Toubabou

I and My Brother Against My Cousin

The Yahi were fierce predatory raiders–as were hill tribesmen the world over with their remote sanctuaries and a lack of property to defend. Lowland Indians feared them, and the Yahi offered the stiffest resistance to the flood of settlers who entered California during the 1850s Gold Rush. In the end all but a few dozen of the several hundred Yahi were killed, and the survivors vanished into the remotest parts of their mountain territory, living a life of concealment, at bare subsistence level, for 40 years. The renowned anthropologist Alfred Kroeber dubbed this refugee group “the smallest free nation in the world.” Ethnologists of the day considered the Yahi way of life during the four-decade concealment “the most totally aboriginal and primitive of any on the continent.”

The amusing thing about this quote, of course, is that the Yahi were not living an aboriginal lifestyle. It was a new lifestyle to them, different than the lifestyle they had previously had. Aboriginal is just a fancy word for original, and this was obviously not the Yahi’s original lifestyle, since they were driven to it.

Unfortunately, this tells us almost everything we need to know about the presuppositions of anthropologists.

Erotic Jesus sparks art debate in Austria | U.S. | Reuters

Boehler, like Hrdlicka, says the art debate can be compared to the Danish cartoon row, where an image of the Prophet Mohammad with a bomb in his turban enraged some in the Muslim world who saw it as blasphemous. The angry reaction to Hrdlicka’s work has only been verbal and the museum says some Christians have been balanced and support the exhibition, despite disagreeing with the artist’s approach.

If this exhibit can be compared to the "Danish cartoon row", it is only in this way:

1. The Danish cartoons weren’t blasphemous. They were of Mohammed, who isn’t God, even according to Muslims. Jesus, on the other hand, is God.
2. The Danish cartoons demonstrated the link between Mohammed and a bomb, as fully illustrated by the reaction to the cartoons. Homosexual perversion is not linked to Christian doctrine and practice, and the reactions to this, while passionate, have been measured.

In short, the comparison shows, like the title of Robert Spencer’s book, why Christianity is a religion of peace, and Islam isn’t. But I wouldn’t expect Reuters to pick up on that…