Somebody tried that last week, and they killed him!
What part of this do you not understand???
Unless, of course, you’re homosexual, or a woman facing a life-threatening pregnancy complication, or married to a spouse-abuser… then it really sucks.
Outside of the Bible? No, that’s bullshit. Oh, sure, you can probably find evidence of someone with the proper name having lived at that time if you look hard enough, you might be able to prove it was THAT particular “Jesus” (although so far as I know no one has as of the present time), and everybody dies, but no resurrection.
Using a book of myth and legend to prove something is fact is ridiculous.
You don’t get to decide for the Sentinelese what counts as a sufficiently “informed” decision about whether or not to interact with other people. If they want more information about other people, they are free to seek it out by indicating a desire to communicate. Until and unless they do, it is paternalistic to pretend we know what’s “best” for them in terms of how much and what kind of information they ought to have about the outside world.
I’m not entirely convinced there is one.
Okay, so demonstrate mathematically that the Catholic faith is the true one.
Use whatever you want, just be aware that if you’re claiming “truth” in the same sense as “facts”, you are subject to correction.
No, I do not believe they can.
What all of the above boils down to is that you have not established any authority that I can recognize that suggests you have any particular insight that religious missionaries visiting the Sentinelese would benefit the Sentinelese. In rather obvious contrast (and indeed with clearly demonstrable historical support - considerably more so than the existence, let alone divinity, of Yeshua ber-Yussuf), solid and fact-based arguments can be easily made in favour of strictly mininimizing contact with them, ideally to zero, if one cares at all that the Sentinelese continue to exist.
Put simply, unless you are prepared to see most or all of the Sentinelese dead, do not advocate for contact. If you are prepared to continue arguing in favour of contact, I can only conclude that you are determinedly ignoring or utterly indifferent to the implications because you value your superstitions more than their lives.
The one advantage that I can see of handing things over to Catholic missionaries is that there is modest reason to hope that they would stay away. The Catholic Church actually has some experience with the ups and downs of developmental work; at the very least they are not clamoring to visit the Sentinelese. eg Catholic Relief Services.
Happy News: International Christian Concern (ICC) admits they are idiots (my interpretation) and retracts call to prosecute Sentinelese for murder. They say that’s just boilerplate in their news release, implying they aren’t responsible for their statements (my interpretation). A win for Christian humility! Nonreligious Questions
What “things” are those? As far as I can tell, any relevant “things” are in the hands of the Indian government which is following a rational isolationism/protection policy, so even if the RCC feels the same way… why give them a say in this at all?
Well, good. Sanity prevailed.
I’m suggesting that those actually versed in developmental policy, of whatever religious persuasion, are likely to be pretty dubious about the prospects bringing the Sentinelese into the modern world. It’s difficult enough to do that with an Indian village, who have advantages (language, some literacy, robust immune systems, some familiarity with machinery) that the Sentinelese do not.
I don’t think it’s impossible. Just imposingly hard and expensive, as well as highly dangerous for the alleged beneficiaries. Proposals to do this right would likely be laughed out of Parliament.
Regardless of whether or not you’re right they are not living in a bubble. their exposure to disease is not limited to outside influence. That means their best chance of long term survival is access to modern medicine.
Would that most citizens of India had access to modern medicine.
Hopefully they are working on that.
That’s fantastic news. I can only wish them the best. India’s economy is growing at 7% per year: in another decade, it’s possible that a few of its pockets of deep poverty will be considered untenable.
But before that happens I fully expect a number of [del]bozos[/del] adventurers to park a fishing boat 200 meters from Sentinelese shore and fly their long range drones in for [del]shits and giggles[/del] exploration of the island and its culture. Two thousand bucks gets you a drone with a 5 mile/8 km range today; those stats will only improve over time. Our long bowed friends have some serious foreign policy challenges ahead of them.
Well, when the thread is about those areas I might have an opinion. Condoms is high on my list of solutions for most of the worlds problems, so there you go.
Maybe you missed where I said secular schools. Letting the religious do anything is a recipe for disaster.
As both are based upon con-men and delusions, then neither is appropriate to inflict upon anyone, let alone a group of people who have no way to determine the falsehoods they are being told.
Again with ‘they’. The people with the spears for sure. David Miscavish gets upset when you question scientology, Mullahs get upset when the wimen folk get uppity. Priests get upset when you ask about why the children are walking oddly. They all have reasons why they want you to leave them and their people alone. Few of those reasons are for the benefit of ‘their’ people.
Or most citizens of the United States, for that matter…
No, that’s not why they’re not blameworthy. They’re not blameworthy because self defence is a valid reason.
Yes, they are.
I … don’t? 
this implies they don’t have all the relevant information, but that’s not true, they do have enough information to make an informed decision viz. : outsiders are Bad News. And they’re not wrong.
That’s a nice outcome … for some hypothetical 6-times-removed descendants. Not so much for the current people under consideration. Who want to be left alone.
Of course not and that wouldn’t hold up in any court of law. If someone wrecks their car in my front yard and I kill them because I’m scared they’re going to rob me, then I’m not acting in self-defense. Even if someone who crashed their car robbed me before. Self-defense implies a real and not just imagined threat. If my Hispanic neighbor comes over to my house with a gift which I accept and then the next day comes back with another gift and I shoot them because I’m worried about them destroying my culture, then we don’t call that self-defense. Even if my worries are well-founded.
Nonsense. How could they make a fully formed decision on their response without having the slightest clue how our criminal justice system works, nor the inherent power imbalance. I doubt they can even conceive of most of the technology available to us and they have no way of knowing the chances of a response. It’s obviously a decision that is not made with with even partial knowledge of reasonable outcomes. If these killings had happened 200 years ago, they’d all be rounded up and in slave camps and they have no way of knowing that we today aren’t quite that nasty about things. They got lucky that they made it as long as they did, ‘Luck’ is not the basis for a fully informed choice.
You’re judging for them that outsiders are bad news rather than letting them make that decision themselves. They have no idea if outsiders are bad news or not. This Chau guy while I may disagree with him wasn’t coming to steal their land or commit genocide. He wanted to bring them some gifts and try and convince them of a particular philosophical point. You may or may not agree with his particular philosophical point, but most people would posit that conversation and free exchange of information is not a ‘bad’ thing. Again, I point to the Jarawas who have decided that outsiders are a mixed blessing. You’re treating the Sentinelese like an endangered species and not human beings. You and I both live in the ‘outside’ and I would contend that most of the people that are ‘outsiders’ are not particularly bad news. We exist in a comfortable world with a rule of law and access to quite a few ‘good’ things. I like that my 26-week preemie son is alive today playing and learning and whatnot. On Sentinel Island it’s likely that both he and my wife would be dead. I think that them not being dead is a ‘good’ thing and one that the Sentinelese should be able to choose knowing the realistic outcomes of those choices. And I’m certainly not saying that they should choose to join the outside world, but I am saying that they deserve to fully know their options and I contend that knowing that we have big boats made out of metal, coconuts and pigs and that we die pretty easily is not even close to being fully aware of their options.
There is a real threat, and it’s entirely reasonable to believe that contact would be dangerous and even deadly for some Sentinelese, if not all of them.
I find that statement very disturbing for what should be very obvious reasons.
If I am interpreting your statement correctly, you are saying that, since YOU believe Catholicism is “The Truth”, it is acceptable to actually subjugate people to it if necessary. That is exactly the philosophy that missionaries had when they went into other lands, attempted to do that very thing, and damaged those societies in the process.
You are not interpreting my statement correctly. What I meant by the statement is that the truths of the faith are not relative to cultures or individuals, but are universal. It has nothing to do with coercion or subjugation.
Cite?