Ever heard of the Crusades? The Spanish Conquest of the new world? The genocide of the Cathars? The Thirty Years War? The Spanish Missions in California, which kept Indians as literal prisoners? The Spanish Inquisition? What about Rwanda? Even the goddamned Pope had to acknowledge that one.
And that’s just off the top of my head. I could also talk about the persecution of pagans in places like Spain. Or how for many Europeans the choice between being Protestant and Catholic was a matter of life and death. Or the murder of innocent women in “Witch trials.”
I mean, you do get that for most of European history, just disagreeing with the Church could carry a death sentence?
Educate yourself. I’m done trying.
Your religion is evil and I’d rather die than submit than to you.
There’s nothing wrong with indigenous peoples being suspicious of outsiders, it should be expected.
I strongly disagree with your assertion. The spread of Christianity has of course been tainted by horrible and inexcusable things (like all human endeavors), but it has overall been a positive good for humanity.
Who’s saying they don’t? They were offered an opportunity to enter the international community just a week or two ago, and decided against it. Presumably they are satisfied with what they have and aren’t clamoring for linking up with the outside world that they fully well know exists.
This doesn’t conflict with what I’ve said (not that I agree with it, but the disagreement would be a hijack).
But you’re just preaching here. Yes, you’re a Christian who believes that your religion is the One True Faith that everyone should join. So what? Why should I, or the Sentinelese, or any other non-Christians, care that you think your religion is extra-special? Do you have any argument that Christian (and only Christian, apparently) missionaries should be dispatched to the Sentinel Islands that doesn’t rely on your own personal religious faith?
For a choice to be free, it has to be informed. There is considerable reason to believe that the Sentinelese are not informed about their legitimate choices. To go back to an earlier analogy. If I am locked in a room, but there’s a hidden unlocked exit, you wouldn’t say that I am choosing to stay locked in that room. If I lack the information to choose differently, then I am not actually choosing anything. If everyone in the world kept it a secret from me that I can blink my eyes three times and say ‘Shazam’ and I would be able to fly, then you can’t say ‘Listen, he can fly anytime he wants and he’s choosing not to do so.’
You can say that they know that the outside world exists and are choosing not to join it, but I would contend that it’s reasonable to presume that they don’t know the reality of the outside world, merely that something ‘other’ is out there. That’s not a particularly free choice either. If I were to tell you that I have a ‘cloptharg’ and want to give it to you where the only thing you know about ‘clopthargs’ is that they sometimes can hurt you, then are you really making a free choice if you accept it or reject it? I would contend that you are not. You don’t know enough about ‘clopthargs’ to decide if the choice benefits or harms you, you’re simply throwing a dart at a board which isn’t a choice at all.
I wouldn’t object to missionaries from other religions going there.
Like I said in an earlier post, I personally would love to see Catholic missionaries go there. The Catholic faith would be a positive good for the Sentinelese as with everyone else, because it provides all the tools one needs to flourish as a human in the best possible way.
How would this benefit the Sentinelese? Moreover, how would rampant missionaries from a variety of religions not be likely to harm the culture and people of that island, considering the atrocity and tragedy-filled history of proselytizing to (mostly) uncontacted indigenous people? Accidental disease transmission alone could be genocidal.
More preaching. You’re free to preach, but I don’t think your preaching is anything beyond self-indulgent silliness, and hopefully you don’t have any illusions that non-Christians like me find it any more interesting than the ubiquitous faith-based Christian proselytizing many or most of us have been subjected to for most of our lives.
This isn’t a locked room with a hidden unlocked exit.
They were contacted in the long past, they were contacted in recent memory, they were contacted weeks ago.
There’s a shipwrecked boat (technology far beyond their capability) right off of the north side of their island. Ships and planes routinely pass by close enough to be seen, they’re surveyed by helicopter on a regular basis as well.
They know there’s a world of people out there who can do things they can’t. When approached by that world, they wan’t nothing to do with it.
AFAIK the Indian Navy keeps watch to prevent bad guys from approaching the island or poaching fish. I never heard any suggestion that any legitimate inhabitant is prevented from leaving.
Are you both telling me that you honestly believe that island native “Jane Sentinel” from North Sentinel Island is making a fully informed and rational decision to stay on Sentinel Island? Because if that’s what you’re believing, I’m not buying what you’re selling. If that is what you truly believe, then I assume that you also believe that they are fully culpable for all of the people killed there over the years. Because it’s one thing to kill someone that you don’t know about and are scared of and have no idea what they want or what they are doing in your home. It’s quite another to be fully aware of the outside, know that someone from there is bringing you gifts and then killing that unarmed person. As mentioned in the analogy above, it’s one thing to shoot the alien in the face because you think it’s going to eat you and a very different thing to shoot the alien when you are fully aware that it’s there to bring you gifts and listen to your opinions about the outside world. I don’t believe in their culpability for a minute, so I don’t see how I can possibly believe that they’re making a rational, informed decision regarding leaving or staying on their island.
Philosophical “truths” can’t be evaluated in any useful way so if Catholocism is only “true” in that sense, then it’s just as “true” as any other religion.
Now, if you had some demonstrable, examinable “facts” to present, that’d be quite different, though I don’t mind admitting that I’m already somewhat dubious about your claim of the name of your religion’s founder. Wouldn’t “Yeshua” be a more factually accurate version?
How dumb do you think they are? A fishing boat wrecked on their island years ago, they know we’re here.
Of course they’re responsible for the killings of these visitors, just like every other population in history was responsible for killing those seeking to invade their homeland. And those people are not bringing “gifts” they are bringing the tools to destroy their society.
To turn it around on you, do you honestly believe that Jane Sentinel would wind up happy if she chose to leave Sentinel island? WTF is she going to do with her life? She doesn’t know so much as a single word of another language, has no skills to do work in a modern economy, she’d be a sideshow attraction at best, or dead from a common disease at worst.
That’s not my decision to make. I have no idea how happy she would be. I hope that she’d be quite happy regardless of her decision, but who knows? She might end up being dead of typhus or childbirth on Sentinel. I’m not an oracle. Regardless, I’m not defending her decision, only the right to make it. I don’t see how she is making an informed decision to stay. She might be aware that we’re out here, but that doesn’t mean that she is informed enough to make a decision to stay or leave. She has no idea what say London is like or the benefits of modern medicine. She likely does not know either the pros or the cons of modern living and maybe she would pick it and maybe she wouldn’t. I certainly wouldn’t object to Jane choosing to stay on Sentinel if indeed I felt the choice were a truly free choice. If she were to say, “Listen, I’ve seen modernity with its awesome stuff and with its not-so-awesome stuff. I’ve seen its medicine and its travel and its labor saving devices and its relative lack of famine along with its poverty and strife and lack of community and I think that I prefer my hunter-gatherer lifestyle.” To me, that’s a completely valid choice that must and should be respected. That’s not the choice being offered. It’s “I’ve seen a wrecked boat and a couple of guys throwing coconuts at me and stories of kidnappings and perhaps rapes and death. I’m scared of them.” That’s not a choice. What I advocate for is the right for human beings to make fully informed decisions about their lives and not have people who either romanticize their lives or think that they know better to make those decisions for them.
No one has suggested any possible way of informing the Sentinelese of all that exists in the outside world that would not result in a high likelihood of catastrophe.
I completely agree with you. They aren’t worthy of blame because they are uninformed decisions. Those killings are not rational decisions with full knowledge of the situation and options available to them. Of course you can’t blame them. But if you can’t blame them for the killings, then how can you ‘blame them’ for their decision to stay on the island? My contention is that you can’t because the decision to stay on the island is not a ‘free’ decision, any more than the killing of a shipwrecked fisherman or a guy who just wants to tell them about Jesus is a ‘free’ decision.
Let’s pretend that such a way exists (of course, it depends on what you mean by catastrophe.) Then I assume there are no objections to contacting them? If so, then it seems to me that the focus of our debate then should shift to how we can contact them without ‘catastrophe’ rather than should we contact them.
We know the best case scenario: it’s sharing a sidewalk with other aboriginal beggars in Port Blair.
The British colonizers had an analogous problem during the 1800s. They were determined to reach out to the Andamans in a humane fashion, thinking themselves far superior to the Belgium colonizers - which they were. But they found that the Andamans didn’t have a very good skillset - this in an economy that made use of lots of illiterate labor. Sure, the Andamans were superb trackers, and they were used to locate escaped convicts. But there’s only so much demand for that.
This needs repeating:
There are so many people in the world in far worse shape than this set of hunter gatherers. Sure, some are in war zones and whatyagonnado? But in other cases, a couple of hundred bucks can do a lot. Here’s a list: