Posted on 04/16/2009 9:05:38 AM PDT by AreaMan
Here's some of the idiocy:
Instead, they brought him to atheism. "The Pirahãs have shown me that there is dignity and deep satisfaction in facing life and death without the comfort of heaven or the fear of hell and in sailing toward the great abyss with a smile."
Not that they have escaped religion entirely. Spirits live everywhere and may even caution or lecture them at times. But these spirits are visible to the Pirahãs, if not to Everett and his family, who spent 30 years, on and off, living with the tribe.
So, they are a little bit pregnant? WTF?
And then there's this...
...Sexual mores are governed by common sense rather than stricture, which means that single people have sex at will while married people are more circumspect.
Wow...just WOW, because God knows we NEVER see that in ANY other modern or primitive society.
One more:
...the pure strangeness of daily life with a people who live in the immediate present and whose most common "good night" is "Don't sleep, there are snakes." (sound sleep is dangerous and, besides, toughening themselves is a strong cultural value foodless days are also common).
Hmm...constant lack of sleep and malnourishment...obviously this is a superior culture. There is so much to learn from them.
Drowsy, hungry and fornicating is no way to go through life son.
Arrested development at the adolescent stage.
Sounds like American “Progressives”
So, now that he's not longer a missionary, will he have to change his position?
It isn't? Damm.
I read this book earlier this year, as I am interested in linguistics and foreign travel. The exploration of the language is quite fascinating, and the travel/cultural information is cool in a, “Thank God I live in an American suburb!” kind of way.
However, the author went round the bend and turned into a cuckoo. He just must have been borderline-loopy to start with, in order to go wacky-doodles over the “superiority” of a barely-subsisting group of a couple of hundred people. That takes some severe cognitive disjunction.
Homo heidelbergensis probably lived this way.
Well, not unless you are a college student. Then that is pretty much the way you live for a few years.
I thought this was an article about leftists.
The Pirahãs population numbers about 400.
*sigh* Yeah. The good old days.
Thank God for Top Ramen...
The only the thing lefties are hungry for is more power and more of your money.
Yeah, common sense like, "Well, the gang rape is already over, so we'll just make some disapproving noises and drive on."
toughening themselves is a strong cultural value
Illustrated by their letting women die in childbirth alone if they're not "tough" enough to deliver unassisted.
Sometimes, you know, cultures/tribes disappear *precisely* because they are *inferior* from a basic survival standpoint. This culture is one such, in my opinion.
But fat, drunk and stupid is! I proved it. In college. Then there was the Army and marriage then kids then mortgage and somewhere, the idea, taught from the womb, that there is one greater sunk in. (been Catholic all my life, I just thought, as a young man that it was spelled with a small ‘c’)
These folks don't have ‘the answer’ that the modern folk are looking for. They have survival and no more and can not see beyond that. They need a real missionary - no some new age fluke. (sorry. i am sure he went there meaning well.)
If you’re lucky. :)
So the take-home message is that atheism is for primitives?
Got that.
Based on Google hits, it looks like he used to work with Wycliffe Translators.
I wonder if he got infected with atheism when he went to grad school in linguistics.
Pretty small gene pool.
This is a sad story. Of course the missionary has no ‘evidence’ for his new position, just a personal preference for it. Another case of sloppy feel-goodism combined with a poor foundation in Christian apologetics - assuming he was biblically a believer to begin with, which cannot be taken for granted.
I guess we have found a village/people group that Satan has complete domination over.
Silly American, don't you know all cultures are equal and beautiful?
sorry, I just threw up a little in my mouth as I was writing that...I have to brush now.
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