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Originally Posted by jammies
Sorry, this is just not true. "Nothing to do with religion"? Indulgences offered for crusading against the Saracen were a powerful motivator for many that went; do you really believe hundreds of thousands of men went to try to conquer a tiny bit of land of no strategic importance and little wealth for exclusively "political" reasons?
And what about fighting monastic orders like the Templars and the Hospitallers? Do they not count as religiously inspired?
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Religion was the motivation and justification for many in the Crusades but as is all wars in human history, it was politically and economically motivated at the highest levels. It's like how ficticious African yellow cake and WMD was the justification for the Iraq war and religion or anti-muslim feeling motivated many to engage in that war but it is almost certainly political.
Popes were political and economical manipulators of the highest degree. The crusades first began because the eastern empires were concerned with the political and territorial expansion of Turks into their land.
There were almost a dozen crusades, you cannot paint them all with the same brush. Almost every major conflict in human history is ultimately politically or economically motivated.
Do these threads always have to degenerate into Reggie Dunlop posting irreverant youtube videos and pictures, Cheese blaming Christianity for every war in human history, Richard Dawkins thrown about, etc. It's all getting tired people. The atheists spouting absurb hyperbole like how religion is the cause of all mankind's ills are just as blind and ignorant to reality as the religious people who do not question their faith or challenge their beliefs.