Its All About the Science
With United Nations climate negotiators facing an uphill battle to advance their goal of reducing emissions linked to global warming, it's no surprise that the woman steering the talks appealed to a Mayan goddess Monday.
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel in her opening statement to delegates gathered in Cancun, Mexico, noting that Ixchel was not only goddess of the moon, but also "the goddess of reason, creativity and weaving.
The Mayans used to also cut the hearts out of living human beings as sacrifices to their gods, an apt metaphor for what the assembled UN delegates want to do to development and the world economy.
Mesa Econoguy:
...which is why some legal oversight is needed for these people.
December 3, 2010, 10:44 amBearster:
legal oversight? Heh. They need to be laid off.
Coyote: I'll note that it's not *reason* that people use to believe in their gods, but faith.
December 3, 2010, 11:01 amDrTorch:
Bearster wrote:
Coyote: I’ll note that it’s not *reason* that people use to believe in their gods, but faith.
I'd beg to differ.
December 3, 2010, 11:54 amhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_apologetics
caseyboy:
Bearster & DrTorch - I think you are both right. You develop FAITH in something or someone by observing evidence and applying reason. One can have faith in evolution by observing evidence and applying reason. To the extend something cannot be fully explained through the scientific method it stands as theory. At which point your observations and reasoning leads you to have FAITH in a theory. Doesn't make the theory correct, it just means there was a logical approach to arriving at it. Therefore an evolutionist must have FAITH that inert matter was created from nothingness, that inert matter evolved into simple life forms and that simple life forms evolved into mans. I don't know about you, but whenever I see scum on a pond I wonder why it decided to stay scum and not make the transition?
December 3, 2010, 12:30 pmdelurking:
Ah, give her a break. It is rare that opening statements are not pablum.
December 3, 2010, 1:13 pmFred:
When the environuters eventually get around to demanding human sacrifices to appease their angry god gaia, I would like to nominate Christiana Figueres as candidate #1 to be "saved".
December 4, 2010, 7:19 amSean:
Fred,
December 4, 2010, 8:26 amChristine would be pretty far down the line as many people have been sacrificed already. With 40% of corn going toward our gas tanks and the price of all grains rising, how many people have already been starved to death when food aid ran short?
ruralcounsel:
Goddess of weaving? As in weaving tall tales, it seems.
The UN will propagate any lie necessary to advance global redistribution of wealth from technologically advanced nations to poorer ones. And they see themselves in the role of the world's investment banker facilitating the transfers, with very sticky fingers.
December 4, 2010, 8:44 amTed Rado:
It would be a blessing if the AGW pushers would have a viable alternative to fossil fuels before they destroy our current economic system. Some of the pro AGW blogs argue that if you do away with fossil fuels, it will force us to "think of something". Wouldn't it be better to "think of something" first, and destroy the economy second?
This whole AGW thing is a wonderful example of zealotry uber alles!!
December 4, 2010, 1:40 pmBill J.:
I thought it was the Aztecs that practiced human sacrifice.
December 6, 2010, 6:00 amskh.pcola:
In common with all known Bronze Age civilisations the Incas practised human sacrifice [via: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_sacrifice#Pre-Columbian_Americas%5D
I didn't know that _all_ (known) Bronze Age cultures engaged in the practice, though.
December 6, 2010, 11:52 amskh.pcola:
Open italics tag...sorry.
December 6, 2010, 11:54 ammarkm:
skh.pcola: There's a pretty big difference between "civilization" and "culture". If you go back to the Greek roots of the word, "civilization" originally was the art of living in cities, and in the Bronze age most people didn't. However, "city" doesn't necessarily mean metropolis's like Athens in the Greek Golden Age; a town of 20,000 qualified as a "city" in Europe until the 19th Century AD. I can make a case that with modern transportation and communications, civilization no longer requires cities or even towns, but many people still choose to live there...
Hunter-gatherer's often don't practice human sacrifice, but they aren't civilizations. Anyway, if the "noble savages" of North America didn't cut out captives hearts on an altar like the Aztecs, they did torture them to death to test their courage. Before you condemn those ancient tribes, remember that we're still struggling with the question of what to do with captured enemy warriors, aside from those special cases where it's possible to make peace and send them home. We won't kill them or enslave them, and adopting them into our tribe would be suicidal, so it looks like we're stuck with feeding them at Gitmo forever...
According to the collection of Hebrew legends we call the Old Testament, they stopped practicing human sacrifice at an indeterminate time that probably was in the bronze age - but Abraham's people were definitely hicks. It was much, much later that a collection of runaway slaves who claimed descent from Abraham conquered the cities of Canaan and formed the first Hebrew civilization, which had a definite rule against human sacrifice. I think this was near the end of the Bronze age.
I can't confirm that nearly all Bronze Age civilizations practiced some form of human sacrifice, but . To the limited extent that the Canaanite Hebrews recorded anything about the civilizations they fought, they attributed human sacrifice, polytheism, and other nasty habits to them. Hard to tell the facts from the propaganda. I don't recall the ancient Egyptians burning children or slaves in sacrifices to their gods, but they did bury servants along with a deceased pharoah. I
December 7, 2010, 5:57 pm