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Date: 20 Jul 2000 00:00:00 GMT
Subject: Religious rogues (was: war water)
Message-ID: <20000720183346.29025.00000001@ng-fn1.aol.com>
Organization: AOL http://www.aol.com
Newsgroups: alt.religion.orisha
X-Admin: news@aol.com
In article < 8l5do5$8cl$0@dosa.alt.net > karl@FS.Denninger.Net (Karl
Denninger) wrote:
>In article <20000719173508.29937.00001291@ng-ca1.aol.com>,
>>In article <8l28r2$2s5$0@dosa.alt.net>,
>> karl@FS.Denninger.Net (Karl Denninger) wrote:
>>(( cuts ))
>>>
>>> My issue with these practices is that in their organized form here in the
>>> United States they are inherently intertwined with both "sorcery" (as you
>> ^^^^^^^^
>>> defined it) and also with control of those who worship for the purpose of
>>> fiscal and personal gain by those who run those "houses of worship."
>>
>>You continue to make an equation between traditional African religion and
>>sorcery.
>>This is certainly wrong as a matter of precept, but if that has been your
>>experience,
>>then that is certainly unfortunate, but your inference would still be
>>unwarranted to
>>the extent you are seeking to claim that wrong-doing is inherent in the
>>religion.
>
>"Traditional African religion" is not practiced in the United States.
Clearly you are in no position to make such a statement. You may also take it
from me that you are wrong.
>
>Hint: Most of the patikas associated with the shells have been LOST TO
>HISTORY. The form of casting of those shells is VASTLY different in the
>"Cuban-American" form of the Orisha-related religions than it is in Africa
>as well, and the results of the changes are predictable.
I fail to see the cogency of whatever conclusion you are seeking to draw. In
fact, I can state categorically as a matter of logic, that you cannot argue
your way to the (non-existence) conclusion you seek. At best can you claim
that you, personally, know of no traditional African religion practiced in the
United States. Your limited experience is in no way constraining of the
practice of many Africans, continental and diasporan, who currently reside in
the United States. For your benefit, I assert that I, and many others that I
know, are very much engaged in the practice of religion, i.e. in spiritual
cultivation aimed at fostering a reyoking to oneness with Prime Creator, using
traditional African teachings to assist in that endeavor.
>I cannot judge what "traditional African religion" would be like since it
>cannot be found in this country at the present time.
>
For reasons already stated, I beg to differ. The fact that you have not been
blessed to find it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist.
>>There is nothing in that that
>>is inherent in the religion however.
>
>Again, you can't judge what isn't practiced (how do you find it?)
>
In that case you would be hard put to judge Christianity also. But in fairness
to Christianity, you set aside the flawed practice even of popes, and focus on
a pure precept that is hard to find actually adhered to anywhere. It is the
same here, and it is not that difficult to draw the distinction between
practice and precept that is necessary. What inheres as precept in traditional
African religion, whatever the flawed practice of those you have so far
encountered, is the cultivation of iwa pele, not the practice of sorcery. My
main point remains that you should refrain from unfairly and incorrectly
forming an essentialist equation between traditional African religion, and
sorcery.
>> I brought up the perfidy of "Christian"
>>popes
>>and enslavers to make a point. You acknowledge the point in one breath, and
>>then in the next you again assert the nonsense that wrong-doing of the sort
>you
>>mention is somehow "inherent" in the traditional religion.
>
>That religion is long gone. It is not practiced in the United States.
>If you do the actual research into the ways in which this religion was
>intertwined with life in Africa and practiced there, then contrast that
>with what is done here, an honest comparison inexorably reaches that
>conclusion.
>
Again, you strain to establish the non-existence of an empirical fact through
logical argument, which any beginning student of Philosophy of Science 101, or
of Logic 101, can tell you is a futile endeavor. Moreover, I am here to tell
you that the empirical fact whose existence you deny, I know to exist.
>> I can accept that
>>you
>>have been unfortunate to have met people purporting to practice traditional
>>African religion who have taken advantage of you or other people. You
>cannot,
>>however, infer from such misfortune that roguishness is inherent in the
>>religion.
>
>As practiced in the United States? Certainly I can, for the changes in the
>mode and method of the religion render the protections against that activity
>impotent.
>
Possibly so, but that would not render roguishness as something inherent in the
religion.
>>If that were a correct mode of argumentation, you would also have to concede
>>the inherent wickedness of Christianity (as distinct from the so-called
>>"Christianity"
>>practiced by Europeans from Constantine on down to the present). But you
>>expressly affirm the morality of Christianity, blaming the wickedness of its
>>practitioners not on the religion they claim to profess, but to human
>weakness.
>
>I do not need to concede any such thing.
>
>I concede that the *distortions* that some "Christian" faiths have introduced
>into Christianity (such as fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible) are
>inherently wicked and lead to exactly the same sorts of abuse that are in
>the "Orisha-related" religions in the United States.
>
>The problem is not in the root of the religion; it is in the distortions
>that have been introduced into that practice.
>
My point exactly.
>>That is my point precisely when it comes to traditional African religion.
>The
>>wickedness of some of its practitioners does not inhere in the religion.
>
>Certainly it does, when the original religion is no longer present.
>
This you have not, and cannot, show as a matter of practice, since I can name
counter-examples known to me, but obviously not known to you. And if you argue
from precept, you have conceded that there is nothing to argue, since you find
fault not with precept, but with "distortions" in the practice.
>>Furthermore,
>>the wickedness of some adherents of traditional African religion is as
>nothing
>>compared with the wickedness of the "Christian" popes who authorized, in
>>the name of religion, the enslavement of Africans and the genocide of
>>indigenous
>>people everywhere outside of Europe.
>
>Not the point under discussion.
>
It does point however to a double standard in your argumentation. For you see
"distortion" when it comes to Christian wickedness, but inherent wickedness
when it comes to traditional African religion.
>Again, my claim is that you simply can't FIND "traditional" African
>religions. Santeria and its offshoots (including the particular
>bastardization of the Lucumi in Chicago) simply aren't that "traditional"
>African religion.
>
I do not know what goes on in Santeria houses since that is not my lineage.
However, I would still argue that the roguishness you claim to be inherent, is
instead merely distortion.
>>Even if one were to wash Christianity of
>>such wickedness, there still lies at the core of Christianity a doctrine of
>>exclusivism - that there can be no reyoking to oneness with God except
>through
>>Christ - that is inevitably pernicious in its effects on those who convert
>to
>>such a doctrine: it undermines if not destroys ancestral cultures. No one
>>should
>>need to reject their own ancestral culture in order to find God.
>Traditional
>>African religion, and indeed the religions of indigenous people everywhere,
>>understand perhaps better than Christianity the true meaning of the biblical
>>injunction "honor thy mother and thy father that thy days may be long," for
>>none of them find merit in proselytizing, and the "fiscal and personal gain"
>>that comes from this particular kind of conquest.
>
>Really? They don't eh? Tell that to those who charge thousands for
>killing a handful of birds and goats shortly after shaving their head,
>then pronounce "sentence" at Itan of tens of thousands more to be spent!
>
>I'm sorry, but here you simply are wrong.
>
My point here was about proselytizing, or preaching the gospel, or winning
converts. There is a "fiscal and personal gain" that follows in lockstep with
proselytization. The Christian missionaries that went to Hawaii ended up
"owning" large plantations, making millions of dollars off the backs of the
indigenous people that they had effectively enslaved through Christian
conquest. The Christian missionaries that went to Africa did much the same
thing. There is a wry African joke that makes this point: "When the
missionaries came, they had the bible and we had the land. They said, close
your eyes and let us pray. When we opened our eyes, we had the bible and they
had the land!" My point therefore is that proselytization is often, if not
usually, about "fiscal and personal gain", although it would always be dressed
up as "preaching the gospel". Check out today's mega-churches and the
television ministries.
>>advice would be to focus your outrage on the successors of those popes who
>>have shaped the present world. If you want to condemn rogues in general,
>>you might also want to focus your outrage on the potentates of the present
>>world order who today continue to profit from the twin theft of land and
>labor,
>>as yet unatoned and unreparated, that lies at its base.
>
>Here we will have to agree to disagree.
>
>I refuse to adhere debt to those decended from someone who did an evil
>thing but is dead.
>
>I refuse to do that because if we were to take that to its logical
>conclusion we would find all kinds of "debts" that have to be repaid, and
>I'm not at all certain you'd like the consequences of an HONEST examination
>of that path.
>
>Those who want to argue that "reparations" are due are being dishonest.
>The conquered in one war or crusade frequently were the conquerors earlier
>on, and if you go far enough back through history you will find countless
>examples of one group of people doing bad things to another. In the end
>we'd all be owed by someone, and all that prevents you from being the
>screwed instead of the screwer is which particular section of history one
>cares to focus on "N" generations back.
>
>The extreme dishonesty of those who claim they are "owed a debt" by the
>decendants of a crook long since dead is belied by the truth that in
>virtually every case you can find an equivalently evil asshole who would
>lead YOU to be the one who would have to pay.
>
>Perhaps you want to return to the days of feudal culture.
>
>I, for one, do not.
>
The argument about REPARATIONS is another thread, and perhaps another
newsgroup. I do not wish to enter into it here. But the intemperate and
illogical arguments you advance against even the idea of reparations confirms
again for me that the moral outrage that you bring to traditional African
religion rests itself on a morally deficient double standard. If you are blind
to the debt that arises from Christian enslavement and genocide of Africans and
the First Peoples of America, and to the proselytization-for-profit scheme that
has gone on in the name of preaching the gospel, then the outrage you direct
against traditional African religion, as being "inherently" wicked, rings
hollow. Clearly you need to examine your own motivations. In terms of
traditional African religion, and its concern with the cultivation of iwa pele,
its advice would be for you to come to terms with whatever "head" it is that
you are pushing, or is pushing you. Fare well, my friend; you may have the
last word.
>--
>--
>Karl Denninger (karl@denninger.net) Internet Consultant & Kids Rights
>Activist
>http://www.denninger.net Cost-effective solutions on the Internet
>http://childrens-justice.org Working to protect children's rights
>
>
In Maat,
Grisso
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