I would like to think that a civilized person should have something resembling respect for other people/culture’s spiritual beliefs enough to not be so blatantly insensitive. Its just polite.
I agree. However I still would like to say that the Oscar-winning pimp song from HUSTLE AND FLOW is shit; it's not even good rap, and it vaguely glamorises a terrible terrible profession. Just SAYING that, for some reason, I open myself up to declarations of racism, even though I never said that pimping was exclusively a black man's profession. I use this analogy to point out that when people choose to be offended, and yes, it's a CHOICE, they often supply their own ammunition. Getting back to the point though, it's a shit song, really. It's just fucking terrible. Pretty much evefyone in North America ought to see the Hughes Brothers' documentary AMERICAN PIMP. If I were the Minister of Education, I'd be showing it in grade school. It's about time we stopped glamorising pimps. We're being inundated with this faux-urban slang, and it's soooooooo annoying. It's getting so looking good and dressing nice is "pimp," like it's an adjective for "attractive" or "stylish." Fucking enough already, please.
As for human sacrifice, Julius Caesar wrote about them in
De Bello Gallico. However, what he was describing sounds to me more like a form of execution: murderers were sacrificed to the Gods. He may have had limited exposure, and possibly I haven't read enough, but I am just applying a skeptic's reading to what I have seen. Strabo, in his
Geography, wrote more generally of sacrifice, for prophecy and fertility, and he mentioned nothing that I could see of punishment. Strabo's writing however references use of weapons that the Celts didn't use, so like Tacitus, we may be dealing with an author not writing from personal experience. Julius Caesar however was there. Both wrote of the Wicker Man, with the animal and human burning. Physical evidence of the burnt sacrifices, naturally, will never turn up, but the culture and history of the Wicker Man has endured among the celtic poeple, so I doubt these Romans made it up. Men have turned up in bogs whose bodies show evidence of what may have been ritual violence. Whether it was sacrifice to Gods or mundane torture who knows. The Danes in their own writings did speak of human sacrifice, so they for one I believe. However naturally they were speaking of Danes and not Celts.
In my opinion this is all immaterial to whether the Celts had a line to the ancients and to the spirit world, but if someone wants to follow their religion and still apply modern morality to it, I can understand one wanting to deny sacrifice, or at least to say that sacrifices, if they occurred, were a part of the secular reality of a different time and place. In defence of Druidism, MC, I'd like to point out that classical Hebrews stoned women to death for adultery, but they don't do that now. They abandoned that aspect of their religion as secular morality changed and shaped them as a people. The same can be said of modern Druids, that essentially they do nothing much that their classical counterparts may have done, while retaining all of the beliefs they suspect their ancestors may well have had. The big leap however is when you take Medieval Studies, and reenactments, and following those make the leap to believing that there is a spirit world and make claims that you have contacted it.
Slade: You are right when you say that subjective beliefs can't be argued. I tried to point that out with the comments about musical taste and all that. But belief systems ought not to be subjective; people should believe in things for which there is objective proof. Like for instance I believe in Twinkies, and I think they are horrible and don't understand why people eat them. The first half of the previous sentence contained an objective statement, the second half a subjective one. I wouldn't want to build a belief system on subjective leanings, but only on objective learning. The subjective statements are what show my character, but I wouldn't try to use them to make claims about the world. "I like the Druids, and I read about them, and I like to dress up and play with Ouija boards" are all therefore statements that can be the subjects of conversation, or they can be ignored. "I have spoken with spirits" is on the order of saying there is intelligent life on Mars. I am going to want to know more. The claimant can't provide any more information, except as a medium, which frankly isn't enough. I need to see the Martians for myself. Failing that, I am free to say that the claim is false. I don't need to prove it wrong; it needs to be proven right.
Sailer: I am not asking you to prove it right. You have told us that in your personal experience you have encountered objective proof to back up your beliefs, but that this is proof that cannot be shared or displayed. This sort of thing is common to statements of religious revelation, like the testimonies of various Spanish girls who have seen the Virgin Mary. I call this "proof" then subjective; hardline skeptics will call it "delusion," while I simply say it is unconvincing. Even Slade calls your objective proof subjective, suggesting perhaps that it exists only in your own mind. He can speak for himself on that one; maybe that's not what he meant.
Regardless, they should take that Oscar back and give it to Dolly Parton, despite her own history of glamorising whorehouses.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).
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