Just a thought

[JavaGuy]

I just thought about how the Native Americans all had developed Religion just as the Easterners. However, They weren't in contact with the Europeans until navigators found the continent. As far as I know, the Natives came over during the Ice Age (or around that time) before any visible proof of religion existed. So either religion is more that just an idea, a very real thing instilled into all the minds of men, or there were many many Westerners traveling over here before anyone had thought. I'm sure there's some piece of common knowledge that I don't know that would clear this all up, so somebody please inform me.

[IMJack]

You say they all developed "religion". Of course they did. The concept of an unseen power creating and affecting the world is a common human concept in lieu of science. It is by no means a European creation; people have had concepts of religion ever since humanity became self-aware and started spreading out from central Africa.

[fodders]

The choice is , religion and a feeling of something after death, world wide and all religions, or last breath and blankness, thinking man has always chosen the former

[dsm]

AFAIK Chrsitianity is much more divided in the US than it is where I live.

My religion teacher while I was at what would be the equivalent of US High schools, told us once that he went to the USA with a class. He was approached by an American student who asked him which kind of Christian he was (he had told the Americans that they were Christians) and he replied "Protestant" to which the American bloke further asked: "Which kind???"
Now, this was where my teacher got confused, because in my country we only divide Christians between Protestants and Catholics (a small group are Jehova's Witnesses, but they are generally ignored). We don't have Quakers and what all the other American "divisions" of Christianity are called (don't recall them all), so from that I'll conclude that Christianity has been divided further in the US than where I live. Dunno about other European countries though.

[fodders]

Where DO you live?

[IMJack]

  Quote

all the other American "divisions" of Christianity are called (don't recall them all)

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Last I checked, there were far too many to list. Though I suppose you could trim the list a tad by omitting those groups that either don't quite fit the classic definition of "Christian" or are small and strange enough to be considered a "cult".

[dsm]

  fodders said:

Where DO you live?

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Denmark

[fodders]

  dsm said:

AFAIK Chrsitianity is much more divided in the US than it is where I live.

We don't have Quakers

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Check

[dsm]

  fodders said:

Check

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Well I'll be damned!
How come I've never heard of 'em before?

[fodders]

:)

[Sharessa]

Uhhh...the Natives didn't have a religion like the Judean faiths. I think many of them do believe in a creator-god, but the god is widely unrecognised. Most revere the nature spirits as equal to themselves, unlike the middle-east religions, who revere a One True God figure and they have to do whatever the fuck he asks them to do.

[JavaGuy]

While there was a common beliefe among many tribes, religions (or whatever YOU want to call it) varied among them. To say it was "This way" with the Natives is like saying all Europeans believe in the same thing.

[Sharessa]

  JavaGuy said:

While there was a common beliefe among many tribes, religions (or whatever YOU want to call it) varied among them. To say it was "This way" with the Natives is like saying all Europeans believe in the same thing.

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Um...that was exactly my point...