[xboxcreature]

A lot of people seem to mix up religion and spirituality. Many scientists, athiests, etc. try to link things done by religion to disprove spirituality. Religion is the construct; the church system, clergy, ceremonies, rituals, etc. while spirituality is the connection between humans and God. The crusades was a war, wars are fought between two or more different organizations most often governments. After the start of the catholic church things turned horrible. The clergy, headed by the Pope, became an almost co-existing government system among nations having it's control in each nation from taxing to causing wars. The war was fought by the church and the "religion" (the body of persons adhering to a particular set of beliefs and practices) not by God, so why is all of the blame going to Him? The clergy claimed to have been told by God to do these things, but is it also not possible that they were corrupt in their positions of power and, as how the posession of power usually causes one to crave more of it, they just wanted more control. No clergyman was ever and none will ever be perfect. It's like the ol' saying goes "We're human, we're not perfect" The clergy are human, could they have wrongly used the Word of God to further enhance their new "government"?

All I'm saying is don't use the excuse of bad religion as a black mark on the spiritual nature of God...