At 04:17 PM 2/10/00 -0700, dfsiemensjr@juno.com wrote:
I think this also bears
>on Glenn's problem with non-human hominids. IMO, whatever "cousins" we
>may have had in the past, all persons now living are descendants of the
>first man, the first entity to bear the image of God. Empirically, the
>evidence of this is that all races are completely interfertile and all
>are religious--though some of the religions are strange and some are not
>recognized as such.
I fully agree that all on earth are descended from Adam. But I must make a
minor correction to the statment that all are religious. I hear this a lot
but it may not be true. I had a boss who was an atheist who was the most
consistent non-religious person I have ever known. He knew of my religious
persuasions and didn't care nor did he find religion interesting although
we had many conversations about it. He honestly thought it was an
irrelevancy.
Beyond that there are the Ona, a tribe of Tierra del Fuegans. Bridges, the
son of a missionary to them, wrote of them in a fascinating book. I need to
define a couple of terms before the quote:
Klokten were novices in the men's lodge of the Ona. Initiates who had
passed their first exam.
a joon was a magician or medicine man.
"I have met white men who told strange stories of Tierra del Fuego, and, as
far as I could judge, believed in what they told. One claimed to have
found a mysterious spot in the Forest, where there was a great stone on
which human sacrifices had recently been made. Another spoke of a cave
where young guanaco, fat birds and other luxuries were deposited as gifts
to the gods, later to be devoured, no doubt, by some cunning medicine-man
or priest. I heard one lecturer solemnly telling his audience:
'They believe in a god called klokten'
Imagine anyone giving a talk on the Navy, and announcing:
"They believe in a god called Midshipman.'
"According to other so-called explorers, the Ona also worshiped Hyewhi,
which means a song or chant, and joon, which has occurred too often in
these pages to need translation here. One authority went so far as to
prove, to his own satisfaction, that Joon, is directly derived from the
Hebrew Jehovah."
"These stories demonstrate how a vivid imagination, combined with wishful
thinking and the desire to impart interesting information, may influence a
certain type of otherwise enlightened and educated men.
"During the many hours I passed in the Lodge, listening to the exhorations
of the older men, and during the years I spent almost exclusively in the
company of the Ona Indiands, I never heard a word that pointed to religion
or worship of any kind; no expectation or hope of reward--no fear of
punishement--in a future life. There was dread of death by witchcraft and a
lesser dread of the ghosts of the woods, but not the ghosts of the departed
dead. Respect there was for individual mountains such as Heuhupen, who,
annoyed at being rudely pointed at, might wrap herself in clouds and bring
on bad weather. Fear of death, end of life, may have existed; possibly
some unexpressed terror of the unknown; but there was no worship, no
prayer, no god, no devil." ~ E. Lucas Bridges, The Uttermost Part of the
Earth, (New York: Dutton, 1949), p.429
Thus it may not be factually correct that all men are religious.
glenn
Foundation, Fall and Flood
Adam, Apes and Anthropology
http://www.flash.net/~mortongr/dmd.htm
Lots of information on creation/evolution
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