When the Christian missionaries turned up in PNG, one of the first moral rules they taught to the locals was not killing each other. Apparently it was pretty common. The geography of PNG prevented the formation of large tribes or villages. While this meant no large scale wars, they did kill each other on a smaller scale, but more frequently. They would not line up in battle, but would turn up at 3am and slaughter everyone in the village. When two people met each other in the forest, they would stand back and chat until they figured out that they were related somehow, which was usually a good enough excuse not to kill each other.

Anyway, this got me thinking about claims that religion is not responsible for moral values. If not religion, where does the notion that killing another human is wrong come from? It is not an unnatural act. The moral code has practical value in a large community, but if that were the only source then it would be discarded whenever convenient.

I think that moral opposition to murder comes from culture. You pick up the set of values your culture has, and then declare them to be absolute once you've tried them out and found them to be useful. Take any person who says murder is wrong, let them grow up instead in a society that has no problem with murder, and they will not express the same opposition to it.

Amongst headhunters, people from another tribe were not seen as "humans."
For them, to kill those of your own tribe was as abhorrant as if you or I killed someone.

Whereas to kill a person from another tribe, was like us killing a chicken or cow.

Which part of PNG all this about? Highlanders on mainland are still very warlike while islanders never were really bad may be were eating a missionary a year not more.

As for churches there it is a site to behold on Sundays. Mature young girls with nor bra singing psalms to customary Pacific tunes nearly converted me to their lifestyles.

You thought about that qualifier didn't you?

freediver wrote on Oct 20^th, 2008 at 10:21pm:

You thought about that qualifier didn't you?

I used to live amongst them in bush villages and can testify that they they are very nice people unless you brake a taboo but much nicer then any Big Smoke Concrete Jungle people at any time.