Religulous - The Hour - Tuesday

[RougeUnderoos]

The thing with religion and wars is that they always need it to motivate the soldiers. The Crusades for example -- if they were really about relics and riches (I don't know), they couldn't tell the soldiers that. You can't get hundreds of thousands of people to march across Europe dying and killing people all the way if all you have to tell them is "the King will get more money out of your sacrifice".

They gotta believe they are doing God's work and will be getting a nice reward for it. So the powers that be cook up some hocus-pocus and sell it to the poor, and away we go.

[MarchHare]

The Crusades were more about recovering relics and riches that the Christian kingdoms saw as their own.

I've never heard that perspective before, although admittedly the last time I researched the Crusades was during a high school history class over a decade ago. Do you have a link to support your claim?

Everything I've ever read about the Crusades has stated that they were about Christian kings, usually at the behest of the Pope, trying to retake the Holy Land from the infidel Muslims and preventing the spread of Islam. If recovering relics was an objective, was it because the Crusaders wanted additional wealth for their nations, or was it because of sentimental religious reasons -- i.e. important Christian artifacts should not be under the control of the infidels?

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos

The thing with religion and wars is that they always need it to motivate the soldiers. The Crusades for example -- if they were really about relics and riches (I don't know), they couldn't tell the soldiers that. You can't get hundreds of thousands of people to march across Europe dying and killing people all the way if all you have to tell them is "the King will get more money out of your sacrifice".

They gotta believe they are doing God's work and will be getting a nice reward for it. So the powers that be cook up some hocus-pocus and sell it to the poor, and away we go.

You could say the same thing about any war, whether religion is the motivator or not. Take the Iraq war... it would be harder to get the people behind it if Bush told them it was to secure oil fields, push out competition, and to award contracts to American companies. Instead you find some other "bogeyman" to get the people on board.

If there was no religion, I doubt it would have any impact on the number of wars humans would fight with each other. We'll always find some kind of differences.

[FlamesAddiction]

Originally Posted by MarchHare

I've never heard that perspective before, although admittedly the last time I researched the Crusades was during a high school history class over a decade ago. Do you have a link to support your claim?

Everything I've ever read about the Crusades has stated that they were about Christian kings, usually at the behest of the Pope, trying to retake the Holy Land from the infidel Muslims and preventing the spread of Islam. If recovering relics was an objective, was it because the Crusaders wanted additional wealth for their nations, or was it because of sentimental religious reasons -- i.e. important Christian artifacts should not be under the control of the infidels?

In medievel Europe, Rome was pretty much the centre of Christianity. When the Holy Land was occupied, tribute stopped making it's way to the pope. Since the Church was the only "social safety net" for the people at the time, it had huge political implications. If they couldn't look after the people, the people would revolt.

So yeah, religion was the motivation, but not the cause. If you removed religion from the equation but still had: a) a growing and aggressive empire that was annexing your neighbour's territory; b) a society on the verge of economic collapse; and c) several very militarized nations with no one to fight, you would still likely see a war a the result.

I had a decent history textbook on this subject but I don't know where it is now. It was cool to learn about how politics played into the organizing of the Crusades. There were several kings that made agreements with each other to split loot from the pillaging.

Here is one internet link that talks about it a little bit:

http://www.the-orb.net/textbooks/nel...t_crusade.html

http://www.templarhistory.com/causes.html

[troutman]

I thought this was interesting - look at the reader reviews at boxofficemojo:

http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=religulous.htm

It is an upside-down bell curve - people either loved it or hated it (if they even saw it).