Nick Arnett wrote:
On 7/29/06, Brother John <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> We ourselves used to be
an enormously fertile and prolific people. Our ascendancy over the
Native Americans who were here before us is as much a factor of the
difference in our relative birthrates as anything else.
Cite, please. Seems to me that the death rate among the indigenous
people
had a whole lot more to do with it.
While I have studied a lot of Native American history, I am unaware of
any sociological studies to back up what I claim. I do know that the
number of wagon trains passing through the lands that belonged to the
Plains Indians on their way west caused them to despair because of the
great numbers of them. Also, a few of them traveled east to where those
wagon trains originated and came back and told their peoples that the
Whiteman seeming outnumbered the stars of heaven. They were appalled by
the sheer size of our population as it moved west. If they themselves
were propagating in such numbers, something that could only occur if
they were primarily a sedentary and agricultural people which they were
not, our conquest of the New World would have been much more difficult.
We overran the Indians primarily because we were an agricultural people
and they were hunter-gatherers. As a result we could support a much
larger population than they could because our ability to feed our
families was so much better then theirs. Many of the native tribes
practiced various forms of birth control, abortion and even infanticide
which was common among some of the tribes when they could not feed
themselves. Virtually all of the Native Americans in the New World who
lived in large cities and had what we think of as "civilization"
practiced human sacrifice as part of their religion. And in all of
those native religions ritual cannibalism played a role. The Aztec
didn't just kill thousands upon thousands of captives on top of those
pyramids. After ripping out those still beating hearts, the priests ate
them. Obviously their attitudes toward the sanctity of life was
somewhat different from ours.
Of course we "eat" and "drink" the body and blood of our God in our own
Christian communion services. Is that not human sacrifice and
cannibalism too, at least symbolically?
Cultures that reproduce replace cultures that don't. Do I actually have
to find scientific "evidence" to back that claim? I should think it
would be rather obvious to anyone who knows anything about ecology or
biology.
John W. Redelfs [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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"Since we are all children of the same Heavenly Father,
we really are all brothers and sisters." --Uncle Bob
============================================
All my opinions are tentative pending further data. --JWR
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