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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:34 am 
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Simon_Jester wrote:
Kea wrote:
Religious wars were the exception rather than the rule though. I don't know anything about the Yellow Turbans rebellion, but Wiki says it was motivated in large part by rural famine and political corruption, and the Boxer Rebellion was mainly anti-Imperialist with a side of supernatural belief. There's no real equivalent of the Thirty Year's War, or heretic burnings.
The religious wars in Europe had secular sides too. Catholic Austria and Spain saw the rise of Protestantism as an opportunity to build themselves up at the expense of newly Protestant states, while the decision of many monarchs to go Protestant was influenced by the desire for greater control over their own politics and the power to confiscate church holdings.

Likewise, a lot of witch burnings were motivated by politics, because the burners would often get part or all of the witch's property.

I think you can still make a distinction by degree. While there were secular motivations contributing to a lot of European religious conflicts, each side really did consider the other heretics. I'm not sure that was true of the Yellow Turbans rebellion. They were militant Taoist sect, but their beliefs were a mixture of utopian proto-communism and mystical faith healing, and their enemies weren't defined as unbelievers but specifically the government. Their face-value declared motive was to overthrow the government because it was corrupt.

It also happened in 184 A.D. and there aren't many examples of religious wars in China's long history. The next one given as an example by Duke Leto happened in the 1800s. Reading around on Wiki, there were various persecutions/book burnings/monastery closures against Taoists and Buddhists by emperors who feared they were becoming too wealthy and powerful, but many of these campaigns seem to have been relatively bloodless by the standards of religious persecution. A lot of other emperors and philosophers sought to merge the three religious traditions together and juggle them politically, and most regular people didn't have a problem with adhering to more than one at the same time.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 1:44 am 
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Jeesh Kea, you haven't picked up on the fact that sometimes I just contradict for the sake of contradiction? But generally speaking I'd say your right, China seems to be relatively free from the effects of messianic religions. Except, of course, for Maoism...

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:02 am 
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And I like to geek out over wikipedia.

I completely forgot my larger point, which is that one does not have to excuse egregious violations of human rights in order to appreciate the merits of cultural diversity. The problem with burning widows isn't that it's a Hindu tradition, it's that it's murder or coerced suicide. There were pre-colonial, indigenous objections to the practice, by the way - several Mughal rulers discouraged it and the Sikhs outright prohibited it in their own religion. Where local customs do not violate human rights, what is the point of wiping them over with Universal Globalized Homogeneity?

Incidentally, "female genital mutilation" refers to many different practices, ranging from actually stitching up the woman's vagina except for a small hole, which is pretty horrific considering what happens during childbirth, to making a small nick in the clitoral hood, which is pretty harmless if done in sanitary conditions and not by some old woman with a piece of broken glass.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:46 am 
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But what purpose does nicking the clitoral hood serve? Correction, what useful purpose?

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 4:00 am 
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Having gone on record earlier saying that English language speakers would do well to rip off and assimilate the Chinese number system, maybe we could interest you in an alphabet in trade... no sorry that was in bad taste, can I say just one more time that a universal democratic overgovernment would not necessarily entail cultural homogeneity? And that it is silly to expect that it would? Good. Having a universal language of trade and scholarship would not be much different from what now pertains with English.

And that only a fool would want to establish such a global government by forcibly expanding the Sick Old Man of North America in its current form? Great.

And can we agree that the Sick Old Man of North America and and the EU are not in the present forms a threat to the cultural diversity of their inhabitants as governmental organizations?

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:24 pm 
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vampirebunbun wrote:
But what purpose does nicking the clitoral hood serve? Correction, what useful purpose?


What purpose does the weekly ritual cannibalism occurring in churches across the US serve? Correction, what useful purpose?

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 7:40 pm 
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Surgoshan wrote:
What purpose does the weekly ritual cannibalism occurring in churches across the US serve? Correction, what useful purpose?
That depends on how literal you take your scripture. For the non-literalist, it's a physical connection to a mental exercise; a thing upon which one can focus their thoughts, giving tangible reality to the intangible. For the literalist, it's directly making a part of one's self the physical body of Christ. Wine-soaked styrofoam crackers taste just like human flesh.

Personally, as a non-literalist by way of observing the way Jesus himself used non-literals as teaching tools, I take it as the former.

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 Post Posted: Thu Feb 19, 2009 11:28 pm 
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I always saw it as a social bonding ritual, much like the talking in tongues during night services.

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 Post Posted: Fri Feb 20, 2009 2:45 am 
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Just to be totally boring and deadpan, here's the section of the Wiki on cultural justifications for female genital cutting. Take with a grain of salt because some of the info has been flagged as a bit iffy.

And I reckon that's ten pages.

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