Posted on 01/23/2008 11:00:57 AM PST by SunkenCiv
The victims of human sacrifice by Mexico's ancient Mayans, who threw children into water-filled caverns, were likely boys and young men not virgin girls as previously believed, archeologists said on Tuesday... Maya priests in the city of Chichen Itza in the Yucatan peninsula sacrificed children to petition the gods for rain and fertile fields by throwing them into sacred sinkhole caves, known as "cenotes." The caves served as a source of water for the Mayans and were also thought to be an entrance to the underworld. Archeologist Guillermo de Anda from the University of Yucatan pieced together the bones of 127 bodies discovered at the bottom of one of Chichen Itza's sacred caves and found over 80 percent were likely boys between the ages of 3 and 11. The other 20 percent were mostly adult men said de Anda, who scuba dives to uncover Mayan jewels and bones. He said children were often thrown alive to their watery graves to please the Mayan rain god Chaac. Some of the children were ritually skinned or dismembered before being offered to the gods, he said... Archeologists previously believed young female virgins were sacrificed because the remains, which span from around 850 AD until the Spanish colonization, were often found adorned with jade jewelry.
(Excerpt) Read more at reuters.com ...
Pope Paul III's encyclical of 1537, Sublimus Dei , never addressed the topic of whether or not the Indians had "souls" but whether or not they were "dumb brutes" fit only for slavery.
In other words, the question in Spanish conquered territories at the time was whether or not Indian in the 1530's should be treated as blacks were treated in the U.S. in 1830.
It is a fact that Spanish adventurers saw the Indian population as a source of profit.
However, as far as the Spanish Crown was concerned, the Indians were Spanish subjects and their fair treatment was addressed not only in the last will and testament of Queen Isabella but also in the Laws of Burgos of 1512 which specifically commanded that they should be given Christian instruction.
Queen Isabella, in particular, always considered the Indians as her royal subjects and not "subhumans".
Because it allows one to believe entropy does not exist.
Sublimus Dei is a papal bull promulgated by Pope Paul III on May 29, 1537, which forbids the enslavement of the indigenous peoples of the Americas and all other people. The pope used in the bull almost the same language as in his letter, Veritas ipsa, to Cardinal Juan de Tavera, Archbishop of Toledo, sent less than a month earlier on May 2, 1537. In these, Paul III unequivocally declares in his language declaring Indians to have souls and be included in those God had endowed with capacity to attain to the inaccessible and invisible Supreme Good and behold it face to face. Thus the indigenous peoples of the Americas were rational beings with souls, denouncing any idea to the contrary as directly inspired by the "enemy of the human race" (Satan). He goes on to condemn their reduction to slavery in the strongest terms, declaring it null and void for as well as for any people known or that could be discovered in the future, entitles their right to liberty and property, and concludes with a call for their evangelization.
“It would probably take far more study than you appear willing to invest to discover or deduce…We can hardly relate or explain the complexities of this subject, learned in 20+ years of Catholic and Jesuit education in a few paragraphs”
Thanks for the lesson in supercilious arrogance, ass.
It was a Jew, Isaac Asimov, who commented that anyone who couldn’t explain what he was doing to an eight-year-old, was a charlatan. I think that goes for us Catholics as well.
In any case, it looks to me like Polybius has a better grasp of the subject.
I apologize. It was all too obvious that you were operating at an eight-year-old's level.
“I apologize. It was all too obvious that you were operating at an eight-year-old’s level.”
My goodness. “20+ years of Jesuit and Catholic education” and all you learned was how to act like an ass.
OK, I was pompous and you said ass twice.... truce?
All right.
You wrote”So, do you reject the notion that God actually communicates with people, and that some religions are actually based on the content of those communications?”
If you posit an all-powerful monothesistic God—and it must be monotheistic or it wouldn’t be all powerful—then God could easily and simultaneously talk to all humans or select among them. Why SHE would choose the latter course instead of the former, or give only Delphic clues to be interpreted by humans is puzzling as it leads to schisms, sects, and false prophets, no?
you wrote: “The whole point is that God Himself, one Person of the Trinity, chose to become both fully man and fully God”
You forgot to add that it was only in the 4th century after the Virgin Birth, and after the relatively recent adoption of the non-contemporarily written books of the New Testament, that God became officially recognized as Tri-partite. This addition to official doctrine was principally elaborated by St. Augustine using the logic invented by pagan philosophers without anyone claiming a personal communication from God as far as I know.
Look, I’m not trying to denigrate your faith in certain dogmas of the Christian religion. I respect your faith in them, all the moreso BECAUSE I can’t accept what appear to me to be later man-made attempts to mold dogma to suit perceived inherent contradictions or the adoption of canons of faith such as the Virgin Birth or your more secular declarations that the United States was established by God as a Christian country.
I apolgize for tweaking you on some issues, but you made some uncalled for ad hominem attacks on me, calling me ignorant simply because I disagree with your opinion and beliefs. I tried mightily not to respond in kind.
Let’s end this discussion and go our own way with a small, and hopefully better, understanding of each others faith, reason, and the human heart.
“Why SHE would choose the latter course instead of the former, or give only Delphic clues to be interpreted by humans is puzzling as it leads to schisms, sects, and false prophets, no?”
Firstly, God is male in nature, although this is not to be understood in terms of sexual function, but of maleness in the abstract. That’s simply a demonstrated fact.
Secondly, while God may have some reasons for choosing the latter course instead of the former that are incomprehensible to human reason, there are good and sufficient reasons that are perfectly comprehensible, to those who employ right reason.
Thirdly, it is not God’s respect for our free will that causes schisms, sects, and false prophets, but our own corrupt spirituality and the work of Satan.
“You forgot to add that it was only in the 4th century after the Virgin Birth, and after the relatively recent adoption of the non-contemporarily written books of the New Testament, that God became officially recognized as Tri-partite.”
A person can be informed, uninformed, or disinformed. You fall into the latter category. You have received and believed a number of assertions that are the inventions of those who hate the good. Just as one example, “The word trias (of which the Latin trinitas is a translation) is first found in Theophilus of Antioch about A.D. 180. He speaks of “the Trinity of God [the Father], His Word and His Wisdom (”Ad. Autol.”, II, 15). The term may, of course, have been in use before his time. Afterwards it appears in its Latin form of trinitas in Tertullian (”De pud.” c. xxi). In the next century the word is in general use. It is found in many passages of Origen (”In Ps. xvii”, 15). The first creed in which it appears is that of Origen’s pupil, Gregory Thaumaturgus. In his Ekthesis tes pisteos composed between 260 and 270, he writes:”
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/15047a.htm#I
Your assertion that it was “only in the 4th century” is false. It is an error. And even having pushed the date back to about AD 180 is no indication that the concept was new in that year, or that it is an invention. Our understanding of the nature of God has continued to deepen for thousands of years.
“Look, I’m not trying to denigrate your faith in certain dogmas of the Christian religion”
I doubt that you will be intellectually willing to consider that for some, and I have no idea how many, it’s not a matter of faith, but of objective, empirical knowledge.
“BECAUSE I can’t accept what appear to me to be later man-made attempts to mold dogma to suit perceived inherent contradictions or the adoption of canons of faith such as the Virgin Birth”
They only appear to be contradictions because you believe the false assertions of the father of lies. These are not matters of faith, but errors of objective fact and of right reason. You have been told, and have believed, many things that are simply false. If you were of a mind to listen and debate for long enough, with access to the needed resources, you would certainly become a Catholic.
“or your more secular declarations that the United States was established by God as a Christian country.”
I don’t see anything secular about that.
“but you made some uncalled for ad hominem attacks on me, calling me ignorant simply because I disagree with your opinion and beliefs.”
Those were not ad hominem attacks, but they were definitely called-for. I observed, correctly, that you are severely disinformed regarding the subject under discussion. I said this not because you disagree, but because it is an objective, empirical fact. Where you are not uninformed regarding Christianity, you are disinformed. This is not an attack; it is simply a fact.
“I tried mightily not to respond in kind.”
You can’t respond in kind, unless you find me spouting off in an insulting fashion on a subject regarding which I have espoused a huge number of false notions, which were originally the malicious inventions of those who did not scruple to use falsehood in their attacks.
“Let’s end this discussion and go our own way with a small, and hopefully better, understanding of each others faith, reason, and the human heart.”
When I run into people on your side of this, I try, in a triumph of optimism over experience, by demonstrating that just one of their beliefs is factually incorrect, to provoke them into examining the rest of the falsehoods they have absorbed regarding God and Christianity.
I have demonstrated that one of your opinions regarding Christianity is factually incorrect.
Actually, you have demonstrated nothing but your willingness to take things out of context and claim victory.
What I actually said, was “...it was only in the 4th century after the Virgin Birth,...that God became officially recognized as Tri-partite.” Factually, the doctrine was adopted at the Ecumenical Council of 381.
One would think that God would have stepped in earlier to give Divine guidance on such an important doctrine, but the word ‘Trinity’ never appears in any of the Scriptures.
Arguments for the concept of the Trinity before were made by individual theologians who tried to reconcile the Jewish monotheistic God with the idea of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as divine on the same level as Jehovah.
See Doctrine of the Trinity http://www.inu.net/skeptic/trinity.html
As far as I know, these theologians never claimed they were in direct communication with a Trinitarian God on the subject.
“Actually, you have demonstrated nothing but your willingness to take things out of context and claim victory…Factually, the doctrine was adopted at the Ecumenical Council of 381.”
Actually, I was giving you too much credit. You cited a fourth century date as though the codification of the doctrine at that Council showed that it was newly invented at that time. If that wasn’t what you meant, then you had no point. By claiming that earlier references to the Trinity are outside the scope of your remark, you have pettifogged your point right out of significance.
“One would think that God would have stepped in earlier to give Divine guidance on such an important doctrine”
As, indeed, He did.
“but the word ‘Trinity’ never appears in any of the Scriptures.”
The Scriptures are one means of Revelation, but not the only one. Besides, there is certainly nothing wrong with developing a shared vocabulary with which to communicate on the subject of Revelation. The fact that the word does not appear in the Bible is utterly without significance.
“Arguments for the concept of the Trinity before were made by individual theologians who tried to reconcile the Jewish monotheistic God with the idea of Jesus and the Holy Spirit as divine on the same level as Jehovah. See Doctrine of the Trinity http://www.inu.net/skeptic/trinity.html”;
Once again you choose to believe falsehoods. What a hash of nonsense and irrelevancies that article is. How can you find such trash to be intellectually satisfying?
From the Scriptures we know this much: Jesus is God, God the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God. You remember the Holy Spirit, surely. We meet Him in the Scriptures, too. The nature of the Trinity is beyond human comprehension (See “Flatland”), but God has revealed that He is one God in three Persons.
“As far as I know, these theologians never claimed they were in direct communication with a Trinitarian God on the subject.”
Not “as far as you know.” That’s inaccurate. You have been told that some theologians, holy men, doctors of the Church, etc. have had the guidance of the Holy Spirit, but you choose to reject that. And not on any factual basis, either. You have been given the opportunity to know, but have rejected it in favor of the serpent’s promise to Eve.
Wait, was it your relative who was thrown to the dogs, or was it Pizarro ?
Oops. Long dead thread, sorry.
The ancient honored ancestor got tossed to the dogs. Some researchers suggest that Pizzaro and his men were simply Spanish Protestants.
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