User blog comment:LurkerLordB/Religion in a world without Christianity/@comment-97.102.131.191-20120423011502/@comment-1630894-20120423012409

Or Christianity could have arisen and failed to spread, but then died out quickly. Or Jesus could never have been born or never started his religion.

The Crusades and Islam I suppose you are right. As for the holocaust, that was motivated more by Hitlers racism than by his bizarre religious views (in fact, due to the emphasis he placed on Germanic myth, it could have been worse). I don't see how the Byzantines wouldn't have existed, they would have resisted the Germans and Slavs simply due to their geography. In fact, if without Islam no Arabian empires arose to take Egypt and Syria, it could have lasted even longer. As for the Renaissance, certainly the idea of Rome lasted for a while due to the Roman Catholics, but it is possible that they could have been inspired nonetheless, and if they still followed the Roman religion, they would have greater reason. Non-Christian art would doubtless exist, as could crests for non-Christian religious artifacts (which didn't do much either). Christmas and Easter are both based upon old pagan holidays anyways, so there would be others.