OrgoneConclusion said:

harass us mercilessly

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DimensionX said:

For full article http://www.smh.com.au/news/world/pope-admits-crimes-of-christian-colonisation/2007/05/24/1179601579676.html

"CONFRONTED with continued anger in Latin America, Pope Benedict has acknowledged that the Christian colonisation of Indian populations was not as rosy as he portrayed in a speech this month in Brazil.

The Pope did not apologise, as some indigenous and Latin American leaders have demanded. However, he did say it was impossible to ignore the dark "shadows" and "unjustified crimes" that accompanied the evangelisation of the New World by Catholic priests in the 15th and 16th centuries.

"It is not possible to forget the sufferings and injustices inflicted by the colonisers on the indigenous population, whose fundamental human rights were often trampled upon," the Pope said in his weekly public audience in St Peter's Square on Wednesday. "Certainly, the memory of a glorious past cannot ignore the shadows that accompanied the work of evangelising the Latin American continent."

Still, he said, recognizing the sins should not detract from the good achieved by the missionaries: "Mentioning this must not prevent us from acknowledging with gratitude the marvelous work accomplished by the divine grace among these people."

They basically committed Nazi style atrocities, they refuse to apologise and think that some good came out of what they did. And yet, people think its perfectly acceptable to join organizations such as this.

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OrgoneConclusion said:

Why is it difficult to answer my question?

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So voluntarily entering a DEBATE forum wherein one is going to be CHALLENGED is the same as someone knocking on your door to convert you, giving you a pamphlet on the street telling you are going to burn in hell and passing laws against mushroom use and abortion and...

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He left off the question mark. 

Visionary Tools said:

Acinaxuz said:

As an example, Christianity you are told what to believe, you are told how to behave. Is Islam really so different in those terms?

-Zuxa

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Not really, just one has symbolic cannibalism, and the other does away with the pretense of taking entheogens altogether.

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Aye, that statement was more in reference to the control factor, not insinuating anything other than.

The tradition of cannibalism goes back ages as a death right of the family (to ingest the flesh of their loved one), a religious right of priests and elders for ceremonies, and treatment for illness. There have been documented accounts, from various cultures and religions of people ingesting blood, flesh and even pieces of mummies to cure ailments, and this went on well into the 1700s. In some Native tribes it was believed that to eat the flesh of your enemy was a means of obtaining their strengths in battle.

What better cure or means of gaining spiritual strength than to ingest that of a healer or profit? By ingesting the flesh and the blood of Christ, you are now holy and aided in curing your sins and righting your wrongs, able to see your path. Christ is within you now takes on a very literal meaning. The use of alcohol as opposed to the use of water could have just to give it an individualized, "special" connotation. You're more likely to drink water daily, than wine.

The last supper where Jesus is said to have delivered the speech of 'eat this bread for it is my body' and 'drink this wine for it is my blood' IMO is mindful of the cannibalism tradition. You wouldn't want Jesus' body devoured before he was set to rise again! Instead, by blessing the bread and wine, he thus preserved himself and the tradition of gaining cures, strength, and enlightenment through the ingestion of another's essence, simultaneously. Maybe this wasn't the purpose of doing so, but it's an interesting thought none-the-less.

I could see this being a means of easing transition from a Cannibalistic belief system to Christianity as well. My reservation was torn apart by missionaries, people were enslaved, forced out of their language, ceremonies, beliefs, everything. The missionaries however needed these people to believe. After all, they were rescuing "savages". There is record that they began drawing upon religious similarity to gain the trust and therefore the faith of the "savages", to ease transition. And because it was thought that anyone not of the same, I'll use the term Culture, were cannibals I surely see how this could have come to pass.

The obsession of cannibalism by the generalized historical (namely European) population interests me. Explorers over time made profits from reporting their discoveries of new peoples. In some cases, most of the information, regarding new cultures, published was completely false. Other cases, the act of ceremonial cannibalism was misconstrued and taken entirely out of context.

Interesting examples of explorer recorded Cannibalism would be places like Vanuatu. Easter Island is a more mainstream reference or the Aztecs. I find it interesting that while the reasons behind the cannibalism are all different, many are all fairly similarly recorded in the context of exaggeration and misunderstanding. (exempt are the Aztecs who attempted to assist in the recording of their culture... though, I find the resources extremely interesting and still think it's worth the ponder)

I'm not sure that symbolic cannibalism took the place of entheogens, as the use of entheogens were present and used differently in some of the same cultures that you find European and self-recorded cannibalism. I find it much more likely that they did so to limit the ingestion of human flesh while retaining the spiritual and medical benefits of chowing down on a hunk of human and to ease in transition. Not to mention preservation of Jesus' cadaver itself!

As a side note, is there a fair comparison you think between the cannibalism of brains and zombies? Because cannibalism existed in terms of dining on brains, zombies coming to reclaim what's theirs? I've never looked into it, but, I'm sure there's a deep-seated belief buried in there somewhere.

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And that's a point where a religion stops being such, and becomes a political organisation. Unfortunately a lot of people cannot seem to accept that *gasp* organisations such as christianity, judaism and islam use their sway to affect political decisions in their favour, to the detriment of people not of that religion.

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I agree, and it makes me

-Zuxa

Veritas said:

Your original statement seemed to compare the harassment you claim to receive on this site from non-Christians with the harassment perpetuated by Christians in the social and legal systems.

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Of course, you have made this claim before & have not yet produced any actual instances in which you have been harassed for your beliefs on this site, so this may be why you declined to respond to his question.

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