Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian View Post
Sure, instead of religion we can pervert an ideology. The fact remains that when Europeans were more religious they were also more violent. And, no, it doesn't have anything to do with crusades, as Frags says, we can look at Thirty Years War, a nice pan European conflict and in reality a mass slaughter of those following different branch of Christianity.
It was a post-30YW yet still religious Europe that developed what Ataturk described as the one civilisation. Religious arguments were behind the pushes for equal treatment of Man, better treatment of the weak beyond what we needed to, etc.