The Crusades

Religion, many say that it has hampered the development of culture, that it has caused more harm to human kind than good. While it is true that many wars have been fought on religious principle, it is also true that western civilization is founded on the principles of religion- for better or for worse. Major religious movements have shaped the actions of leaders, caused brilliant minds to advance technology, and provided muses to the great artists of the world. Religion has produced some of the greatest inventions, art and architecture, and greatly effected the course of human events. The major influence of religion on art and architecture starts with the greek and is seen well into the renaissance . The greek paid homage to their gods
The strongest evidence of this is the Crusades, which served to reclaim the ‘holy-land’ for Christendom, and also served to create a divide between the three major religions in the west that would later have wide reaching effects. The Crusades are a major turning point of wester culture in that they changed the values and structure of Europe, the birthplace of all western culture, and in that they would be christianity’s last holy wars. The Crusades changed the fundaments of western culture by helping to end the feudal culture of Europe and setting about the factors that brought about the renaissance. Without religion, crusader would never have been exposed to the spices, goods, and exposure to classical culture that was necessary to drive trade and end the dark ages. Without religion it is doubtful if this would have happened as quickly as it did. Religion has also caused some of the most abjectly deplorable acts in human history suck as the Spanish Inquisition which targeted and murdered non christians at the urging of the catholic rulers of Spain, it is certain that without religion genocide would have been far less common in western
Religions in general offer supernatural explanations for scientific phenomenon; this decreases the demand for actual scientific proof and prolonged the scientific process. The church did however provide the need for such inventions as the printing press which would likely have been invented much later had Johannes Gutenberg not pioneered movable type to aid in the printing of The Holy Bible. Even inventions as simple as bound books came out of a necessity to replace literary scroll. In the same way, however, religion hampered the advancement of medical technology because, to those who truly believed the almighty controlled the health of the sick, so there was no reason to try and help