were extremely fair compared to their secular counterparts at the time.
✦ The Inquisition was responsible for less than 100 witch-hunt deaths, and was the first judicial body to denounce the trials in Europe.
✦ Though torture was commonly used in all the courts of Europe at the time, the Inquisition used torture very infrequently.
✦ During the 350 years of the Spanish Inquisition, between 3,000-5,000* people were sentenced to death (about 1 per month).
✦ The Church executed no one.

See more at my site: https://religiopoliticaltalk.com/spanish-inquisition/

There was a change of subject immediately following the above posted historical facts/items, to which I asked for the following minimalist admission:

Before I go on… I must ask for some honesty. And it requires a minimum admission from you — at least. The reason being is that I do not mind talking about topics in a dialogue fashion. But often times I find people move from one topic to the next, never slowing down to let new information sink in. And so the learning process is hampered in lieu of trying to “win” a point or position held for many years. [In many cases, wrongly.]

So while I have a decent sized home library and love [to discuss] politics, religion, philosophy, science, history, and theology… I also do not want to waste my time in conversation where people do not add new items of understanding to their thinking. In your case, I think it is the historical bullet points to follow that would offer a modicum of reasonableness allowing me to continue.

At the minimum would you say that you did not know that the Inquisitions…

➤ killed 0.769 people a month [yes, that is a point] over it’s 300-year period;
➤ that it was primarily secular;
➤ and was implemented to stop kangaroo courts.

If you would a-t l-e-a-s-t admit that you thought these were different but now can see that maybe, just maybe, you heard this information through word-of-mouth and just ran with it instead of testing your own position to the panoply of history… then we can continue the conversation. (Pride is an S.O.B.)