Now British pagans are demanding ancient human remains from museums for re-burial.
The Council of British Druid Orders say "We would like people to reconsider their relationship with the bones, … We view them as living people and therefore they have rights as people".
I'm sorry, I am not medically trained but, as far as I can see, they look very dead to me.
So far, so bonkers. But, here comes the cruncher:
Some in the museum community say it is unfair for scientists to impose their world view on pagans. "We think that there is actually an intellectual argument for pagan claims to be taken seriously," said Prof Bienkowski, "It is a different world view which, actually, like the scientific world view can be neither proved nor disproved. It is actually our responsibility to take those views into account." What right, he asks, do scientists have to speak for the bones either?
So it has come to this. We can't distinguish between science and bollocks eh? Post-modernism, you have so much to answer for.
3 comments:
Terrific blog. Like your humour if not your photo.
How dare you.
Please don't assume that all Pagans take this view. Most of us recognise the value of archaeology and science. My personal view is that archaeology and archaeological research (including that on human remains) has contributed an enormous amount to the recovery of respect for the ancestors, who were previously regarded as savages, until archaeology set the record straight.
As to postmodernism, Piotr Bienkowski's statement about the relativity of truth claims only applied to what happens to the consciousness after death - something that neither materialist science nor faith traditions can prove (it's non-falsifiable). That isn't postmodernism, it's either relativism or epistemology.
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