🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <61hp1q$23v@bgtnsc03.worldnet.att.net>,
M. Poletti <polz@junoxxx.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 7 Oct 1997 20:55:59 -0700, Tracy Hornschuch
><browntr@engr.orst.edu> wrote:
>
>>:}No Karl, read your history books... it was a bunch of *good* Christians
>>:}who believed that.  It was Christians who caused and supported slavery.
>>:}It was Christians who labeled people as savages.  Isn't it funny that many
>>:}of those people that they called savages ended up teaching those *good*
>>:}Christians descent medical pratices, good environmental skills, etc. etc.
>>:}etc.  Let's not get on this argument... history speaks for itself.  How
>>:}many people died in the hands of a so-called *good* Germany Christian
>>:}named Hitler?  And why?  Because they were not Christian...
>*	*	*	*	*
>
>sarsok@ibm.net (Gary Paul Sarsok) wrote:
>
>Hitler was not a Christian, he embraced nordic paganism. When Cortez
>first came to Mexico and witnessed Aztec religious practices, such as
>plunging a knife into the chest and then eating the heart while it was
>still beating, he decided to conquer this pagan nation, much as
>

this kind of phony rationaling is the reason why people have repeatedly
used religion as a cover for barbaric practices.  cortez conquered the
aztecs because they were pagan?  please.  you mean the slaughter of
the aztecs (and other peoples in the colonized world) to bring them
under colonial subjugation was *not* savage? you've got to be kidding;
or extremely "religious".

to continue, colonialism had nothing to do with "saving" people from
savagery - it was about the accumulation of wealth.  religion just
created the cover to make savagery against these natives palatable to
the people back home.  i mean, since they weren't christians but savage
pagans, you didn't really have to treat them like you would treat
"real people".


>America had to conquer Germany, because of her retreat into savagery
>and paganism. If you knew anything about history Tracy, you would
>recognize that organizations such as NOW, who embrace infanticide and
>other pagan practices, plunge the world into anarchy. It is the
>Christians who attempt to bring the world back from the brink of the
>Dark Ages. It was fellow Negro's that sold their own into slavery,
>that does not make it right, but it does show duplicity. 
>

i see, so is it your contention that these "negroes" went to europe to
sell them on the idea of colonizing the african continent, massacring
it's people by the 10's of millions, and forcing millions more into
slavery?


>As for the "savages" teaching the good Christians "descent medical
>pratices, good environmental skills," it appears that Hornschuch
>is the one that needs to brush up on his/her history. In fact,
>it was Christian individuals and missions that introduced modern
>education, advanced technical skills and more advanced hygiene
>practices in many areas, particularly Africa. The great Kenyan
>leader Jomo Kenyatta for example was educated in one such
>mission school. 
>

yeah, but did you ever ask yourself *who* is writing the histories
that you are reading.  i mean, do you really expect the histories
which are standard educational canon in this society to talk of
the horrors and savagery of colonial subjugation.  did it ever
occur to you that, on what is now call the continent of africa,
you had highly developed societies that traded with other societies
in europe and asia?  i mean, how do you think that the europeans
figured out that there was wealth on the continent of africa were
it not for the fact that there were already established trading
ties?  you don't actually think that europeans went headlong into
the jungle just for the hell of it, with no idea whether there was
anything there or not?  i suspect that the question never occurred
to you...

that said, it's a bit lame for "christian individuals and missions"
to hold themselves up as heroes for "saving" a culture that they
had previously destroyed as a result of hundreds of years of
colonial oppression.


>It was Christian individuals and groups that lobbied hard against
>such "advanced" non-Christian practices as head-hunting and
>cannibalism, and also the sutee in India, a quaint custom requiring
>that widows should be burnt alive after their husbands died. 
>

hmm, so when i see pictures of mobs of white people after a black
person was lynched, or burned alive on a stake (events which gathered
crowds as large as 10,000) in the united states earlier this century,
i suppose that i can safely conclude that *none* of those white people
were "christians" since no christian would engage in such savage
practices...


>To repeat a phrase "history speaks for itself.."
>

...but, in reality, as you've shown in your post, "history says what you
want it to say."

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