Originally Posted by garbanzo

forgive me for being blunt, but you are wrong, plain and simple. you're making the mistake of thinking that large-scale, institutionalized religion is the only kind of religion. moreover, you seem to be forgetting that humans have been around for more than a few thousand years.

go read up on shamanism among the tukano indians of the colombian amazon, or among the san of southern africa. read about yanomamo shamanism, or peruvian curanderos, or australian clever men.

read about a shaman's role as a mediator, both within his society and between humans and the natural world.

read mircea eliade, joseph campbell, mihaly hoppal, gerardo reichel-dolmatoff. read something.


why shamanism? humans were hunter-gatherers for most of (pre)history. almost all known hunter-gatherer societies practice shamansim. the archaeological record suggests shamanism has been around for 200,000 years or longer. this means that for 99% of human history, it was the dominant form of religion on the planet.

if you want to bash christianity, be my guest. i'll tag along. but don't insist that all religion is bad.