Britain's new cultural divide is not between Christian and Muslim, Hindu and Jew. It is between those who have faith and those who do not.

[bossykate]

fascinating article in today's guardian.

here

Are you really claiming that kidnapping women for rape wasn't a core part of native american culture ?
Really ?
To be sure, their fragile way of life could not survive, but it was heasing for a fall. The issues with adiet based upon maize screwed the more sourthern ones, and the northern ones were pathetically dependant upon a small range of food sources. Only surprise is they lasted that long.

You mean the big bad indian kidnapping the poor helpless white woman to rape her? Yes thats a myth.

I think, if Dawkins is annoyed (and I am prepared to consider the evidence and decide in favour of his being so), that it is because he has been banging on about this for 30 years and getting the same old misunderstandings and misrepresentations in response.

He is not trying to "convert" anyone to atheism, as atheism is not a religion and therefore does not seek converts. What he is trying to do is to get people to THINK. To question their beliefs rather than accepting blind faith. To apply the same rigorous criteria to claims of faith as one would to claims of science - evidence, method, results, conclusions. I don't think that's unfair, or militant, or fundamentalist, or anything else he has been accused of being.

I agree he isn't the fluffiest of debaters, but people shouldn't mistake sharpness of tone for arrogance in the actual content.

As for herbal remedies, either it works in independent clinical trials, in which case it's just "medicine", rather than "alternative medicine" - or it doesn't, in which case it's charlatanism. That's the only test needed.

On the morals/faith thing - having morals outside a religious framework is more than a matter of faith that what you are doing is right or wrong. It's all about seeing them in action. You treat people the way you would be expected to be treated yourself - that's the basis of it. So you don't steal, because you wouldn't want to be stolen from. It's not perfect, but neither is Christian morality.

that's not what he means paula.

it did last a long time though didn't it DC?

are you saying that all amer-indian cultures had rape and kidnap of women at their core? are you sure you're saying that?

What Tribe did you visit?

Dead ones.
Can't see how you can deduce much about the way cultures were by talking to the people given the terrible things that happened to them.

you seem to be deducing quite a lot by doing so though???

I'm saying it was very widespread in the N.American nations. Why do you think they wanted the horses ? Polo ?

Message withdrawn

Kidnapping women was courtship - still is in lots of cultures. It's not particular to Native Amenrcans

Courtship ? Right. So none of them died in the process right ?
Wrong.

DC...tell me you have a view on boarding schools.....on the other thread.

i'm guessing here....anti? i'm a hopeless hopeful case aren't i?

Yes, there is always balance to be struck.
But the smoking analogy is a big weak.
Smoking actually harms people, fools chanting prayers do not. Banning smoking is nowhere near the same as banning public prayer.

Smokers get it in the neck these days, but only when they affect others.
Unlike religious groups they don't get exemmptions because they genuinely believe it does not harm. because objectively we know it does.
That's the big problem. The pandering to religious "beliefs", even when their argument is based upon stupidly obsolete biology, or pathetic mistranslations of their own holy books.

The law has a legitimate role to play when someone exercises power over another, or when the state's money is used to fund it.

Thus when Christians refuse access to services on the basis of sexuality or race, that is exercising power.
When they use their power over state funded schools to discriminate against disabled children or those whose parents don't follow their religion, then again the state has a legitimate role.
If someone denies a job on the basis of religion, again it is proper for others to balance the power of the bigoted employer.
It is not legitimate as many Moslems say they want for women to get nothing but what they stand up in after a divorce.
It is not legitimate for a religious group to have any say on what contraception is allowed used people who don't even believe in that religion.

Why are you asking a rhetorical question and then answering it yourself DC? You misunderstand the point I was making.

DC: judging anyone's culture on the basis of what their ancestors did doesn't get you very far. The rape of children was very common in Victorian England (at least, the sale of poor children into brothels and the high price charged for sexual access to them) because sex with a guaranteed virgin (when the age of consent was 12) was believed to be a cure for syphilis.

Bloss: there's a kind of consensus among religous and non-religious people, on the whole, about what freedoms need to be constrained. For instance, there's a pretty broad, scientifically-backed, consensus that being exposed to cigarette smoke doesn't do you any good, yet there's only really a religious argument for constraining people's freedom to, for instance, criticze religious teaching or laugh at it unmercifully.

Hello. I've been looking up the native American stuff and the evidence I've seen is that historically rape was extremely rare in native american societies. Courtship rituals were rather gentler than you suggest. There would be a huge dance (would go on for days) for eligible girls and men (girls marriageable in early teens) after which if a boy saw a girl he liked, he would talk to his mother who would talk to the girl's mother and they would decide if it was a suitable match. If the girl's motehr agreed, he would go to her tent when she was sleeping holding a light, if she liked what she saw, she'd blow out the light.... Otherwise he'd have to go through some palaver with a courting flute and repeat process until girl gave in or complained to her mother, presumably
Nowadays, sadly rape and violence is absolutely catastrophically endemic in Native American society. But that does appear to be the result of the appalling mistreatment of their people by white people, including the casual and routine rape of American Indian women by settlers.

But what this has to do with religion, I'm not absolutely sure (except maybe that the settlers would have thought themselves very Christian and superior, though Jesus would probably have disagreed with that, to be fair).

Message withdrawn

Rape has always had penaties within communities, but I think it has a practice in most cultures at some point to 'outsource' as it were and women were kidnapped and raped by their putative husbands as a matter of course in this instance.

I don't know anything about native american culture these days BTW. Just thinking of a generic hunter/gathererer community.

Horses made hunting easier for them, especially in the plain states where buffalo was hunted.

Madamez, I was very specifically talking about the failings of "ancient wisdom", ie how crap things were in the "good old days".
Obviously modern Indian or British culture is somehow evolved from it, but they serve more to show the horrors of religious cultures, and that there never was such a thing as the "noble savage".
I'm glad bloss reminded me of Australia.
So far humanityu has destroyed two ecosystems, one in Australia which until the arrival of "ancient wise" Aborigines was a very different and more lush place, and what we now call Iraq which had pretty much our first civilisation.
Both were utterly trashed by "ancient wisdom".

The Aborigines became "in harmony with their environment" in the same way that if you surround people by solid concrete and steel they do very little harm to it.

Sophable, you're not alone. I don't want to get drawn in to the unpleasantness though. I've always loved Dawkin's work, been reading him for years now, but his latest (sometimes amusing) kick has many scientists cringing. His latest stance SOUNDS fundamentalist in the way that it totally dismisses any other belief system as bunkum. There is no respect or agreeing to differ. I understand why he's doing it in a way, but joining the fundamentalists isn't a really the way to beat them, funny as it is. For many years I've viewed this type of atheism and religious fundamentalism as two sides of the same coin. Agnosticism is a more sensible position to take if you don't believe in God, imho. We don't know nearly enough about the universe yet to make such definite proclamations. That's not to say that we don't know a lot - we know loads - but it's a vast and complex place. I'll continue to read Dawkins though, because he's amusing at the moment and (usually) a very clever man.

DC, why is my reading of Native American courtship rituals so different to yours? I have been reading up on it as yours sounded so bizarre and have found a very different society, often matriarchal, and actually NO institualised rape and, in fact, a striking absence of rape as a crime. Flutes a-plenty though.

Droile, are you agnostic about Thor?