padremike wrote:
Actually, Australia had a far worse records for pacification of the Aboriginal population than we Americans had for our blacks brethren. Give us a shout when your PM is a "black feller."
Your right, or close to it, you fed the indigenous people fire water and plastic beads we fed them grog and arsenic flour.
Australian Aboriginals were more down to earth and flour was superior to worthless junk, speaking of worthlessness let me just say.
Another difference is that Australian Aboriginals were not seen as a worthy enemy by the British so even when they did figh Militarily which they did on the Nepean Plains, it was not recorded because the Aboriginals were believed to be too pathetic to fight with, so technically since no treaty was ever made and the right of conquest was never officially recorded, legally the Continent of Australia literally legally still belongs to the indigenous people.
The Convicts and Settlers believed the stone age Aboriginals with no domesticated animals would soon die out and not exist, hence the arsenic flour.
This is typical genocidal thinking, but the Church saw the Convicts and Settlers as, although flawed in some regard, still good Christians much the same as Evangelical and Catholic Ministers see the good "well to do" Christians in the US today.
These good Christians are always trying to lock up poor Negroes the descendants of emancipated slaves, that legally don't own very much and are of equal legal status.
What Australia needs is a worthy Aboriginal PM to create a water shed mental moment.
But it wouldn't change very much, we need to understand how atonement is achieved by rituals, maybe penance is necessary for redemption or maybe wine as fake blood will do the trick, I'm not sure but I do want to survive death.
Prior to the Old Testament social achievement on a tribal level, or social achievement on a National level with regard to a large group of many tribes warranted a place in the after-life.
The Old Testament had no after-life so the question didn't arise. Christianity invented Heaven the Muslims agreed calling it Paradise.
So now the Congregations with a Heaven to accept or reject them are only Christians and Islamists as far as were concerned in Australia and America.
What is Redemption ?.
If extraterrestrial Religion is understood as the beginning and end of the intellectual phenomenon known as Philosophy the answer is environmental, because God in that case is developing Himself and learning from mistakes.