Christian "doctrine' fueled dehumanization

For OpEdNews: Posted by Race-Talk - Writer

NEW YORK A groundbreaking report examining the roots of Christian domination over indigenous peoples and their lands was released this week at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

North American Representative to the Permanent Forum Tonya Gonnella Frichner, an attorney and founder of the American Indian Law Alliance, presented a preliminary study on the "Doctrine of Discovery" and its historical impacts on indigenous peoples, with a focus on how it became part of United States laws.

"The first thing indigenous peoples share is the experience of having been invaded by those who treated us without compassion because they considered us to be less than human," said Frichner, a citizen of the Onondaga Nation serving her first term on the 16-member UNPFII.

"Dehumanization leads to the second thing indigenous peoples share in common: Being treated on the basis of the belief that those who invaded our territories have a right of lordship or dominance over our existence and, therefore, have the right to take, grant, and dispose of our lands, territories, and resources without our permission or consent."

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Christian-doctrine-fuele-by-By-Valerie-Taliman-100430-405.html

I am surprised they actually put this out. Let's see how the right responds to this.

"The first thing indigenous peoples share is the experience of having been invaded by those who treated us without compassion because they considered us to be less than human

Religion does not create that effect, but people not realizing they are picking what they like to justify their own desire to rationalize an action.

It is not Christianity, it is what people do, using some interpretation for self, not for what it teaches.


For instance, what Jesus teaches us is not what many Christians do, and all are flawed, so there is that also. And even what is in the Torah, many people of Jewish decent do not follow. Just like many Muslims do not follow the teaching of Islam. I would guess it is the same in other religions.


It is not the religion that causes that bad effect, it is how people choose to view and use it. To learn and better themselves, or to have an excuse to do what they already want to do.

But speaking of hell was far less then other lessons in the Bible.

And even the chasm to wide to cross, is countered in another part of the Bible with the statement where a person asks then how can he be saved, with the reply, nothing is impossible with God.

But the big point is it is not about fear unless that is how you chose to view it. It might be possible that is part of the Rod, and I have been graced to not have fear as part of that.



One of my favorite verse for times of strife.
2 Timothy 1:7
For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

It cripples minds and spirits, of people of all ages. Original sin is the starting basis of xtianity. I believe that you MUST believe in original sin (as in the fruit munching simpleton Adam and Eve story) and substitutionary atonement, otherwise you would not need to be saved. That's square one for being a Christian in my understanding.

I had to leave xtianity because I couldn't stand the bullshit doctrine of original sin and the unnecessary solution of substitutionary atonement. I wanted to go home, crawl in a hole and slash my wrists. So I left. It was MY mistake to take that crapola seriously. I learned the hard way. I learned that most preachers were full of bullshit and very much into toxic, poisonous control of other people.

Original sin and substitutionary atonement are POISONOUS. Destroying a child's optimism and will, controlling them through fear of hell, keeping Jesus watching them in their minds like a traffic cop if they scratch their butts in public.....horrible horrible stuff. Some children never hear a single adult tell them anything positive in their entire childhoods....read Angela's Ashes for how the Catholic Church in Ireland, for just one example, was always discouraging children's independence, telling them to shut up, be serious, not read comic books, and pray for the souls of those poor, doomed to hell Protestants. Just one example. Life was all about pain and suffering and praying for Jesus and NOT having any fun at all.

Read "HEALING THE SHAME THAT BINDS YOU" and other books by John Bradshaw, Ph.D., for more info, as well as the works of Alice Miller (The Drama of the Gifted Child, Thou Shalt Not Be Aware), which Bradshaw's are based on and they expand on.

Oh, and Jesus was down with slaughtering thousands or millions of people if they didn't like his preaching, never mind cussing out a fig tree that was not in season....


:wtf: :banghead: So many apologists out there for xtianity and its atrocities!!!

Christianity is NOT nice and sweet. To be compassionate you have to abandon almost all of it except the Sermon on the Mount and "As ye did it to the least of them, so also you did it unto Me" and "Judge not, lest ye be judged". And there is nothing original about those sentiments. They did not originate with Jesus, they are far older than he is.

Cultural superiority tied in with imperialism is indeed responsible for thousands of years of oppression, murder, genocide and destruction of native cultures. As with the idea that it is better to kill an indigenous native or forcibly convert him for his own good, so he won't go to hell. Of course the Spanish and others did the same thing to Jews in Europe. Convert or die.

Smallpox on blankets anyone???

People are not perfect. And they all do some wrong and some right. There are parts of the Christian faith that talk about shame, and how cultural differences change sin, a big point of contention in Paul's letters versus strict observance of law.

Peter was more law orientated.

But the point is if you live in perfect love, you will not break the commandments. But since we are all flawed, we need sets of rules to protect us in our lesser moments.

Because groups did not have a rule set, either moral or legal, to protect themselves from crime, many people did crime in some of our current situations.

The moral authority of love can stop that, but so can law and enforcement for when a person fails to love.

If you are talking about Revelation, I try not to comment on that much because of what it says at the end of that chapter. If you give the chapter value, then you have to give the ending of it value.

There is a danger to making shame the problem, it can lead to burning up ones conscious, then there is no shame. But the conscious was given to correct problems a person thinks is wrong. It is possible that things can be added into law for a person to think wrong things that are not wrong for everyone. But still the need for a conscious, and the effects it can have, one of them shame, is important.

Many times the bad side will take joy God created away from people by making rules above what is necessary to live in the love of the spirit of God, many of those rules are for man's reason, or societal reasons, and so they can change as society changes. But some are laws of God that do not change.


If you believe a certain way about the supernatural, and have a few other beliefs, it can be explained like this. Although it is just the way I think about it, I did not learn it from any group of people.

If you think of sin as something real that creates compulsions in people. Then once a person gets in a pattern, it moves on, or keeps a person held back then you can see some of what happened. The scape goat is putting all the sin of a group on one animal, then running that animal out of town. That is not putting all the blame, but the actual spirits of sin into the animal.

In the same way, an animal can be sacrificed after sin was put into it, and the sin can be carried into death instead of in a living person.

So when Jesus was crucified, and he had in him the spirit of God which is the Alpha and the Omega and lives in all time, he became the sacrifice for all people, and took all of the sin past and present and future into death. So you can get rid of a spirit of sin from an action you do tomorrow because of Jesus being the lamb of God 2000 years ago. And then he was raised from the dead three days latter to prove he overcame death, unlike the sin he carries into death.

And before he was crucified, he taught the law of love, and the new covenant where if we are sincere and learn we can be forgiven, and move forward from a problem by ridding ourselves of those spirits of sin.

There are also spirits of light, part of the Body of Christ, that is one with the spirit of God, and they can help people, but people have to know when they are doing right and when it is a spirit trying to hurt a person, and that is not always easy for people to tell.

Christians have free will,you can do evil or good things according to your will.Please use caps when you spell Christianity. Thank you and God bless all of you the believers and the non believers.

The fact that there are people of faith that are altruistic and humanistic does not change the fact that any religion that begins with the concept that there is only one true god and one true faith will always lead to the extermination of those that do not conform to its dogma.

and please remember use caps when spelling God.

it is, at least by some of the few who know it exists.

However, this goes back to a Papal decree that slaveholding was no longer allowed. Many slaveholders, not the least of which were a few bishops and their trusted lords of the manor, objected and a clarification was issued that Christians could not be enslaved. After all, Christ mentioned treating your slaves properly, not setting them free.

This opened up Africa as the source of slaves, and European shipbuilding and navigation skills improved as they sailed directly to West Africa to avoid the Arab slave traders who had been ripping them off. Or making a fair living, from the Arabs' point of view. (Or scumbags making an unconscienable buck off of human suffering-- it's all in your point of view.)

Then, since they had all these neat ships, they looked for a water route to Asia to get away from the last of the Arab traders (and screw the Italian traders who controlled some land routes) finding the Americas, adventure, and gold.

And a convenient religious authority to assume indigenous people had no ownership rights to the land, but were only temporarily occupying it.

Yeah, religion was involved, but only because it infused everything they did back then, and it wasn't doctrine from faith, but a cynical way of approving colonialism.

for a thousand years before they landed in the Americas. Why would anyone expect them to treat others differently?