Good ol Pericles :)

You nailed it, then you jumped into denial.

"about me"...noted.. and that should have been the end of it, but no....

You then refer to the 'nasty bits' of the Old Testament, suggesting that I'm saying we can ignore those ?

On the contrary, we cannot ignore them, but rather embrace them for exactly what they are.

-Reports of historical incidents
-Accounts of the judgement of God on specific peoples.

But what is NOT found there is any generalized or even generalizable 'command' to get out their and crack heads for the sake of extending God's kingdom.

It's not in the old Testament and it's sure isn't in the New.

So....I rest quite comfortably in my affirmation that the incidents for which the 'Church/Christianity' is usually blamed (Inquisition, Crusades/various protestant-catholic conflicts) have nothing to do with sound Biblical interpretation and everything to do with the human condition against which it speaks.

"For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" Rom 3:23

So lets have a look at "exactly what they are", shall we Boaz?

>>You then refer to the 'nasty bits' of the Old Testament, suggesting that I'm saying we can ignore those? On the contrary, we cannot ignore them, but rather embrace them for exactly what they are... Accounts of the judgement of God on specific peoples.<<

And these judgments are:

(1) Idolatry (specifically, Molech): death
(2) Spiritualism: exile
(3) Being a spiritualist: death
(4) Cursing your parents: death
(5) Adultery: death
(6) Incest: death
(7) Bestiality: death
(8) Homosexuality: death

...and so on. That's a whole lot of embracing, right there.

Some of them of course make absolute sense. I'm pretty sure he had John Edwards in mind when he decreed (3). I'm less sure about killing the animal in (7), unless they were strict vegetarians back then.

And I have to say, that it is all very well for you to try to load the blame back on the individual Crusaders all these years later. But there is absolutely not a skerrick of doubt that, at the time, they very firmly believed that they were "doing God's bidding"

Much like Bush's justification for invading Iraq.

According to Jacques Chirac, Bush told him: “Gog and Magog are at work in the Middle East. The biblical prophecies are being fulfilled. This confrontation is willed by God, who wants to use this conflict to erase his people’s enemies before a New Age begins.”

http://www.digitaljournal.com/article/277411

Now, to you M. Chirac may be a discredited cheese-eating surrender-monkey. But it all sounds essentially plausible to me.

It must be a source of great comfort to you, Boaz, to be able to sit back and pronounce your verdict on all these people, the way you do.

>>I rest quite comfortably in my affirmation that the incidents for which the 'Church/Christianity' is usually blamed (Inquisition, Crusades/various protestant-catholic conflicts) have nothing to do with sound Biblical interpretation<<

You don't actually accept responsibility for anything, do you?

You just sit in judgment over everyone else.

Tacky.