/lit/ - Literature

Surely this will be a civil thread.

On the bible:

>They will have it, that some five or fix thousand years ago, all that is since come to pass, was then unchangeably decreed. They lay down the way in which the Heavens and the Earth were Created ; and tell you, that Man was made of the Dust of the Earth, and the Woman out of one of his Ribs, as if God had not made her of the same Stuff ; that a Serpent tempted this Man in a Garden of Fruit- Trees to eat of an Apple, which was the occasion that the Great Spirit put his own Son to Death, on purpose to save all men. If I would say that these advances have a greater appearance of fabulousness than of truth, you would close upon me with Reasons fetch'd from your Bible : But according to your own words, this Scripture of yours had not always a Being ; the invention of it bears the date of some three thousand years ago ; and 'twas not Printed till within these four or five Centuries. Now, considering the divers events that come round in the course of several Ages, one must certainly be very credulous in giving credit to so many idle Stories as are huddled up in that great Book that the Christians would have us to believe. I have seen some of the Books that the Jesuits Writ of our Country ; and those who knew how to read 'em, explain'd to me the sense of 'em in the Language that I speak ; but I found they contain'd an infinity of Lyes and Fictions heap'd up one above another. Now, if we see with our eyes that Lyes are in Print, and that things are not represented in Paper as they really are ; how can you press me to believe the Sincerity of your Bible that was Writ so many Ages ago, and Translated out of several Languages by ignorant Men that could not reach the just Sense, or by Lyars who have alter'd, interpolated, or pared the Words you now read. I could mention several other Objections, which in the end will perhaps influence thee in some measure, to own that I have some reason to confine my Belief to such things as are visible and probable.

On Adam and Eve and original sin:

>Tis written there, that the first man whom the Great Spirit made with his own Hands, did eat of a forbidden Fruit, for which both he and his Wife were punish'd, as being equally Criminal. Now, let's suppose the Punishment inflicted upon the account of the Apple to be what you will; this poor Man had nothing to complain of, but that the Great Spirit knowing that he would eat of it, should have Created him to be Miserable. But let's consider the case of his Posterity, who according to the Jesuits are involv'd in his Overthrow: Are the Children Blame-worthy for the Gluttony of their Father and their Mother? If a man Murder'd one of our Kings, must the Punishment reach to his whole Generation ; to Fathers, Mothers, Uncles, Cousins, Sisters, Brothers, and all his other Relations? Shall we suppose, therefore, that when the Great Spirit gave this Man a Being, he knew not what he might do after his Creation? But that cannot be. But let's suppose again that all his Posterity were accomplices of the Crime, (which at the same time is an unjust supposition) do's not your Scripture make this Great Spirit to be a Being of such Mercy and Clemency, that his Loving-Kindness to the Human Race leaves all Conception far behind it? Is not he so great and so puissant, that if all the Spirits of men that either are, or have been, or are to come, were united in one Person, 'twould be impossible for that Mighty one to comprehend the least tittle of his Omnipotence? Now, since his goodness and mercy are fo transcendent, can't he by one Word vouchsafe a Pardon to that man and all his defendants ? And since he is so powerful and great, how improbable is it, that such an Incomprehensible Being should turn himself into a Man, and not only live a miserable Life, but die an infamous Death ; in order to expiate the Sin of so mean a Creature, that is as much or more beneath him, as a Flie is beneath the Sun and the Stars ? Where would that infinite Power be then? What use would it be of to him, and what advantage would he make of it ? To my mind, to believe the debating of the Divine Nature, speaks a doubt of the Incomprehensible reach of his Omnipotence, and an extravagant Presumption with respect to our selves.

dirt worshipping heathen

>>19774811
Show humility

He's right.

dumb ass tonto ass native american

>>19774744
And where are the Huron now? Seems God didn't favor them.

On faith:

I do not pretend to provoke thee by offering my Reasons. I do not hinder thee to believe the Gospels: I only beg the favour that thou'lt suffer me to doubt the truth of all the Advances thou hast made. Nothing can be more natural to the Christians than to believe the Holy Scriptures, upon the account, that from their Infancy they have heard so much of 'em, that in imitation of so many People Educated in the same Faith, they have 'em so much Imprinted upon their Imagination, that Reason has no farther influence upon their Minds, they being already prepossess'd with a firm belief of the truth of the Gospels. To People that are void of Prejudice, such as the Heurons, there's nothing so reasonable, as to examine things narrowly. Now, after frequent reflexions for the course of ten years upon what the Jesuits Preach'd of the Life and Death of the Son of the Great Spirit, I must tell you, that all my Heurons will give thee fourty reasons to the contrary. As for my own part, I have always maintain'd that if 'twere possible that the Great Spirit had been so mean, as to descend to the Earth, he had shewn himself to all the Inhabitants of the Earth ; he had descended in Triumph, and in publick view, with Splendour and Majesty; he had rais'd the dead, restor'd sight to the blind, made the lame to walk upright, cur'd all the diseases upon the Earth: In fine, he had spoke and commanded all that he had a mind to have done, he had gone from Nation to Nation to work these great Miracles, and to give the same Laws to the whole World. Had he done so, we had been all of the same Religion, and that great Uniformity spread over the face of the Earth, would be a lasting Proof to our Posterity for ten thousand years to come, of the truth of a Religion that was known and receiv'd with equal approbation in the four Corners of the Earth. But instead of that Uniformity, we find five or fix hundred Religions, among which that Profess'd by the French, is according to your Argument the only true one, the only one that is Good and Holy. In fine, after I had reflected a thousand times upon those Riddles that you call Mysteries, I was of the Opinion that a Man must be Born beyond the great Lake; that is, he must be an English-man or a French-man, that can form any Idea of 'em. For when they allege that God, who can't be represented under any Figure ; could produce a Son under the Figure of a Man : I am ready to reply, that a Woman can't bring forth a Beaver; by reason that in the course of Nature, every Species produces its like. Besides, if before the coming of the Son of God all men were devoted to the Devil, what reason have we to think that he would assume the Form of such Creatures as were lifted into the Service of the Devil. Could not he take upon him another Form, which might be finer and more pompous than the Humane? That he might, is the more reasonable, since the third Person of that Trinity (which is fo inconsistent with Unity) assum'd the Form of a Dove.

On faith:

>I do not pretend to provoke thee by offering my Reasons. I do not hinder thee to believe the Gospels: I only beg the favour that thou'lt suffer me to doubt the truth of all the Advances thou hast made. Nothing can be more natural to the Christians than to believe the Holy Scriptures, upon the account, that from their Infancy they have heard so much of 'em, that in imitation of so many People Educated in the same Faith, they have 'em so much Imprinted upon their Imagination, that Reason has no farther influence upon their Minds, they being already prepossess'd with a firm belief of the truth of the Gospels. To People that are void of Prejudice, such as the Heurons, there's nothing so reasonable, as to examine things narrowly. Now, after frequent reflexions for the course of ten years upon what the Jesuits Preach'd of the Life and Death of the Son of the Great Spirit, I must tell you, that all my Heurons will give thee fourty reasons to the contrary. As for my own part, I have always maintain'd that if 'twere possible that the Great Spirit had been so mean, as to descend to the Earth, he had shewn himself to all the Inhabitants of the Earth; he had descended in Triumph, and in publick view, with Splendour and Majesty; he had rais'd the dead, restor'd sight to the blind, made the lame to walk upright, cur'd all the diseases upon the Earth: In fine, he had spoke and commanded all that he had a mind to have done, he had gone from Nation to Nation to work these great Miracles, and to give the same Laws to the whole World. Had he done so, we had been all of the same Religion, and that great Uniformity spread over the face of the Earth, would be a lasting Proof to our Posterity for ten thousand years to come, of the truth of a Religion that was known and receiv'd with equal approbation in the four Corners of the Earth. But instead of that Uniformity, we find five or fix hundred Religions, among which that Profess'd by the French, is according to your Argument the only true one, the only one that is Good and Holy. In fine, after I had reflected a thousand times upon those Riddles that you call Mysteries, I was of the Opinion that a Man must be Born beyond the great Lake; that is, he must be an English-man or a French-man, that can form any Idea of 'em. For when they allege that God, who can't be represented under any Figure ; could produce a Son under the Figure of a Man : I am ready to reply, that a Woman can't bring forth a Beaver; by reason that in the course of Nature, every Species produces its like. Besides, if before the coming of the Son of God all men were devoted to the Devil, what reason have we to think that he would assume the Form of such Creatures as were lifted into the Service of the Devil. Could not he take upon him another Form, which might be finer and more pompous than the Humane? That he might, is the more reasonable, since the third Person of that Trinity (which is fo inconsistent with Unity) assum'd the Form of a Dove.

>>19774868
On the European love for money:

>The more I reflect upon the lives of the Europeans, the less Wisdom and Happiness I find among 'em. These six years I have bent my thoughts upon the State of the Europeans :But I can't light on any thing in their Actions that is not beneath a Man ; and truly I think 'tis impossible it should be otherwise, so long as you stick to the measures of Meum et Tuum [mine and yours]. I affirm that what you call Silver is the Devil of Devils ; the Tyrant of the French ; the Source of all Evil; the Bane of Souls, and the Slaughter-House of living Persons. To pretend to live in the Mony Country, and at the same time to save one's Soul, is as great an inconsistency as for a Man to go to the bottom of a Lake to preserve his Life. This Mony is the Father of Luxury, Lasciviousness, Intrigues, Tricks, Lying, Treachery, Falseness, and in a word, of all the mischief in the World. The Father sells his Children, Husbands expose their Wives to Sale, Wives betray their Husbands, Brethren kill one another, Friends are false, and all this proceeds from Mony. Consider this, and then tell me if we are not in the right of it, in refusing to finger, or so much as to look upon that cursed Metal.

>>19774858
Seems very logical and well-reasoned to me.

>>19774868
There has never been a god, fool.

>>19774779
Based but what does this have to do with the thread?

>>19774744
>>19774792
>>19774808
>>19774898
>>19774928
pretty cool conversations desu

How were old times people so eloquent? It's like their minds are so well-organized. Even damn Huron chiefs. It's like their minds are so pure and undamaged, compared to mine which is a total convoluted wreck. I couldn't write something as articulate as this if I spent 6 months on it.

>>19774744
lmao did you just read graeber you fucking pseud?

It seems that Christianity is the only religion that has a god so loving that he is willing to debase himself and suffer. I think such a thing just seems incomprehensible to believers of other faiths.

>>19775542
If you had any understanding of the meaning of the word God you would know all those things are contrary to such a being's nature.

>>19774744

I'm with him on this.

>>19775550
that's so cute. you're able to define him out of all existence, bless you both.

>>19775542
truly a cult for women and slaves

>>19775242
higher selection pressure in the past for survival. it's totally obvious why the past seems more intelligent when you realize that dumb people were much too dumb to survive then compared to now, where all the dumb people can survive on an EBTEEE card alone.

>>19775242
Is called education
But obviously the chief only has rhetorical education not theolgical

>>19775572
This, Christianity is inherently slavish and self-debasing. If you think otherwise you have simply been propagandized.

>>19775550
It's amazing how much people who believe in supposedly omnipotent beings keep having to explain all of the things he cannot do. In this case, it really does seem like the concept of love is something completely incomprehensible to those not from Christian societies.

>>19775607
Christianity demands moral excellence while recognizing that human nature is such that it is impossible to achieve it. Hence why the believer needs prayers and repentance. I don’t think the call for perfect virtue is slavish. Christian families with 8 kids based on Virtue ethics are hardly effeminate are they.

>>19775607
You say this immediately after stimulating your prostate to ejaculation. You aren't a hero, you're a Judas wondering why we do not simply sell the spikenard for 300 denarii.

>>19775791
Protecting pretty hard my friend. Celibacy wasn't invented by Christ.

>Jesuit and enlightenment education turns native American into a fedora
Woah...

>>19775791
And the only refutations you offer are through the lens of Christian morality, specifically a figure who betrayed your God on a personal level. Clearly, your devotion to the faith has left you with few critical faculties when it comes to analysing such questions.

Do Christian theologians have any legit counter-arguments to this dude's reasoning?

>>19775518
Not even, he just found it mentioned in another thread on pagans in late antiquity.

>>19776707
no. this red indian was the first man ever to think of those questions.

>>19775791
>if I were not a christian I'd spend my time fingering my ass
Why are so many christlarpers on this board closeted homosexuals?

>>19774744
>A 17th century Huron chief
you meant a self-inserting french aristocrat who helped create the good savage meme, right, larpagan?

>>19774868
the same place OP will be next week if he keeps being uppity like this
>>19774993

>>19778232
Nope.

>Most criticism of Lahontan’s work simply assumes as a matter of course that the dialogues are made up, and that the arguments attributed to ‘Adario’ (the name given there to Kandiaronk) are the opinions of Lahontan himself.31 In a way, this conclusion is unsurprising. Adario claims not only to have visited France, but expresses opinions on everything from monastic politics to legal affairs. In the debate on religion, he often sounds like an advocate of the deist position that spiritual truth should be sought in reason, not revelation, embracing just the sort of rational scepticism that was becoming popular in Europe’s more daring intellectual circles at the time. It is also true that the style of Lahontan’s dialogues seems partly inspired by the ancient Greek writings of the satirist Lucian; and also that, given the prevalence of Church censorship in France at the time, the easiest way for a freethinker to get away with publishing an open attack on Christianity probably would have been to compose a dialogue pretending to defend the faith from the attacks of an imaginary foreign sceptic – and then make sure one loses all the arguments.

>In recent decades, however, indigenous scholars returned to the material in light of what we know about Kandiaronk himself – and came to very different conclusions.32 The real-life Adario was famous not only for his eloquence, but was known for engaging in debates with Europeans of just the sort recorded in Lahontan’s book. As Barbara Alice Mann remarks, despite the almost unanimous chorus of Western scholars insisting the dialogues are imaginary, ‘there is excellent reason for accepting them as genuine.’ First, there are the first-hand accounts of Kandiaronk’s oratorical skills and dazzling wit. Father Pierre de Charlevoix described Kandiaronk as so ‘naturally eloquent’ that ‘no one perhaps ever exceeded him in mental capacity.’ An exceptional council speaker, ‘he was not less brilliant in conversation in private, and [councilmen and negotiators] often took pleasure in provoking him to hear his repartees, always animated, full of wit, and generally unanswerable. He was the only man in Canada who was a match for the [governor] Count de Frontenac, who often invited him to his table to give his officers this pleasure.’33

>>19778675
>During the 1690s, in other words, the Montreal-based governor and his officers (presumably including his sometime deputy, Lahontan) hosted a proto-Enlightenment salon, where they invited Kandiaronk to debate exactly the sort of matters that appeared in the Dialogues, and in which it was Kandiaronk who took the position of rational sceptic.

>What’s more, there is every reason to believe that Kandiaronk actually had been to France; that’s to say, we know the Wendat Confederation did send an ambassador to visit the court of Louis XIV in 1691, and Kandiaronk’s office at the time was Speaker of the Council, which would have made him the logical person to send. While the intimate knowledge of European affairs and understanding of European psychology attributed to Adario might seem implausible, Kandiaronk was a man who had been engaged in political negotiations with Europeans for years, and regularly ran circles around them by anticipating their logic, interests, blind spots and reactions. Finally, many of the critiques of Christianity, and European ways more generally, attributed to Adario correspond almost exactly to criticisms that are documented from other speakers of Iroquoian languages around the same time.34

>>19774744
Dude has a point

>>19778174
They are afraid of the world that exists outside of their religion, like most people.

>wageslave 40hrs/week for Schlomo Corp. for the next 50 years
Perfectly fine no psychological damage here cause you see I get to consoome capeshit in the meantime
>sit in a room for a year
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA IM GOING INSAAAAAAAAAAANE HOW IS A MAN TO SURVIVE WITHOUT CONSTANT STIMULI!!!!

>>19775783
It doesn't demand moral excellence. It demands self castigation.

>>19778696
Again, I don't really think so. I'm not even a Christian, but it's clear that his issues with the religion are based on a lack of imagination more than anything else.

>>19774868
Lol there hasn't been an actual 'full-blooded' Huron since the late-1800s (his name was Zachary Vincent) but there is a hybrid Huron Wendat nation which 'still exists'. They're essentially white people, for the most part: pic related is their chief. Being in Quebec, as well, most have been Catholic for the last 100 plus years.

>>19779353
Why not also assume this Huron guy is just tripping out because he felt his religion of shapeshifting was being threatened (literally, my grandmother is from a clan of Huron that believe they come from a lady getting raped and abandoned by a bunch of snakes in human form.) Lakota believe they were born out of a hole in the ground by a God. There are numerous indigenous spiritual beliefs which aren't some kind of Spinozan environmentalism. This chief wasn't an atheist or even rational, and by the nature of the grammatical constructions, even in translation--many of the are stock rhetorical constructions of a western educated mind that don't have analogues in Indigenous languages--i don't believe he even conveyed these sentiments through handtalk (which was the only pseudo-lingua franca many chiefs spoke especially in the 1600s.)

>>19779610
that kinda proves his point if all the ones who remain are Catholic and Francified

>>19779666
wtf i love jesus now

It's pretty obvious the translators or the compiler is the one who actually wrote this, not the chief.

>>19775242
they were not consooming internet and noise all the time

>>19774744
abrahamic cucks BTFO by an injun savage

>>19774744
This was written by a French aristo: that's the scholarly consensus

>>19779836
The outdated scholarly consensus. See:

>>19778675
>>19778680

>>19779836
Transcribed

>>19774744
This reads like a nerd poking holes in a marvel plot
>just turn your brain off bro

>>19779926
Just turn your brain on. And no, Marvel has more solid writing than the Bible. The plot holes are worse than DC even

>>19774808
He's right that the concept of Original Sin makes no sense, and the idea of worshiping Jesus for eternity for absolving us of that sin is silly.

>>19779839
All of that comes from a Jesuit historian that was a child in France by the time Kondiaronk died. Not to mention those exact sources (European histories of the new world) are roundly disregarded as extremely inaccurate when they portray Indians negatively. And for 'some reason' Barbara Mann, the modern source, is a crazed supporter of a proven liar, forger of facts, and enthnic fraud, Whiteman Ward Churchill, probably because a fair bit of her work relies on his bullshit as well (and she probably doesn't like the idea of people having their ancestry looked into.)

>>19780736
Which of these concepts make sense: http://www.native-languages.org/wyandot-legends.htm ?

>>19775242
>Even damn Huron chiefs.
Even? Many colonial French people were flabbergasted themselves at how eloquent and charming the natives were, apparently more than the Frenchmen themselves. Although in general I assume "old times" eloquency is just a survivors bias.

>>19780893
How do you know the relationship that he had with his own faith? He never brings it up, he may have been agnostic, or recognized his cultural faith as mythological or allegorical rather than direct or literal. The point is most people in this thread are attacking the legitimacy of his own beliefs or even his existence rather than defending their own beliefs

>>19780893
Is whataboutism the only defence Christians can provide against the penetrating critiques from this chieftain?