Talk:Religious abuse

Validation of this article

The rationale of why a distinct article like this one should exist in Wikipedia is explained in the header:

This article is about ritualistic child abuse in real life. For the conspiracy theory involving vast networks of paedophiles abusing children, see Satanic ritual abuse

This section —:

Ritualized child abuse is also related to infanticide. Before colonization, in the Hawaiian islands all children, after the third or fourth, were strangled or buried alive. At Tahiti fathers had the right (and used it) of killing their newborn children by suffocation. The chiefs were obliged by custom to kill all their daughters. The Rajput killed a proportion of his daughters, sometimes in a very singular way. A pill of tobacco and bhang might be given to the new-born child; or it was drowned in milk; or the mother's breast was smeared with opium or the juice of the poisonous datura. A common method was to cover the child's mouth with a plaster of cow-dung, before it drew breath. In India children were thrown into the sacred river Ganges, and adoration paid to the alligators who fed on them. Where this custom prevailed in the beginning of the twentieth century as a sacrifice the male child was usually the victim.

—was taken from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.

The article is a stub. I have informed other editors that have been interested in starting this article to expand it & correct it.

Cesar Tort 08:14, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Within the Columbian culture that killed children, I doubt this was considered child abuse. I am concerned that this page runs afoul of WP:V, specifically that it attempts to portray this as true - that all child killing is automatically child abuse. By our modern conception it is - killing children in Incan sacrifices was wrong and child abuse. By the Incan culture, it was right. A modern pedophile has sex with a child because they are selfishly gratifying urges that are forbidden by our culture. In ancient Mesoamerica, it was considered culturally appropriate. There's a massive difference and I'm concerned about lumping them together. WLU (talk) 15:24, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

This has already been discussed at length here. —Cesar Tort 19:28, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Meh, I still say child sacrifice and child abuse are two different subjects. Lacking expertise and interest, I'm probably not going to comment or edit much. The discussion you linked to didn't address my concern that this is the projection of a modern idea (child abuse) on a completely different culture and historical period. Yes it's horrific, yes it's painful, yes if someone were to do so today we would say child abuse, but was it then? But you know all this and there's not much point in repeating : ) WLU (talk) 20:07, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

I agree with you, WLU, that your personal stance would be that we should not classify, say, pre-Columbian child sacrifice as homicide because within the mores of that cultures, it was not considered murder. But let's not forget the pov of the sacrificed children. According to Bernardino de Sahagún, the Aztec children cried when they were about to be sacrificed. They obviously experienced the ritual as abusive. Anyway, I've removed the category "homicide" from this page. Hope that's fair enough :) Cesar Tort 22:31, 12 February 2008 (UTC)

Hm...my first thoughts are about WP:5P and WP:NOT#Memorial - we're an encyclopedia, not a memorial, unfortunately information trumps the terror they may have felt. And were they tears of joy for having such an integral part in the renewal of life and importance with the supernatural cause they were helping with? I'm playing Devil's advocate, obviously I think sacrificing children to make it rain is stupid and horrible, but child abuse is a thoroughly modern idea, just like the idea of the rights of animals and the lack of value in the elderly. I'm not going to AFD the page or bold-merge it back to SRA. I'm just suggesting things to think about and giving you my gut reaction. The horror of events should not influence the dispassionate recording and discussion of them in an encylcopedic manner. Get the feeling we're talking in circles? I still also feel that the split between SRA and ritualized child abuse is not a good one, but I'm not the community and obviously there was some support for it on talk:SRA so for now at least they stay separate. How about we agree that we're disagreeing, and see where the following weeks take us? I don't think either one of us will come around to the other's point of view no matter the arguments raised. WLU (talk) 00:09, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

• "And were they tears of joy for having such an integral part in the renewal of life and importance with the supernatural cause they were helping with?"

Nop! In fact, most of the Aztec human sacrifice was involuntary. People in their towns were raided (like in the Apocalypto film) for sacrifice. Forget Mel Gibson. This is demonstrated in the 16 century Sahagún text. Also, you can see in Bernal Díaz's 16 century account that not only the Spaniards, but many Indians also felt that Aztec sacrifice of their own people was horrible and abusive. The feeling of abuse is not only a view of our times.

Yes: we may agree to disagree and we can only wait for other editors to comment here. I still think that merging this page with SRA is akin to merge sexual abuse to an article on claims of sexual experiments during UFO abduction.

I apologize for my bold preempt and for not waiting for a broader consensus in talk:SRA anyway. But isn't Wikipedia calling for our boldness sometimes? :)

—Cesar Tort 01:04, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

Hey, I wouldn't have cited WP:BOLD if I didn't think it was OK! Boldness isn't a permission thing, it's codified. On gristle-chewing the idea for a bit, I think my objection comes down to one of motivation - the motivation of the ancient Incas was totally different from the motivation of a modern child abuser - sexual gratification, power trip, frustration, definitely not following the cultural mores to (the believed) good of society. Anyway, just because I disagree doesn't make me right, there's millions of other editors on wiki and a half-dozen on the SRA alone who may have a different opinion. You were bold, let's see how it unfolds. WLU (talk) 01:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

OK. But some scholars do not think that the motivation of the ancient Incas was totally different from the motivation of a modern child abuser. Since this topic is related to the legitimacy of this article, what I am about to quote is not soapboaxing.

See how psychologist Robert W. Godwin mocks the anthropologists who idealize the Capacocha child sacrifice:

“ I will cite just one out of thousands of examples, the recent discovery in the mountains of Chile of three children who had been ritually sacrificed 500 years ago [National Geographic, November 1999]. Lest you think there was anything horrifying and barbaric about this practice, these children were actually the benefactors of "the highest honor the Inca civilization could bestow: becoming a human gift to the mountain gods." In fact, one of them had even her head placed in a vice from birth, so that she would have the distinction of her skull growing "into the shape of a mountain peak," thus resembling the god to whom she would be sacrificed. Although they were buried alive, we are assured that the children "exude an air of tranquility," and that "this was not a time of terror and horror but of peace and worship." And with this fortuitous archeological find, researchers are hoping the little ones "prove as valuable to science as they were precious to their people." Here we see a fine example of complete moral inversion, in what amounts to the glorification of collective intimidation, humiliation, and thought control, with all its potential for unhinged sadism. ”

—Cesar Tort 03:10, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

None of that to me says anything about the motivation of the Incans being similar to that of a modern child abuser. The archeologists are projecting a utopian ideal the same way Godwin projects a sadistic torturer. And really, we can never know who is right or of both are 100% wrong, because that was 500 years ago in a culture completely alien to me. Yeah, I think it's horrible, but I'm not an ancient Incan. I don't think you're soapboxing BTW, I just don't find it convincing enough to change my position. Do you think this dead horse has been beaten enough?  : ) Let's leave this discussion and let the page evolve. WLU (talk) 15:17, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The Incas' motivations have been discussed elsewhere, but yes: let us end this thread and the page evolve. —Cesar Tort 18:49, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

• gasp* <choke> **gurrrrrgllle** REMEMBER ME AS I ONCE WAS!!! (dies) WLU (talk) 18:51, 13 February 2008 (UTC)

The problem (as I see it) is that you (cesar)seem to be defining what is abuse, and yes by our standards they are, but at the same time I think you're going to have to find references that call these things abuse. Yes, all of these things are ghastly, horrid and <insert adjective here> but without sources that specifically mention them in the context of abuse it seems to me to be WP:OR. Remember, we want verifiability not truth WP:V. --Woland (talk) 01:27, 15 February 2008 (UTC)

Oh no: it's no OR. Believe me! Have you read the expressions of horror of Bernardino de Sahagún about the sacrifice of Indian children almost 500 years ago? Sahagún (1499-1590) has often been called "the father of modern ethnography, because his methods included using native informants to elicit information on Aztec culture from the Aztecs' point of view." I have read part of his monumental Florentine Codex and, if you like, can quote verbatim (in Spanish) those expressions of abuse. (There's an English academic translation but I don't have it.) —Cesar Tort 01:40, 15 February 2008 (UTC)