Nicholas Humphrey retells the 1995 AD find in the high mountains of Peru of the frozen mummified body of a young Inca girl,
She was dressed as a princess. She was thirteen years old. About five hundred years ago, this little girl had, it seems, been taken alive up the mountain by a party of priests, and then ritually killed-a sacrifice to the mountain’s Gods in the hope that they would look kindly on the people below.
The discovery was described by the anthropologist, Johan Reinhard, in an article for the National Geographic magazine. He was clearly elated both as a scientist and as a human being by the romance of finding this “ice maiden”, as he called her. Even so, he did express some reservations about how she had come to be there: “we can’t help but shudder,” he wrote, “at [the Incas’] practice of performing human sacrifice.”
He then expresses outrage that a TV program depicting the find represented,
the practice of human sacrifice was in its own way a glorious cultural invention-another jewel in the crown of multiculturalism, if you like.Yet, how dare anyone even suggest this? How dare they invite us-in our sitting rooms, watching television-to feel uplifted by contemplating an act of ritual murder: the murder of a dependent child by a group of stupid, puffed up, superstitious, ignorant old men? How dare they invite us to find good for ourselves in contemplating an immoral action against someone else?
Immoral? By Inca standards? No, that’s not what matters. Immoral by ours_
Get the picture? According to Nicholas Humphrey child sacrifice is not inherently immoral but just happens to be thus viewed by our standards; “ours” apparently meaning first-world country citizenry’s agreement which is, of course, subject to change even as the zeitgeist fluctuates to and fro from moral zeitgeist to poltergeist.But then again, the only “moral” conclusion is that the child chooses for themselves as long as they do not choose anything but atheism, as we shall see (particularly at the end of part 4).
Moreover, I wonder what his view on abortion is; the Incas had nothing on the hundreds of millions of healthy, beautiful, innocent and defenseless human babies that have been painfully murdered via brutal dismemberment. Keep in mind that according to “our” morals this is not only perfectly acceptable: it is; as per Dan Barker, “a blessing,” it is even “sacred abortion,” it is a right, it is a financially beneficial multibillion dollar money machine.
This is just about the point in the lecture where Nicholas Humphrey drives home the point that in opposition to his proposal of what the child would have chosen if given the choice,
The Amish, by contrast, survive only by kidnapping little children before they can protest.
And we are getting ever closer to the ultimate motivation behind his proposal which, as we shall see, is to make it so that the atheist survives only by kidnapping little children before they can protest.Again, note that he claim to uphold the ideal that,
_in every case where we come across examples of children’s lives being manipulated to serve other ends, we have a duty to protest.
His ultimately goal is to bypass the parent’s rights, forcefully, and manipulate children to serve other ends; Nicholas Humphrey’s own.In another attempt to drive a nail into the coffin of a parent’s relationship and responsibility to their children he states,
_the very idea that parents or any other adults have “rights” over children is morally insupportable.
He, of course, does not elucidate to what moral he is appealing; atheists generally prefer to not bother with premises but merely launch into condemnation. Yet, it is ONLY parents and other adults who do have “rights” over children. The parent or guardian is legally and morally responsible for the child’s health and safety since they are supposed to be better informed and more able to discern than a child. When I take my children to the playground only I have the right to pick them up, place them into my vehicle, drive away with them and place them into my home. No one else, not even those Amish kidnappers, have that right. Where my children to vandalize personal or government property I would be responsible for the legal and financial ramifications.
Yet, Nicholas Humphrey is not really proposing that “the very idea that parents or any other adults have ‘rights’ over children is morally insupportable” but that only he and his elite atheist cabal have a rights over children.
And again,
No human being, in any other circumstances, is credited with having rights over anyone else. No one is entitled, as of right, to control, use or direct the life-course of another person-even for objectively good ends.
That is right; you have no right to tell your child to share with others, or become a doctor, etc. because this amounts to being entitled direct the child’s life-course for objectively good ends. This, of course, is more poppycock since everyone from parents to teachers, from the police to the president, from the lunch lady to the military is actually expected to exercise rights over others and are indeed, entitled to control the life-course of others persons-to a certain extent.
We shall see that Nicholas Humphrey’s entire lecture, his very premise, is his hopes of personally having rights over others; to actively control, use or direct the life-course of others (as will be seen particularly at the end of part 4).Now we get closer to how the militant activist atheist plan is meant to unfold as he describes how he intends on, forcefully, intervening:
Intervene how? Suppose we-I mean we as a society-do not like what is happening when the education of a child has been left to parents or priests. Suppose we fear for the child’s mind and want to take remedial action. Suppose indeed we want to take pre-emptive action with all children to protect them from being hurt by bad ideas and to give them the best possible start as thoughtful human beings. What should we be doing about it? What should be our birthday present to them from the grown-up world?
My suggestion at the start of this talk was: science-universal scientific education. That’s to say, education in learning from observation, experiment, hypothesis testing, constructive doubt, critical thinking-and the truths that flow from it.
Let us grant that he provides a wonderful definition of “science” against which none would argue. However, let us recognize that the purpose of defining science in this way within this context is in order to elicit this very reaction: that it is wonderful and no one would argue.
Yet, we must recognize that within the worldview of certain atheists what they mean by “science” is atheist propaganda wrapped in a mere veneer of scientific respectability. Science is employed along with claims that upon exploring the cosmos science implies atheism. Science is even employed in the form of atheism spirituality to fill the God shaped hole in every human heart-atheist neo Paganism. Science is one of the doorways through which atheists have smuggled atheist propaganda into public schools.
Nicholas Humphrey further elucidates:
I think science stands apart from and superior to all other systems for the reason that it alone of all the systems in contention meets the criterion I laid out above: namely, that it represents a set of beliefs that any reasonable person would, if given the chance, choose for himself_science is the one way of thinking-maybe the only one-that passes this test. There is a fundamental asymmetry between science and everything else.
What are some of these “beliefs that any reasonable person would, if given the chance, choose for himself”? That life came into being when lightning struck a swamp? That nothing caused nothing to explode for no reason and made everything? That light is both wage and particle? That there are subatomic particles? That water consists of H2O? That accident begat accident begat accident begat the human mind that concludes that accident begat accident begat accident begat the human mind? That Keanu Reeve can act?
Just what are we talking about: hard science, soft science, scientific interpretation of evidence via schools of thought, professional rivalries, and worldviews? Exclusively observation and repeatable experimentation? Wild speculation in the guise of theory? What?
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