Christian Europeans killed and burned tens of thousands of “witches”

One example of how superstitious previous generations were can be seen by the reasons for which they killed people.

Historians estimate that between the 14th and 17th centuries 50,000 to 600,000 Europeans were killed because of accusations of witchcraft. (In contrast, the death toll for the 9/11 bombings, which caused a whole nation to awaken for war, was under 3,000). (1, 2)

Often these “witches” were accused merely because they were strange people, had heretical views, or unusual birthmarks and then eagerly burned/drowned by the local Christian community.

Superstition kills.

Many African Christians are are religiously motivated to abuse, torture, or kill children for “witchcraft”

Some of the African converts to Christianity, whom you may see on television during a large evangelistic crusade go back to their local towns and practice very dangerous version of Christianity.

According to numerous human rights agencies, there have been tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of children who were abused, tortured, or killed, by a strange kind of Pentecostal/Charismatic “Christians” for the accusations of witchcraft.

For example, “the officials in one northern Angolan town identified 432 street children who had been abandoned or abused after being called witches. A report last year by the government’s National Institute for the Child and the United Nations Children’s Fund described the number of children said to be witches as “massive.”(1, 2, 3, 4, 5

The perpetrators of this abuse, who consider themselves Christians, pastors, prophets often mix in Old Testament theology, which commands the murder of witches (Exodus 22:18), with local African superstition. The moral of the story is that certain kinds of theology can be very dangerous.