Re: religious group retention rates (Mark Twain and Brigham Young)

From: Ken Kittlitz (ken@javien.com)
Date: Thu Jun 22 2000 - 10:08:59 MDT


At 09:40 AM 21/06/2000 -0400, GBurch1@aol.com wrote:
> > >J. R. Molloy wrote:
> > >
> > >> BTW, have you read Chief Seattle's address?
>
>The March, 1999 edition of the Skeptical Enquirer magazine has a good article
>showing fairly conclusively that Chief Seattle never gave the speech that is
>attributed to him.

Here's the story, as outlined in Matt Ridley's _The Origins of Virtue_
(Penguin, 1996), pp. 214-215:

         The chief's prescience, alas, is illusory. Nobody knows what he
said that day. The only
         report, made thirty years later, was that he praised the
generosity of the great white
         chief in buying his land. The entire 'speech' is the work of
modern fiction. It was written
         for an ABC television drama by a screenwriter and professor of
film, Ted Perry, in 1971.
         Though many environmentalists, Gore included, like to pretend
otherwise, Chief Seattle
         was no tree-hugger. Among the few things we do know about him are
that he was a slave
         owner and had killed almost all his enemies. As the case of Chief
Seattle illustrates, the
         entire notion of living in harmony with nature is built upon
wishful thinking.

--
Ken Kittlitz
V.P. Development, Javien Canada Inc.


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