Freethought & Rationalism Archive

GakuseiDon · 06-30-2010, 03:58 AM

I don't want to bore people, so I'll make this my last post on this thread.

It would be good if Dave31 -- as the last word on this particular matter -- could clarify Acharya's position on the Pygmies, the "sky people" and the Garden of Eden in the Mountains of the Moon in central Africa, and whether the cruciform images represented death, as raised in my post on Page 4.

dog-on · 06-30-2010, 04:20 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

I read your stuff, but I am a bit confused with what you are saying versus what, via the other links on this thread, Acharya seems to have actually said.

Anyway, are you seriously saying that the foundation of Acharya's hypothesis is that Pygmies were the actual source for some of the biblical tales?

I'm trying to clarify Acharya's hypothesis that the Pygmies were connected to the "sky people" and the actual source for early myths, including Horus, Hercules, Krishna, American gods, Adam and Eve, Christ, etc. I've probably read more of Acharya S's work than you have, so you might not see the association in her mythicist position between ancient global civilizations and the spread of myths. Here is what she writes in "Christ Conspiracy" (page 391):

Evidence of an Ancient Global Civilization

As has been seen, it is virtually impossible to determine which nation is the progenitor of western culture and, therefore, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and we are left to ponder the idea of another source, such as the Pygmies, who claim to have been a global culture many thousands of years ago.

She's speculating that the Pygmies are the source of western culture and Judeo-Christian tradition. The source, dog-on! How important would that make the Pygmies? Acharya also sees links between myths in different parts of the globe:

Moreover, the Mayan creator god was called "Hurakan", and the Caribbean storm god was "Hurukan," both of which are nearly identical to the Tibetan wrathful diety, "Heruka," which in turn is related to Herakcles or Hercules. It is from this stormy god that we get the word "Hurricane." Walker hypothesizes that "Horus" was "Heruka" of the East and notes that the Pygmies revered Heru, an archaic name for Horus.

I didn't want to keep popping out quotes, because all I want from Dave31 is the clarification between the Pygmies and the "sky people" (as well as whether the cruciform was representative by death, though that's a minor matter) as the originators to most of the world's myths. If Dave31 could have actually answered my questions in my first post on the topic, then that would have been that. It's frustrating that his refusal to address specific questions causes these exchanges, which then get considered to be off-topic.

Dog-on, do you agree that Pygmies appear to be very important to the creation, if not spread, of many world-wide myths according to Acharya S?

I have not read any of Acharya's books, just the links, that is why I am asking you the question.

I have no clue about the Pygmies, as this is the first time I have ever heard of such a hypothesis.

So, having not read the books, I can't say what here hypothesis is based on, but I believe that she is a member of this forum, so maybe you could message her and see if she is willing to explain.

spamandham · 06-30-2010, 06:48 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

GDon, could Acharya be incorrect about Pygmies and be correct about the astrotheological basis for many religions?

This is possible of course. The problem with Acharya S. is that she has not been very selective with her sources. The Pygmy business is one example, and her use of Kersey Graves is another. Maybe these are the only two times she used questionable sources, and maybe they are not. But as a result "Acharya S says...." just carries no weight whatsoever. It's up to whoever finds her ideas interesting to independently verify the sources, which is just too much work for a layman.

...and she's not alone. Even qualified scholars ruin their reputations when they are insufficiently uncritical. You really have to have a finely honed BS detector to play the game she's trying to play.

dog-on · 06-30-2010, 06:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spamandham

Quote:

Originally Posted by dog-on

GDon, could Acharya be incorrect about Pygmies and be correct about the astrotheological basis for many religions?

This is possible of course. The problem with Acharya S. is that she has not been very selective with her sources. The Pygmy business is one example, and her use of Kersey Graves is another. Maybe these are the only two times she used questionable sources, and maybe they are not. But as a result "Acharya S says...." just carries no weight whatsoever. It's up to whoever finds her ideas interesting to independently verify the sources, which is just too much work for a layman.

...and she's not alone. Even qualified scholars ruin their reputations when they are insufficiently uncritical. You really have to have a finely honed BS detector to play the game she's trying to play.

I see. As I said, I am in the dark concerning Pygmies, but the astrotheological basis for religion does seem to make a lot of sense. However, I am unfamiliar with her specific hypothesis regarding astrotheology and am only referring to the prima facie case that the ancients seem to have deified celestial bodies and occurances across various cultures.

Dave31 · 07-16-2010, 01:06 PM

Toto,

Humm, now that's interesting that you chose to split the John the Baptist stuff to create its own thread, which I thought was far more on topic than the Pygmy crap that belongs in the thread already in existence here. Those who've actually read her book can see how GakuseiDon needed to fallaciously take quotes out of context and offer a giant leap of faith in order to create a connection with Pygmies and the mythicist position topic of this thread, where none exists. Demonstrated by the fact that none of the articles, excerpts or the mythicist position video or the mythicist position itself mentions a single word about Pygmies.

As mountainman already commented in post 118:

Quote:

"Splitting the pygmies out would be fair to the OP here. I am interested in reading about the history of the Mythicist position without having to wade through various exchanges about pygmies."

Again, *ALL* of the Pygmy crap should be merged into the already existing thread. I will not waste any more time mucking up this thread addressing what should already have been in the Pygmy thread. If you can split the JtB stuff, you can merge the Pygmy stuff in its proper thread.

Toto · 07-16-2010, 01:33 PM

This is a quick and dirty split - I selected all posts that mention "pygmies" and moved them here, so Dave can address the issue, if he can.

GakuseiDon · 07-16-2010, 03:40 PM

Thanks Toto. It would be good to see Dave discuss this topic.

Dave, I went to great pains to make sure that I quoted Acharya S correctly. You write that I "fallaciously take quotes out of context". Can you identify which quotes I took out of context, please?

Toto · 07-17-2010, 01:47 AM

Let's make sense of this thread. Why Pygmies?

In the Freethoughtnation thread, Acharya S posts:

Quote:

In his book Pygmy Kitabu (27), Hallet states:

Quote:

My Pygmy friends have an Adam story of their own. Schebesta has told this tale and emphasized that the Pygmies could not possibly have borrowed it from any outside source. It is the story of a god, a garden paradise, a sacred tree, a noble Pygmy man, who was molded from the dust of the earth, and a wicked Pygmy woman who led him into sin... The legend tells of the ban placed by God upon a single fruit, the woman's urging, the man's reluctance, the original sin, the discovery by God, and the awful punishment he laid upon the Pygmy sinners; the loss of immortality and paradise, the pangs of childbirth, and the curse of hard work.

You can get a very different view of this question from The King of the World in the Land of the Pygmies (or via: amazon.co.uk) By Joan Mark Google books at p 125ff - a very different idea of Pygmy religion from what one would gather from the Hallet quote, and a different view of Schebesta.

Quote:

[Wilhelm] Schmidt worked on a multivolume compendium on primitive religion, The Origin of the Idea of God, in which he argued .. that animism and magic were not necessarily the first stages in the evolution of religion and that the idea of a high god was far older than was usually assumed. In searching for the origins of monotheism, Schmidt turned, as he had in his search for the origins of culture, to the pygmies. They lived in the most primitive fashion known, by hunting and gathering, and they were thought to be among the oldest of contemporary peoples. In studying their culture, he believed, one might catch a glimps of the mind of the original primitive human being. In 1910 Schmidt wrote, It is my firm conviction that the study of the pygmies constitutes one of the most important and most urgent, if not the most important and urgent [problem] in ethnology and anthropology.

Schmidt sent his student Schebesta to the Belgian Congo, and Schebesta spent a lot of time trying to find evidence of a belief in god in the pygmies. Joan Mark reports that he had some difficulty finding god beliefs, much less stories that mimic the old and new testaments so closely.

So Schebesta was a Catholic missionary-anthropologist, on a mission to show that primitive people had a concept of monotheism. (It is part of Catholic belief that all religions are pale imitations or precursors of Catholicism.) The story that Hallet reports does not ring true, although it is hard to know if Hallet embellished what Schebesta told him, or if Schebesta spun the yarn, or if Schebesta was just wrong about the possibility of the Pygmies having heard these stories from neighboring Christian missionaries or Christian Africans.

GakuseiDon · 07-17-2010, 02:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

So Schebesta was a Catholic missionary-anthropologist, on a mission to show that primitive people had a concept of monotheism. (It is part of Catholic belief that all religions are pale imitations or precursors of Catholicism.)

Yes, Schebesta and Wilhelm Schmidt appear to be part of the Christian push to find commonalities among all religions -- with those religions being common to Christianity only, of course! Ironically many of Acharya S's claims appear to derive from such sources. Usually she writes something like "this pious Christian scholar, going against self, found this similarity to Christ among the beliefs of this particular religion..."

So I'm not surprised to see Christian scholars looking for Christianity-styled monotheism among African tribes... and finding it!

avi · 07-17-2010, 06:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

So Schebesta was a Catholic missionary-anthropologist, on a mission to show that primitive people had a concept of monotheism.

I suspect that the situation is rather more complicated than we have thus far elaborated in this thread.

1. Schebesta seems, from the casual reading I have done, to be somewhat more than just another Catholic missionary. He had studied Japanese, in preparation for going to Japan, prior to WWI, then, instead was transferred to Mozambique. I am unclear about how much time he spent in the "Belgian" Congo. I am even less clear about his knowledge of the Pygmy languages of the region--they are NOT similar to Bantu.

2. Schebesta seems to have spent considerably more time in Malaysia, studying, and living with a Negroid, dwarfed population living as hunter gatherers in remote locations of the rain forest. Their language is related to Khmer, not the languages of Africa, furthermore, they are genetically quite distinct from the African pygmies, so, some have suggested that they evolved into their current Negroid features, over tens of thousands of years. In other words, there would seem to be neither close genetic nor linguistic links between the two populations, hence, generalizations linking their belief systems may be fraught with peril.

3. It is unclear to me if Schebesta, particularly in his later years, agreed with the doctrine of missionary conversion to Roman Catholicism.

In brief then, I am not in agreement with Toto's summary above, I imagine that there is room for a great deal of investigation, and at least two books written by Schebesta to read, first......Bottom line, I doubt any link whatsoever, between "monotheism" and Pygmy traditional folklore. But then, on the hand, I completely reject the assertion, offered yesterday, I think it was, on one of the threads, not sure which one, that Judaic monotheism represented the foundation of western civilization. What crap.

avi

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06-30-2010, 03:58 AM	#21
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	I don't want to bore people, so I'll make this my last post on this thread. It would be good if Dave31 -- as the last word on this particular matter -- could clarify Acharya's position on the Pygmies, the "sky people" and the Garden of Eden in the Mountains of the Moon in central Africa, and whether the cruciform images represented death, as raised in my post on Page 4.

07-16-2010, 01:33 PM	#26
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	This is a quick and dirty split - I selected all posts that mention "pygmies" and moved them here, so Dave can address the issue, if he can.

07-16-2010, 03:40 PM	#27
GakuseiDon Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2003 Location: Australia Posts: 5,714	Thanks Toto. It would be good to see Dave discuss this topic. Dave, I went to great pains to make sure that I quoted Acharya S correctly. You write that I "fallaciously take quotes out of context". Can you identify which quotes I took out of context, please?

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