"Until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Europeans who believed fervently in God, Jesus and his resurrection, angels, Satan, and miracles did not think of themselves as “religious” but as ordinary. Only with scientific progress, encounters with other peoples of the world with radically different beliefs, and the demystifying aspects of the Reformation did there emerge a sense that adherence to a certain set of Christian tenets was “religious” as opposed to empirical." - John McWhorter
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
