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Re: "...there were also well-established Christian groups which burned "witches" at the stake, and went around slaughtering people who refused to convert Christianity"

This is a simpletons view of history. The same sort who blame America first, just consider the prison scandal in Iraq. Someone did it so it must be everyone in Government behind it. Don't look behind that curtain little girl, don't question the great OZ.

I can think of no Christian church where this was "policy" and the closest is when one Christian group was doing it to another. These pagans and other idiots who love to take potshots forget, don't know or don't care to remember 300 years of persecution by the gentle pagans before Christianity was even permitted out in the light. Add to that the slaughter of missionaries ever since. Consider Sudan today or China. But I doubt not the committed blind man's will to ignore truth that does not fit what they wish to see.

"It is better to cross paths with a she-bear who has lost her whelps than to cross paths with a fool."

I can think of no Christian church where this was "policy" and the closest is when one Christian group was doing it to another.

You need to read up on the history of various Christian churches. For a close-to-home and relatively recent example, try the Christian theocracy in 17th century Massachusetts (though they preferred stoning, to the burning which was popular among European Christian witch- and heretic-killers). Earlier in the 17th century, the Catholic Church imprisoned Galileo for his published agreement with Copernicus' claim that the Earth revolves around the Sun rather than vice versa -- even though he renounced the claim, when threatened by the Inquisition with being burnt at the stake if he didn't (it took the Catholic Church until 1992 to get around to rescinding this verdict of heresy against Galileo, after Pope John Paul II initially ordered a "study" of the matter in 1979).

Lots of pagans, Christians, Jews, Moslems, and others have done a lot of barbaric things in their histories, with the official sanction of their religious authorities. Except when a group is continuing to do these things, as many branches of Islam currently are, it's not a reflection on the legitimacy or sincerity of the beliefs of modern adherents.