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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

#51
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…

That is a very astute observation. Those of us who've seen secular humanist tenets of "rights", being cynically used for all sorts of geopolitical ends, will realize how easy it is to excite folk with such talking points.

People don't realize the dangers of such universalist notions.

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

#52

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.

That's a good point; British "agnostic" "liberals" (incl. notably Mill), often defended the British task of "civilizing the barbarians" the world over.

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

#53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Without a mechanistic view of things, predestination is impossible. So without God, Calvinism gives us a sense of the universe as a great machine.

Other cultures may see the universe as a great mountain or a great tree.....

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

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

That is a very astute observation. Those of us who've seen secular humanist tenets of "rights", being cynically used for all sorts of geopolitical ends, will realize how easy it is to excite folk with such talking points. People don't realize the dangers of such universalist notions.

And of course there is no cross-cultural empistemology that allows us to know which rights are universal, so they always become an excuse to power.

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

#55
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You are right.

Maybe I should just flag and move on.

I still hope I am right when I say I never start and I rarely downvote opponents, instead trying to present the other forgotten point of view :-/

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

#56
post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would say that nothing beats the genocide of the Americas for sheer scope, numbers, duration, and cultural loss. All of your examples ended in a decade or two, that lasted centuries.

My intent is not to diminish the genocide of the Americas but.... I don't think you realize how many people Stalin, Mao, Hitler have killed. We all know Hitler had to resort to incineration to get rid of the bodies. Stalin filled mines with the remains of Ukrainians and others. They couldn't dig holes big enough to bury the dead. I have no idea what Mao did with the 50-80 million bodies he had on his hands. Between j…

I know how many those people killed. I don't know why you think I don't.

The absolute numbers may well favor the atheists. But there's only one reason for that: those are who the genocidal maniacs happened to be in the 20th century. The next genocidal maniac will probably blow all of those away, regardless of religious beliefs, simply because of the number of people available to kill, and the technology available with which to kill them.

The world population at the time of the Great Leap Forward was 2.4x larger than at the time of the Taiping Rebellion. It was about 6x larger than at the time of the French Wars of Religion and the early phases of the conquest of the Americas, 10x larger than when the Crusades got started, and 15x larger than when the An Lushan Rebellion killed perhaps 5% of all humans on the planet.

It would have been difficult to kill 100 million people during the conquest of the Americas, because that probably would have required millions of immigrants just to bring the population back up to zero afterwards.

In terms of languages lost, cultures destroyed, peoples wiped out, land permanently lost to conquerers, and duration, the Americas "win" by a huge margin.

By the way, do you know why the Atlantic slave trade got started? It's not because Africans made such good slaves. It's because the conquerers of the Americas kept working their native slaves to death and began to run out of natives.

China's population recovered to the level prior to the Great Leap Forward in a few years. I'm not sure of the USSR's population ever significantly dropped, as it was a sort of slow burn that population growth kept up with. Europe's population recovered to pre-WWII levels in a few years. How long did it take the Native American population to recover to pre-contact levels? It's hard to tell, because the pre-contact civilizations were so devastated that there's no good idea of how many people there were, but it's likely that they still haven't recovered, and may never do so.

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

#57
post #40
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Subjugating people is bad. Outright genocide of massive proportions is even worse. The common factor here is empires, not religion. The Roman Empire for instance brutally killed many people. The Byzantines killed eg nearly all the Samaritans. The Spanish conquistadors brutally killed and destroyed entire civilizations eg Cortez and the Aztecs (who by the way were an empire themselves). The British and French were sli…

The Maori in New Zealand fought the English to a standstill, and forced them into a treaty which still stands today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Treaty_of_Waitangi

Thanks! You learn something new every day.

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

#58
post #19
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Catholics (and especially Jesuits) were given the task of baptizing natives and turning them into Christians. The church often came into conflict with the ruling class over their treatment. Other Christian churches often had the same obligations.

I'm not sure what that has to do with it. Everybody was religious, of course there were religious people on both sides of the "should we murder everybody in sight?" question.

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

#59
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Subjugating people is bad. Outright genocide of massive proportions is even worse. The common factor here is empires, not religion. The Roman Empire for instance brutally killed many people. The Byzantines killed eg nearly all the Samaritans. The Spanish conquistadors brutally killed and destroyed entire civilizations eg Cortez and the Aztecs (who by the way were an empire themselves). The British and French were sli…

I don't think anyone's saying atheist governments are incapable of committing crimes against humanity. What I was getting at originally was that religion or lack thereof is at best merely a pretext for geopolitical conflict, which you seem to agree with. The original comment I was responding to seems to want to promote the myth that somehow specifically Christian people and nations are somehow more ethical than atheists (and apparently non-Christian as he failed to recognize indigenous religions as such.)

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

#60
Shame that this is what usually happens when you gets conquered. You're literally at the mercy of your conquerors.

Why don't conquerors ever treat the people they conquered with respect, and work hard to make their life better? Why do conquerors always make life harder and worst for the people they conquered?

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