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No One Is Mentioning The Role Of Chrisitanity In The Haitian Devastation

How come no one in the media is talkin’ about the role of the Catholic Church in the tragic loss of life in Haiti? If the Haitian people lived in harmony with their fragile, insufficient island, there wouldn’t be tens of thousands perishing under the mass of poorly constructed buildings and shanties. They were crushed to death like roaches under the heel of a boot.

If the Spanish conquistadors hadn’t invaded the island, Haiti could have been an earthly paradise. Imagine a tropical island lush in exotic animals and birdlife. Hispaniola offered serene togetherness of sky and sea, delicious climate and breath-halting loveliness.

But religion had destroyed the conquistador’s appreciation of nature. The first thing the Spanish wanted was a return on their measly investment for the cost of a triune fleet plus the meager salaries of a few hundred soldiers. Within a generation they recouped their money a million-fold with gold mines all over the island and the native Taino tribesmen mercilessly enslaved. They had turned Hispaniola into hell.

But slavery wasn’t enough. The Spanish invaders also brought small pox and Christianity. Fresh slaves from Africa had to be imported to work the mines, the Tainos virtually annihilated. The disease was devastating to the body, but the mind control of religion (including Voodoo) proved far worse, because the Haitian people were doomed to perpetual poverty and their fragile island the plague of ever-growing overpopulation. Two million human beings inhabit a port city highly vulnerable to natural disaster. Powerful people have to start asking “why?”.

If Haitians would have been living in harmony with nature—as many people as the farmland and sea could support, perhaps a million (instead of 9,000,000) happy, nature-loving, biophilic people, could be living in heaven on Earth this very day.

Instead poverty, illiteracy, filth, deforestation, crime and pollution are the way of life. The way I see it, Haitians need to stop going to church and make the clergy work for a living like everybody else, then institute strong anti-overpopulation measures. Within a few generations numbers could stabilize to around a tenth of what it is today. On average, every Haitian woman brings 3.8 babies into the world. Perhaps leaders should ask the Chinese how to bring this fecundity to one—for the sake of Haiti itself.

Tags: aristopus, earthquake, endmeme, haiti

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Comment by SecularCortex13.x on January 18, 2010 at 8:13pm: There's talk of evacuating the capital.
There's rumors of bodies as roadblocks.
At liveleak .com I won't even repeat what I've seen.
And then there's Thunderf00t's latest experiment on youtube that may sum up a part of the global corruption problem...

In 1987 on November 29th (I think datewise) they murdered some voters in Haiti...
ballots not bullets... 247-spyz. rock group's lyrics.

let me say, I have good neighbors that are Haitian
ironically both sides of the fence, Spanish/Haitian claim Christ/Bible etc..
but... well, do the math. Evolution is not smiled upon.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on January 18, 2010 at 5:15pm: About the picture. It really looks like they found some sticks laying around and stuck 'em in the ground hoping to get their forest back so they can chop it down again.

Say is isn't so.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on January 18, 2010 at 5:13pm: Once again, thanks for your excellent post, Jo. I’m convinced that overpopulation makes life cheap. Take Bangladesh, for example. A ferry boat can capsize carrying thousands of people and it doesn’t even make the newspapers. Now that’s cheap.

Pat Robinson, ain’t he the guy that claimed the homosexuals caused God’s wrath to literally rain down on New Orleans? Hurricane Katrina was their fault—and AIDS too.

in Haiti they tend to have a very "Everything is God's will" attitude.

That’ll get ‘em on the subway, as we say in NYC. It’s also God’s will that we obey the Ten Commandments, and numero quatre is “Honor thy parents.”

So let’s make all the babies we can and teach them the commandments so they’ll take care of us when we’re old. They’ll honor us, he he. Makes no difference if we lose a few from starvation or amoebic dysentery, don’t even think about it. There’s safety in numbers.

Let me put the question out. Would you honor your parents if you were eight years old, stomach distended from starvation, eyes popping out, rickets and a leaky roof? For some reason the Haitians do and that’s the problem.

Comment by Jo Jerome on January 18, 2010 at 1:51pm: But slavery wasn’t enough. The Spanish invaders also brought small pox and Christianity.

I love how those two diseases are blocked together like that.

On the one hand, Haiti gets credit as the only nation on Earth where the slaves freed themselves with little outside help and formed their own nation. This would be the 'Pact with the devil' Pat Robertson speaks of. (Because only the devil would want slaves freed? Because a bunch of Black slaves can't possibly win a war with a Western nation, so they had to have supernatural help?).

But that fight for independence left these now-freed slaves who had nothing, with less than nothing. And they still had the infection of Christianity.

More so than most flavors of Xianity, in Haiti they tend to have a very "Everything is God's will" attitude. It's been discussed elsewhere 'round our forums how this leads to fatalistic views (if I'm poor, it's God's will and there's nothing I can do about it), or poor material decision-making. Or too little decision-making (we're waiting around for God to magically save us instead of doing more to save ourselves).

This is a perfect example of a larger, older institution being to blame for contemporary problems.

Though ridding the world of Christianity et al is no guarantee. Easter Island practiced their own native religion and still managed to deforest themselves into extinction.

Comment by Richard Goscicki on January 18, 2010 at 1:39pm: Thanks Darrel and Michell. I stated the same thing in my post about conditions brought on by overpopulation in Malawi. Darrel then commented on the pope's line about telling Africans they are "spirited advanced." I told that one to a lot of people. It didn’t get a laugh as much as a ”you gotta be kiddin’”.

I think the reason no one is acknowledging the elephant in the room is the fear that poor people need religion to give life a purpose and the belief that making all the babies a couple wants is a basic human right. If I were the king of Haiti it wouldn’t be.

Comment by Michelle on January 18, 2010 at 12:30pm: The French also played a part by enslaving the Haitians and U.S. government has been culpable for some of the economic damage done to Haiti. Then there is the in fighting between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Wikipedia has a very up-to date article that includes a well segmented history.
While religion has played a huge role in preventing Haiti from being a stronger society including misinformation about birth control and AIDS prevention, many other factors have contributed to the continued poverty of what should be a proud and free nation. This includes a lack of a strong and fair central government.
Sadly, this seemed to be improving recently. Hopefully this event will be a wake up call to help Haiti better govern itself, and not an excuse for 'superpowers' to try and dominate it again through religious or economic means.

Comment by Darrel Ray on January 18, 2010 at 12:24pm: Population control is the elephant in the middle of the living room for not only this disaster but for much of the looming crises around the globe. Sustainability requires some clear control on populations of we humans starting immediately. I agree, Richard, with your assessment and think we should be talking more stridently about the role population plays in across the globe and the role religion plays in preventing population control.