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The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

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Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#41

Post by reitanqild »

0134340 wrote: post #26
reitanqild wrote: post #5

> Christianity even today is used to excuse persecution and oppress. I guess that is totally fair as long as we also keep in mind that most of the biggest crimes against humanity were committed by proclaimed atheists.

Still, none of those were committed in the doctrine of atheism. Atheism has no doctrine yet you can point to many people who kill today and many in the past who point to their holy texts after they've cut people's heads off, drowned "witches" and otherwise stole life and land in the name of their gods.

Splitting hairs?

A number of atrocities has been made in effort to rid the world of the plague of religion. Call it ateism or what, point is they made a point out of being non-religious and they were extremely cruel and effective.

Now, listen up. I'm not here to attack atheists or non-believers. I only do when they start by proclaiming how religion is the root of all evil.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#42

Post by reitanqild »

vacri wrote: post #38
reitanqild wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen up: I'm not here to pick on atheists. I do have many friends who are and I think I see many who behave more decently than many religious. It is only when someone mounts sweeping attacks on all or specific religions, based on things that, -while done in name of said religion-, are not described in the sacred texts of said religion, -then I do use the opportunity to gove a little history lesson. Because if I and…

As an atheist, why should I feel bad because someone else also lacked a belief in any particular religion? There's no atheist text to follow, no atheist moral guidelines. It's just an absence of belief in religion - there's no shared base there. Similarly, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot weren't working off some sort of atheist guidebook; atheism was incidental to their 'religion', which was communism. They didn't spread at…

> And as the OP said, Christianity today is still used to persecute and oppress. Catholicism still covers up paedophile priests. There are states in the US where an atheist is barred from holding office. Fake 'faith healers' continuously bilk people out of their money. Some flavours of the faith don't allow women to be priests.

I defend none of it.

Just be so intellectually honest as to admit that Christianity brought a number of good things and Atheists hasn't been without fault and we can meet in the middle.

As I have mentioned before I don't like religious flamewars on HN.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#43

Post by einhverfr »

formula1 wrote: post #2

This really hit home for me though I don't particularly care for the retelling of history as if it was a movie. I understand the need to give perspective in order to understand the effect that Europe had on Native Americans both in north and south america. I always relate it to an invasive species that out matches the an ecosystem and doesnt curb its hunger because there is no reason to. I find it particularly poetic…

Christianity, like Islam, and Secular Humanism is fundamentally internationalist, holding itself to be the universal ideal of correctness. Christianity and Islam both came out of, effectively the Roman Empire (in fact both the Mosque and Cathedral were built based on the plans of the same classes of Roman buildings). Secular Humanism is effectively a reinterpretation of Calvinism along atheistic lines.

As far as I can see, however, Orthodox Christianity didn't have the same history in this regard as Western Christianity did. Part of this was that the Eastern Empire lasted a lot longer, and part was that the spread occurred to Kiev and Novogorod under very different circumstances than it did to Denmark or the Franks. But in the West, the promise offered was that the Church (Roman) would help kings solidify power in return for conversion. It was from that promise that eventually the kings secured their independence by means of the reformation. And secular humanism is effectively an effort to banish competition to the state from the public square in this regard so it too is a further development of the same mistake.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#44

Post by einhverfr »

mikeash wrote: post #10
reitanqild wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't refute my point that the fact that Christians as well as "Christians" oppressed the Indians were mostly coincidental; had Europeans been atheists the results would have likely been very much worse for the natives.

I would love to know why you think atheists would have been worse.

Atheists would have been worse because it is not a problem of religion per se. Western Christianity always held out hope that the church could oppose the state (and sometimes did). There is no real room for any competition to the state in a fully atheistic society. That's why Mao and Stalin were so bad. It wasn't because of atheist doctrines (outside of atheistic political doctrines), but there was too much power concentrated in too few hands.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#45

Post by DanBC »

reitanqild wrote: post #42
vacri wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As an atheist, why should I feel bad because someone else also lacked a belief in any particular religion? There's no atheist text to follow, no atheist moral guidelines. It's just an absence of belief in religion - there's no shared base there. Similarly, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot weren't working off some sort of atheist guidebook; atheism was incidental to their 'religion', which was communism. They didn't spread at…

> And as the OP said, Christianity today is still used to persecute and oppress. Catholicism still covers up paedophile priests. There are states in the US where an atheist is barred from holding office. Fake 'faith healers' continuously bilk people out of their money. Some flavours of the faith don't allow women to be priests. I defend none of it. Just be so intellectually honest as to admit that Christianity brough…

> As I have mentioned before I don't like religious flamewars on HN.

You take part in a lot of them.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#46

Post by posterboy »

reitanqild wrote: post #41
0134340 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Still, none of those were committed in the doctrine of atheism. Atheism has no doctrine yet you can point to many people who kill today and many in the past who point to their holy texts after they've cut people's heads off, drowned "witches" and otherwise stole life and land in the name of their gods.

Splitting hairs? A number of atrocities has been made in effort to rid the world of the plague of religion. Call it ateism or what, point is they made a point out of being non-religious and they were extremely cruel and effective. Now, listen up. I'm not here to attack atheists or non-believers. I only do when they start by proclaiming how religion is the root of all evil.

You are right to partially dismiss this, because the Indians weren't oppressed because of religion. The sense of supremacy responsible, racism and narcissism etc., are rooted way deeper.

However, the points you argue weren't stated as absolute as you make them (using exaggeration as literary device?). On the one hand, "holding itself to be the universal ideal of correctness" is a correct characterization of religions. On the other, your view is partial in favor of religion, while religions as well state that atheism or any other religion is the root of all evil.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#47

Post by fennecfoxen »

enraged_camel wrote: post #22
reitanqild wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1) Please cite your statistical evidence. Mao, Stalin, Lenin, Pol Pot; all of them worse than everything even the Catholic church ever did.

Counterpoint 1: Christian Crusades. There were seven major ones and a bunch of minor ones. All of them resulted in untold amounts of death and misery, all in the name of religion. Counterpoint 2: On the side of Islam, there were an equal amount of major wars conducted in the name of religion, both against polytheists but also other monotheists. The Ottoman Empire by itself conquered large parts of three continents in…

The Christian Crusades were primarily a consequence of a complex geopolitical situation, a multi-century of clash of empires (in particular the Ottomans, Ummayads and the Byzantines) across multiple theatres from modern Spain to Jerusalem and beyond.

The real role that Christianity had to play in this clash was as the great unifier for a fractious western Europe wreaked by petty kings squabbling among themselves, turning their violence outward against common geopolitical foes rather than inward against each other. A pagan Europe would still have seen similar wars, it just would have had a harder time unifying to repel the encroachment of the eastern empires.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#48

Post by fennecfoxen »

reitanqild wrote: post #8
soosjak_kajooks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except, of course, the genocide of Native Americans - which was done by self proclaimed Christians.

Doesn't refute my point that the fact that Christians as well as "Christians" oppressed the Indians were mostly coincidental; had Europeans been atheists the results would have likely been very much worse for the natives.

>had Europeans been atheists

Silly counterfactual. A more interesting one would be if Europe had remained firmly Pagan instead of substantially Christianizing in the first millennium AD. In that case, one could imagine that no great religious alliances would oppose the Ummayad and Ottoman caliphates, nor would Byzantium hold out as long as it did... eventually we might be looking at an Islamic colonization of the New World, as the well-regarded Islamic traditions of science and scholarly inquiry ultimately discovered America.

A big question would be whether colonization and conquering would proceed at the same pace without the Spanish efforts, and if not, whether smallpox resistance and the like could have taken root and afforded the native American peoples a better fighting chance. And would the same ethnic groups be represented among the colonists? What slavery practices would we have seen?

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#49

Post by humanrebar »

einhverfr wrote: post #43
formula1 wrote: post #2

This really hit home for me though I don't particularly care for the retelling of history as if it was a movie. I understand the need to give perspective in order to understand the effect that Europe had on Native Americans both in north and south america. I always relate it to an invasive species that out matches the an ecosystem and doesnt curb its hunger because there is no reason to. I find it particularly poetic…

Christianity, like Islam, and Secular Humanism is fundamentally internationalist, holding itself to be the universal ideal of correctness. Christianity and Islam both came out of, effectively the Roman Empire (in fact both the Mosque and Cathedral were built based on the plans of the same classes of Roman buildings). Secular Humanism is effectively a reinterpretation of Calvinism along atheistic lines. As far as I ca…

> Secular Humanism is effectively a reinterpretation of Calvinism along atheistic lines.

Considering that predestination is a central theme of Calvinism, I have a hard time understanding this thought. Removing God from Calvinism doesn't leave one with much at all.

Re: The Last Florida Indians Will Now Die: The Westward Plight of the Apalachee

#50

Post by humanrebar »

vacri wrote: post #38
reitanqild wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Listen up: I'm not here to pick on atheists. I do have many friends who are and I think I see many who behave more decently than many religious. It is only when someone mounts sweeping attacks on all or specific religions, based on things that, -while done in name of said religion-, are not described in the sacred texts of said religion, -then I do use the opportunity to gove a little history lesson. Because if I and…

As an atheist, why should I feel bad because someone else also lacked a belief in any particular religion? There's no atheist text to follow, no atheist moral guidelines. It's just an absence of belief in religion - there's no shared base there. Similarly, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot weren't working off some sort of atheist guidebook; atheism was incidental to their 'religion', which was communism. They didn't spread at…

A lot of the confusion here has to do with the lack of regulation around the word "Christian". If a genuine evil person is deluded enough to call himself Christian, does that make Christianity responsible for his deeds? When a Muslim murders a club full of gay people or slits the throat of a Catholic priest, does HN upvote a comment that blames Islam?

> Some flavours of the faith don't allow women to be priests.

The only thing (arguably) Christian mentioned in this thread is this doctrinal issue because it's the only thing supported by some amount of scripture (though good-faith Christians disagree on this particular issue).

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