Eddie_Raja said:
Take some college courses people, people do things because they need or want to, and then they use religion as an excuse for themselves and others. They aren't some army of God, they are angry sociopaths. |
I agree with your sentiment, people want to get things done and coopting religion is often a good way of doing it... We've seen terrible things can be achieved without religion whatsoever (Stalin/Mao etc)
The crusades, though, while having some benefits to the land owning dukes and kings (not many) who participated, were indeed primarily motivated by a desire to recapture the holy land for Christendom. It was the kick that got it moving and the glue that kept these disparate classes and cultures together. I'm not anti-revisionist history (I revise myself every time I study it) but I find people are so eager to rewrite history that they just flip it on its head and declare black is white. To fail to appreciate just how all encompassing faith was within the minds of the people of this time is to render any analysis of the Crusades fatally flawed from the start.
