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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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Move over Kevin Costner. The Great WhiteMansplainer is in the sweat lodge.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Innuit is the native and Canadian word for Eskimo which started out as a perjorative word but is now accepted by most American Inuit as ok. Inca is a south American group. The two came from different migrations across the Bering strait. The Incas arrive 10,000 to 30,000 years ago and the Inuit only about 2,000 years ago. Their migration is so recent, a common Inuit language exists from eastern Siberia across to Greenland.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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As for Catholics and primitive religion, people really shouldn't sound off about things they are ignorant of. I grew up with all the same Protestant prejudices around me as just expressed on this thread. You can't get more Protestant than the southern Baptists I was surrounded by as a child in Texas. There's even a group of them who proudly call themselves "Primitive Baptists".
When I got old enough to check things out for myself, I discovered that half of what I had been told were out and out lies, and at least another 25% had been true 500 years ago but not anytime in recent centuries. As for moral virtue, the Southern Baptist Texas I spent my first years in was racially segregated, the perpetrators of regular cross burnings and lynchings and one of the first signs I ever sounded out when I was beginning to read was one outside our town that read, "N----r, don't let yourself be caught in this town after dark". Further north in the Panhandle of Texas we lived on a street corner that had three different Southern Baptist churches on the other three street corners. Members from each of the three churches visited our house to invite us to church and to warn us that the members of the other churches were going to hell.
And check out historical facts, the U.S. cavalry that massacred Cheyenne at Sandy Creek and the Lakota at Wounded Knee including women, children, and infants, were good old Protestants for the most part directed to do so by a Protestant president. The Bureau of Indian Affairs which took Native children away from their families and forbade them to speak their native languages, putting them in boarding schools where they were physically and sexually abused, were Protestants working at the direction of a Protestant government.
As for approaching God directly, I personally think a Catholic church priest who performs rituals and lets the parishioners think what they want during the service interferes much less with the individual's connnection to God than a Protestant preacher who either drones on for 45 minutes or shouts at people about how they ought to think for even longer periods of time. I have never seen a personality cult around a Catholic priest equivalent to the many I have seen around Protestant preachers.
And by the way, I am not Catholic.
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healyje
Trad climber
Portland, Oregon
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I'd say primitive works...
Blue, well, I guess that doesn't surprise me. You, like most folks, don't see what at this point is essentially a rear-guard action to a highly successful campaign of genocide in this nation and around the world.
Todays modern christians anyway, know that God is in each of us and is accessible by every individual, anytime of the day, anywhere!
So when did these 'modern' times begin? Because Native Americans were still being arrested for practicing their own spiritual belief right up until 1978; the Residential Schools ran until the '70s.
And here's a story from last year that kicks off with a story from my wife's reservation school (she's the only survivor of five children and her grandmother and peers still primarily spoke Interior Salish despite all the best attempts of the Jesuits to curb it going back generations before that, finally succeeding with her mother's and her generations).
Child abuse, genocide charges mount on Pope Francis, Queen, Jesuit, Archbishop
And don't think it's just a catholic deal or something in the distant past either, because it's not - if you know it, you can still see aboriginal genocide in action in this country, it just uses methods more subtle than the smallpox-tainted blankets and kidnapping of children which drove my wife's tribe to be declared 'extinct' in Canada with the few remaining US survivors driven onto the Colville Reservation with the survivors of eleven other tribes.
And what's always been the point of that spear of genocide around the world? Christian missionaries - as true today as it ever was.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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As for the word primitive, this was used even in social science and by anthropologists until fairly recent times. Using it now is about the equivalent of the word Negro. It's not terrible, but it's not looked well upon either.
The study referred to by PhilG which seems to represent a new line of thinking about religion and was published in a Biology journal which represents a new trend I think in religious studies, a kind of continuation of those begun by anthropologists when they began classifying religion by structural systems rather than belief, with categories like animistic, magical, mythological, transcendental, communitarian, cargo cult etc.
It's true as they say that in hunter-gatherer societies and early chiefdoms, religious tradition focused on rituals, sacrificial offerings, and taboos designed to ward off misfortune and evil.That said, they all had a moral component. It might not seem as evident from the outside however, as the religious life and daily life were more integrated then. One of the first things that strikes someone from our society even in an agricultural society is how religious ideas permeate every facet of daily life rather than being relegated to a special building for an hour or two a week.
As for ascetic religions originating with agriculture, I question this in light of practices like visions quests and sun dancers suspended from a pole by the flesh of one's chest. I recently had the privilege of speaking for several hours with the son of many generations of Lakota medicine men who showed me his many scars from the sun dance and described the rigors of the sweat lodge. When we talked about past history including the massacre at Wounded Knee which took some of his ancestors, I was amazed at how forgiving and generous of spirit he was - a true Christian in my books, although he had horror tales of his father being put in a BIA boarding school and whipped for speaking Lakota and was most assuredly a practitioner of the traditional Lakota religion.
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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They did indeed DMT. But the larger principle here is that I try to defend whoever is being unjustly attacked whether religionists by atheists or Catholics by Protestants.
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WBraun
climber
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Americans with all their technological advancements are still basically very primitive cavemen as far as their spiritual advancement.
The Native American Indian shaman still is far more advanced then the stooopid Americans
and their stoopid mental speculations as to what spiritual is .......
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Well thanks DMT ! :)
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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"...*...*...*... unjustly attacked whether religionists by atheists..."
Not. No. Not. No.
Busy day, so I won't elaborate the points. (Wouldn't do any good anyways, eh?)
But to describe religions and theisms 1000s of years old as NOT "primitive" in lots and lots of ways is simply ridiculous.
Sigh.
.....
for the more innovative, progressive...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itIRdx1pJ2I
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WBraun
climber
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This guy is the supreme stooopid primitive caveman ^^^^^^
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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Jan i feel ya
i may be a lost sheep? but i am in no way siding with any of the Churches designations(Mormon, Lutheran, Baptist,Etc, Buddhist, Hinduism, Scientism, Etc..) and especially not with any of their acts to control political reform, or acts through the government to further their religious agenda. i fiercely believe in separation of church and state! i believe that to be biblical. And siding within any of the designations always begets segregation. Look at the Mormons,they don't believe any of the other Christians can have a relationship with Christ because they are not of the same lineage as a mormon. Ridiculous! They have NO faith in the Holyspirit. Don't even get me started on them! i've been picking on "Catholic's" cause it's easy, and they are the most outspoken. Now forsure i am pointing at "The Catholic Church" and "The Mormon Church" and their agenda's. NOT any specific individual attending any "Church"! The main problem, when one sides with a church, one tends not to hear what the other churches are being taught by God. ALL these different Churches are supposedly modeled after Christ and His Church. Let us not forget, when Jesus taught/preached He went outside to a hillside, and All were welcome! And He did not call His people, mormon, or catholic. No. He laid out only two designations for His people; Gentile, or Jew. Period!
and i am not ignorant of my ignorance Jan! But i do have my ears wide open to learn. Thank you for your lessons. One thing i do know foresure, Jesus answers prayer
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WBraun
climber
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The Christian hypocrites always kill everything.
They never obey their commandment "Thou shalt not Kill"
Instead they make up stoopid sh!t saying animals have no soul and we have dominion over them and it only means do not murder.
Such stoopid interpretations, no wonder no one follows anymore.
Just chant Jesus all day and kill everything .....
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Jan
Mountain climber
Colorado, Nepal & Okinawa
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Hey blue, you've got wrong ideas about Mormons too.They're actually quite tolerant in their doctrine toward other faiths. Get them together in real life as the majority in a small town in the middle of the desert - not so much. And you're mistaken that they don't believe in the Holy Spirit. Anyway, you're a smart guy and creative and very ethical, so why not emphasize the positive and what works for you and just leave the others out of it?
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MH2
Boulder climber
Andy Cairns
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The Native American Indian shaman still is far more advanced then the stooopid Americans
Agreed. Both have typically depended upon killing animals. There the similarity ends.
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WBraun
climber
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You're stooopid as usual Tvash.
American Native never maintain slaughterhouse.
They offered all their needs first to the mother earth.
You can't think ever Tvash ....
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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American Indian religions are fairly primitive---if one holds to the notion that there exits a degree of social/cultural/technological complexity reflected in the historical progression of human societies, such as the transition from hunter gatherers to settled agriculturalism. The world's great monotheistic religions arose roughly contemporaneously and therefore reflected a tremendous sea change in the modus operandi of religion in general, and perhaps not for the first time.
If it can be said , as Pascal once did, that the religions of man are essentially spiritual technologies, then the question, posed earlier, as regards the presence of "morality" (in the nature of religions) is a question of pivotal significance.
As human societies increased in complexity, as they transitioned from earlier forms of subsistence and social organization ,certain specific requirements arose in establishing an objective uniformity of codes of conduct so that such societies could function amidst a tumultuous swirl of ever increasing barter,trade,litigation, employment, primogeniture, war, crime, sheer human numbers, and countless other requirements.
One of the oldest known efforts in this regard :
The Code of Hammurabi is a well-preserved Babylonian law code of ancient Mesopotamia, dating back to about 1754 BC. It is one of the oldest deciphered writings of significant length in the world. The sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi, enacted the code, and partial copies exist on a human-sized stone stele and various clay tablets. The Code consists of 282 laws, with scaled punishments, adjusting "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth" (lex talionis)[1] as graded depending on social status, of slave versus free man.[2] Nearly one-half of the Code deals with matters of contract, establishing, for example, the wages to be paid to an ox driver or a surgeon. Other provisions set the terms of a transaction, establishing the liability of a builder for a house that collapses, for example, or property that is damaged while left in the care of another. A third of the code addresses issues concerning household and family relationships such as inheritance, divorce, paternity and sexual behavior. Only one provision appears to impose obligations on an official; this provision establishes that a judge who reaches an incorrect decision is to be fined and removed from the bench permanently.[3] A handful of provisions address issues related to military service.
Fine and dandy, right? Apparently as the centuries progressed ( I'm jumping way ahead here and oversimplifying ) there developed a steady conflationary pressure brought to bare involving nominally secular civil laws and the further development of highly mobile monotheistic religions.
The precipitous millennarian movements of Judaism, but especially of Jesus and Mohammed, were largely stateless and therefore necessitated the adaption of continually reinforced codes of strict conduct operating outside of established authority. A sort of 'internal' Code of Hammurabi.
These groups did not invent standard morality nor the absolute determinism of strict religious observance, but in their eager hands it allowed them a sort of highly cohesive,adaptive ,streamlined social/political/religious technology , suited for the times, and capable of incredible power and influence and durability.
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Tvash
climber
Seattle
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I'd say Tenochitlan, Palenque, and Cuzco indicate that Native American religions were anything but primitive by any western standard any westerner can concoct.
Native American Religion. Let's get some Quechua, Maya, Lokata, and Innuit in a room and talk about what Eurasian Religion has to say about all this.
Winner-centric is what history does.
It's probably true that native american religions were more nature-centric than the Abrahamics. Considering how nature is almost entirely left out of our western faiths of choice, this isn't saying much.
Now morality? Well, that can vary - cladistic genetic variation + divergent meme evolution at work. Sometimes righteous means cutting the beating heart out of a virgin, and sometimes it means just burning her. Sometimes dancing around a pole hanging from a spike through your chest is a good thing, and sometimes you go to jail for it.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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you're mistaken that they don't believe in the Holy Spirit.
Jan don't get me wrong. Some of the Mormon's i've met are as good of friends and family as anyone could ever hope for! After i was baptized by the church, They then asked me to get re-baptized for all of my dead relatives who had been baptized by a different Church. You see, They believe John the Baptist and Jesus met Joseph Smith in New York and baptized him to re-start the original lineage. Without being baptized under this lineage no one is Truly baptized. And that if a person was truly a christian, but hadn't been baptized under this lineage their soul would jus be floating around in the spirit world until someone calls their name and allows that spirit to enter their body to be baptized correctly. Thus their church has the only correct way to heaven.
my jab at them not having faith in the HS is over this! So i asked them, when Jesus was baptized the HS descended on Him through a dove, so if this doesn't happen is one truly baptized?! Now i understand the bible is a spiritual manual. The outward act of being dunked underwater and coming up 'cleansed' is purely for the congregation to witness. For the soul to be truly baptized, and holy enough to allow for the HS to dwell. One only needs to change his will, and clean his conscious.
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BLUEBLOCR
Social climber
joshua tree
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but especially of Jesus and Mohammed, were largely stateless and therefore necessitated the adaption of continually reinforced codes of strict conduct operating outside of established authority. A sort of internal Code of Hammurabi.
putting mohammed in the same bucket as Jesus, is like calling an octopus a fish.
do you even know what Jesus preached? If you do could you tell me of any one of these continually reinforced codes of strict conduct? i mean, i know jesus told his disciples to stay and wait for the HS before going out and spreading the word. And when in Rome act like a Roman, but what else?
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Ward Trotter
Trad climber
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We would rather have laws written by the patron of this great city, the man called the "world's most sincere Democrat," St. Francis of Assisi, than laws written by Darwin.
An indication of how terminally confused this man was.
St. Francis opposite Darwin?? Both "writing laws".St. Francis a Democrat, pure of heart and sincerity .Darwin ,presumably an evil hand-wringing robber baron Republican, resembling WC Fields at a hand of poker.
I have been told for years how brilliant this speech was. If this was a brilliant speech by a preeminent politician it's now even clearer why our government has become this severely dysfunctional.
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