dartagnan wrote:And this is the point really. Humans will kill with or without religion. So to say they kill because of religion really begs the question: do they? Or is that just something they say to make excuses? Or is that just something they say for therapuetic purposes?
Did the crusaders kill because of religion? In a sense I guess, because they were told they were forgiven of their sins if they went. But ultimately they were defending the helpless as well as themselves. The Roman Empire, using Christianity as a symbol, withstood centuries of attacks from invading forces without fighting back, probably because they were a Christian empire. It sat back and watched two thirds of its territory get taken over by invading forces before it finally made an aggressive move with the crusades. Now if the Roman Empire wasn't Christian, would they have waited so long before fighting back? I can't think of any Empire in recorded history that would have sat by and watched that take place. Certainly no atheistic Empire would have done that. But Christianity encouraged pacifism, and it was only in the face of inevitable destruction that the crusades were called.
The fact is, recent history tells us that a religious dictator is less likely to slaughter his own population, than one who is an atheist. This is because as a theist, he is bound by the positive standards and expectations that exist in religion whereas an atheist is bound by nothing.
I do not think that those who read a little about the history of the Roman Empire, both Western and Eastern, after the conversion of Constantine will recognise dartagnan's picture of a kindly and pacifist organisation.
And, so far as I can see, he seems to be under the impression that the crusades were launched by 'The Roman Empire'. The Roman Empire divided into Eastern and Western branches in 286, and the western branch was extinguished with the deposition of Romulus Augustulus in 476. Since the first crusade was not launched until 1095, the Western Roman Empire, as a political entity, played no part in any crusades. (The later entity that called itself the 'Holy Roman Empire' has been well described as 'neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire'.)
The eastern branch, with its capital at Constantinople, was a great and highly effective military power, which used a combination of force, diplomacy and bribery to maintain (and as far as possible expand) its frontiers against a series of adversaries such as the Persians, the Bulgars and the Arabs. In 1071 the empire made a great thrust against the rising power of the Seljuq Turks, and it was the disastrous failure of this attack at Manzikert which put the empire so much on the back foot that it called for help from the west. Hence the first crusade, whose results were by no means entirely welcome to the Eastern Emperor; instead of a disciplined mercenary force to add to his armies, there flooded across his empire a horde of what appeared to his citizens to be largely undisciplined barbarians. During the fourth crusade, in 1204, the soldiers of the cross (who had demanded a large payment from the emperor, which he had failed to pay) attacked and captured Constantinople, the capital of the Roman empire, and pillaged it savagely for three days. The damage done by this crusade is widely held to have sent the empire on a downwards course that led to its eventual fall in 1453.
"Defending the helpless as well as themselves"? "Withstood centuries of attacks from invading forces without fighting back"? Dartagnan is perfectly entitled to express his own views on such matters.
Others are entitled to use his post as the basis for making a rough estimate (subject, no doubt, to later refinement) of how reliable his historical generalisations may be. It's a free board.
[edited slightly for typos]