Yangja Isuko

I've seen plenty of theists on these boards magus, and a good portion of them are treated well and often have insightful comments and arguments, ofcourse, they aren't of the 'fundamentalist' type and so take things such as
creationism as seriously as we do.

you however, are a different matter, and like any good christian, have a persecution complex, completely negating the fact that *you* came *here*. we didn't go around to your place and 'persecute' you, now did we? nobody is censoring *your* posts here, are they?

if people are dismissive of your arguments, that's usually because they're wrong. I admitted my own mistake in claiming knowledge of absolute numbers. I've never seen you admit you were wrong though.

Oh, and my name is Yangja, not yanjo.

reprise

Magus, and others, can you please tell me why this particular group of people who live on one of the larger Indonesian islands and who have access to all of the facilities which have been built there for tourists should not be left alone if they don't want anything to do with the Muslims, the Christians, or the fucking tourist industry?

Allah and God were brought to the Indonesian islands long ago. For the last couple of hundred years it's just been a competition for their "souls" between the Christian fundies and the Muslim fundies. They basically said "a pox on both your houses" and moved away from you guys instead of slaughtering you and you STILL won't leave them alone. Thank the IPU that there are roughly 17,000 islands in Indonesia to which they can move which are free of people wanting to tell them how to live.

Warthur

You see, "modern medicine and facilities" have a much stronger association with "civilisation" than "Islam/Chrisitanity" to me.

If you're talking about people rejecting civilisation, you'd better be talking about folk deliberately living a primitive lifestyle. Because this is what people will assume you are talking about. If you're talking about people rejecting Islam or Christianity and retaining their native faith, say "retaining their native faith."

The statement that they had rejected civilisation. Modern medicine and civilisation tend to go together, you know: nomad tribes do not develop retroviral drugs for AIDS.

Yangja Isuko

They also don't tend to *have* aids in the first place. (provided we're talking about truly prystine tribes)

Warthur

Well, substitute the disease of your choice. Doesn't weaken my point.

reprise

Indonesia's health care system is fairly basic compared to those of First World nations. It's better on the large tourist islands like Sulawesi, but by no means up to the standard that you'd find in even regional centres in Australia or the US. AIDS is a problem in some regions of Indonesia, as are the parasitic diseases (especially malaria). Australian tourists who become ill while visiting Indonesia are very often evacuated back here if the problem is anything other than extremely minor. Traditional mecidine isn't just practised by those people living in remote locations. It's often the medicine of first resort throughout the region anyway, partly because "Western medicine" is an expensive luxury which many cannot afford, even if they're living in large cities.

Does living in a remote location pose special risks in medical emergencies? Yes it does. It does in Australia, too, yet people still continue to choose to live in remote locations and we generally accept their right to do so even though they may be exposing themselves and their families to risks which those of us living in urban areas would consider "unacceptable".

Donnmathan

(Emphasis mine.) You left out a word...it is the lack of belief in ANY god. Since the agnostics haven't made that commitment, I can't see lumping them in with athiests, any more than I can see lumping those who don't believe in any ONE god (eclectics) in with the athiests. However, it does seem that Magnus is right - the site's statistics do just that. And I know several agnostics who would disagree with you most strongly - they have NOT decided they don't believe in a god, and so are NOT athiests.

Further, your attack on him for using adherents.com and the dictionary, lumping them together with the Bible and deriding them as 'infallible' sources, is plain silly. If you make that claim, then stop quoting science at him as if it were an 'infallible' source. At some point, you have to accept an arguement from authority, and accept that you may be mistaken, or else you cast your own authorities into doubt. If you can find a source for figures that has more credability, that's one thing, but don't attack if you can't substantiate your own figures. You are applying a double standard you would jump down his throat for copying (and if memory serves, people have done just that to him). Don't get mad that he's gone and learned from it, then caught you in a fudged number.

I don't know - spirituality is different from being religous...and I challenge you to claim that people with deep spirituality are not believing in some higher power.

Doesn't matter in the slightest, unless you can find a better one.

That last statement is certainly true, but the information presented by Magnus has at least some reason for being credable. He didn't pull it out of thin air, he actually found a site that makes some effort at giving working numbers. Basicly, all you did was attack him for doing what this site (in part) is ment for...to present the best data you can about a controversial topic to aid in debate of said topic - you came back with "that's not the way it is because I say so." Happens exactly like that all the time on the Evolution/Creation forum, except usually it's the theist on the recieving end.

All that said...I personally am against messing around with untouched cultures in any case. Nothing good has ever come of it - and lest someone toss the Americas at me, all that happened was that the natives stopped slaughtering each other and started getting slaughtered by the Europeans and their diseases. I'm sure they really appreciated the distinction. Remember, at the time, European medicine relied on "balancing humors", leeches, and amputation. Native American, on intervention of spirits and herbology. I see a slight advantage on the native side, truth be told.

Yangja Isuko

actually, agnostics have made exactly that commitment, agnostics say that ultimately, we can not prove any god either way, and so will hold no belief on the matter, the exact same as weak atheists, except that they make an additional claim on the nature of god(s) that atheists don't make. If your agnostic friends disagree with me most strongly, i'd say that either they don't understand what i'm saying, or don't understand what agnosticism truly entails and rather choose the label agnostic so as to not offend the religious people around them.


on this matter however, there can be no authoritive source since any surveys are only held amongst a minority of the population and thus their accuracy will always be in question.


i allready admitted my mistake to him, apparantly you overlooked that.

Donnmathan

I beg to differ...agnostics have not made any commitment one way or the other on the question of the existance of a god or gods, while atheists certainly have. In essence, the theists sit on one side of the fence, saying that "yes, god exists," the atheists sit on the opposite side with the opposite view, and the agnostics are planted squarely on the fence. To say that someone sitting on the fence and saying, "I'm not sure, and I'm not willing to commit either way," is the same as one side of the fence is just plainly untrue.

The source in question undoubtably uses statistics and estimations based on sampling, both of which are use quite commonly in science.

My apologies, then.

Warthur

I believe, however, Sulawesi is the place we are talking about...