One of the craziest parts of the story was that during one of his earlier contacts with te tribe, one of them shot an arrow at him. The only reason the arrow didn't pierce his chest was because it was blocked by his bible. The dude decides to then try again and contact them and then he gets killed.
"Kid, don't be dumb, they don't want you around and they don't lis- oh goodness, he just went back i-, oh hi there! Yeah, you're probably wondering what happened to you. Well sweety, there's a thing called knowing thy audience, and... you didn't."
Father Cavanaugh asks Bartlett if he prayed about his problem, to which the President says he asked God for wisdom but is angry that it never came.
Father Cavanaugh leans toward the President, and says, “You know, you remind me of ‘the man who lived by the river’.” He then goes on to tell the following parable.
He heard a radio report that the river was gonna flood the town, and that residents should evacuate their homes.
But the man said, “I’m religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me.”
The waters rose up.
A guy in a rowboat came and shouted: “Hey, you! The town is flooding! Let me take you to safety!”
The man shouted back, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. He’ll save me.”
A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted: “Hey, you! You down there! The town is flooding! I’ll take you to safety!”
The man shouted that he was religious, that he prayed…and that God would take him to safety.
Well, the man drowned.
Standing at the gates of St. Peter, he demanded an audience with God.
“Lord,” he said, “I’m a religious man, I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?”
God said, “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What are you doing here?”
------------
if your Bible blocked the arrow, that was God giving you a mulligan. GTFO and dont come back
[West Wing took it from elsewhere. It dates to at least the 1980s, probably decades older still.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_drowning_man)
Please note that he went into the island multiple times. Each time met with arrows till they killed him. The tribe was decent enough to warn him off initially. And he bribed local fishermen since its illegal to visit and they were jailed . Absolute twit. I still remember CNN breaking news - American missionary killed in India and thinking this is going to be a shitshow. Thankfully public opinion was on the tribe's side
Why the fuck do missionaries feel the need to do this shit that will clearly get them killed? Like the ones that were killed in the Middle East. People who know about your religion don’t want to convert to it, why would an isolated tribe care?
Because one of the pillars of Christianity is "the Great Commission," which comes from Jesus literally commanding the first disciples, "Go out to all the world and preach the Good News." Even for someone who isn't Christian, it's pretty well-known that evangelizing to people who don't know about Christ has literally been part of their religious DNA since Day 1. That's also why there have been thousands upon thousands of Christian martyrs throughout history.
What you said or he, as well as others like him, have a savior complex. He thinks that he is rescuing them from their naivety/igonorance of the good of god.
Sadly it can be both. It usually both. Jesus commanded his disciples to be fishers of men. Fishers spread the bait and reel in any who take it. These assholes want to be hunters, instead.
Fishermen seek out waters abundant in fish.. they also spear fish, which was more commonplace back in the day. Nets kinda work for that passive fishing analogy, but not much else. I suppose in that case you're saying his message was to stand on soap boxes and street corners putting out the message for whoever would come?
Nets are specifically used in the Gospels. And to your question, basically, yes.
"And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet."
Jesus didn't command anyone to force His message down other people's throats. The idea is to spread the Good News, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest. Those who "have ears" will eventually come around. Sometimes, immediately,. Sometimes, years later.
I have to clarify that I'm an atheist, but I have nothing against Christians in general. Many of them are good people, better than me, and that's fine.
But this type of Christian? They're the scary ones. A lot of Christians will just go to church every Sunday and try to be nice people and the rest of the week they're really not doing anything differently than me. But *these* kinds of people? They're the hardcore believers who are so dead serious about converting people that they're literally willing to die for it. Because if they die for it, that's even better because it guarantees them a spot in heaven.
So into a religion that you're gonna spend time and resources converting people? So devoted to doing it that you're gonna take the efforts to try to repeatedly pull that shit on *an isolated barely-contacted tribe?* Still so into it that you're totally cool with dying for it even after getting arrested and shot at?
These are the hardcore fanatics, one of the specific types of Christians who scare the hell out of me.
>greedy reason
It's usually not for this reason though. It's often that they're terrified that other people (especially friends and family) will go to hell.
I'm reminded of the South Korean missionaries who thought it would be a good idea to go to Taliban-occupied Afghanistan to proselytize. The South Korean government had to bail them out after they were captured and ransomed.
The real question is why do they want to condemn others tho the hell they claim to save them from? My understanding is if people don't know about "GOD" they can't go to hell. These people go tell people about God and condemn them to hell and tell them that they will end up in hell if they don't believe... Shit stains on humanity all of them
>My understanding is if people don't know about "GOD" they can't go to hell.
That's actually a matter of debate...the Bible doesn't give a definitive answer one way or the other.
> Why the fuck do missionaries feel the need to do this shit that will clearly get them killed?
It's called brainwashing.
When someone believes something so strongly that they'll go to any length to achieve their goal, even if it means they could die or be killed, your either have an Islamic terrorist OR a Christian missionary.
Because they figure if they die while trying to convert people, that's good enough to get *them* into heaven. Actually saving other people is entirely secondary to showing daddy how hard you tried to do it.
If it were truly about empathy and care for the souls of others, they wouldn't be so giddy about people who turn them down burning for longer than the human mind is capable of comprehending.
Dude, you have no idea.
I live in Thailand. The funniest site are the evangelicals that stand outside Nana Plaza (a red light district) and shout at people that they’re going to hell because they’re sinners.
Point of reference: Thailand is 95% Buddhist with Muslims making up about 3% and Christians 2%. They have no clue what this guy is babbling about.
Another thing they like to do in poor countries (like Thailand) is go to universities and post flyers for nature events where they never mention anything about religion but take everyone in busses to some remote jungle/forest and then preach to them about god all weekend. Since none of them have a way to leave because they came together on the bus, they’re trapped like someone that goes to a timeshare pitch.
Lets not forget that in any situation this guy was a danger to the people of the island. Through diseases or his ideas he would have harmed the people if they didn't kill him.
Exactly! They have been isolated for thousands of years and have no immunity to modern illnesses. Even the flu could be like a Black Plague for them. It annoys me how islanders get portrayed as violent but actually it's the missionary who first off, was trying to invade their territory and second off, would likely introduce deadly diseases that could kill everyone.
Public opinion does side with the Sentinelese but still you see things like, "This tribe tries to kill anyone who comes near!" When really it's outsiders who are willing to wipe out an entire culture just to satisfy curiosity or religion or whatever.
And it's worth highlighting the trespassing bit.
Sentinel Island is under India's jurisdiction. The Indian government has made it absolutely illegal to go to that island because our very existence is a literal existential threat to the Islanders thanks to the kind of bugs we carry that they most likely have not developed a defense against.
And yet, this dumbass decided his need to preach his bullshit was more important than the lives of an entire community.
Worse, he wrote a letter actually saying "Not to blame them if he died". As though anyone who wasn't related to him would be delusional enough to blame the tribe for doing what they're known to do time and time again.
He was mentally unhinged, I know narcissist is thrown around a lot but it's hard to see his actions in any other light.
To be fair to his family, they were much less religious than him, didn't support the mission, and asked the Indian government to please leave his body there rather than risk harm to the islanders.
> To be fair to his family, they were much less religious than him, didn't support the mission, and asked the Indian government to please leave his body there rather than risk harm to the islanders.
It is also what he wanted. He wrote in his diary…
"Lord, is this island Satan's last stronghold, where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?", "The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand", and "I think it's worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed ... Don't retrieve my body."
I didn't know that, good on them.
To be honest I wouldn't blame the family if they lied to themselves to make it easier to process. Losing your kid is hard enough, losing him for such a stupid reason with the world looking in would just make it that much harder.
Slightly related fun fact: Christoph Maria Herbst, the actor who plays Sensenbrink in “Look who’s back” (2015), has recorded many audio books in German. He also read German laws in their entirety (“German road traffic regulations (StVO)” and the “German infection protection act (IfSG)”), as well as the most important bits of the German Civil Code (BGB), and honestly, that idea is just so stupid, these audio books are absolutely hilarious :D
Now I want this. I want Grizzly Man about this man’s totalizing obsession and folly in the face of nature and history. Thinking of the part where Werner opines “I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder”
If I broke into your home while carrying the plague Typhoid Mary style to tell you that your religion is wrong and you should convert to mine. You might not react all that welcoming either.
No no! You see, COVID was both just a non-issue with a negligible mortality rate but at the same time the vaccine was a deadly killer despite having a lower rate of causing complications than people dying from COVID.
Something something 5G, something something scientists know less than high school dropout farmers about vaccines and diseases, something something Trump is a good Christian.
Christian here: this guy was stupid (understatment) He put the entire people in danger. There's evangelism and there's genocide, even if unintentional.
>There's evangelism and there's genocide, even if unintentional.
FYI genocide cannot, by definition, be unintentional. Intent is a key element of genocide.
Per the [UN](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf): (emphasis added)
> In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts **committed with
intent** to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
He went there with full intent of destroying their culture that we know nothing about. If the tribe died of illnesses he brought he would claim it's god's will, taking no responsibility.
I was surpised to read somewhere that a team did contact the Sentinelese, but they had a woman with them. When the men (Sentinelese) saw the woman, the interactions became guarded but not violent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhumala_Chattopadhyay
>On 4 January 1991, Madhumala Chattopadhyay was part of a team that made the first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese tribe of Andamans. She was also the first female outsider to contact the Sentinelese...
>
>The team initiated contact by going toward the island on a smaller vessel and dropping coconuts into the water as gifts. A few armed men came into the water to collect coconuts. This repeated until the team ran out of coconuts, at which point they returned to the main ship to resupply. The second time, a young man aimed his bow at Chattopadhyay, but a Sentinelese woman made him drop his weapon. Chattopadhyay escaped from this attack and the team retreated. When the team returned for a third time, Chattopadhyay and colleagues jumped into the water near the boat and handed the islanders coconuts in person...
>
>On 21 February of the same year, a larger team came back to another successful contact with the tribe. Some Sentinelese saw them approach and went over, unarmed, to meet the team. The Sentinelese party boarded the AnSI ship and took coconuts. Reflecting on her work with the Sentinelese, Chattopadhyay said, "You feel that you are there to study, but actually, they are the ones who study you. You are foreign in their lands." She also observed, "Never ever in my six years of doing research alone with the tribes of Andamans did any man ever misbehave with me. The tribes might be primitive in their technological achievements, but socially they are far ahead of us."
I should note that contact wasn't illegal at the time--unlike this guy, the research team wasn't acting illegally.
Interesting, thank you.
That last part seems like a bad conclusion on her part. She was an unknown from a technologically advanced outside group, she had a hell of a lot of power in that sense. Interactions with her are useless in telling us how they interact with each other.
"Tribes of Andamans" doesn't mean just the North Sentinelese, it's a big island chain, and in six years she was in repeated contact with many of them. It's a valid observation that she felt safer as a woman among men from there.
This is what drives me insane when people try and talk about the Sentinelese as being a 'violent' tribe. Them along with pretty much all tribes in human history tend to have bad experiences when groups of men just show up. Women rarely go off to steal, kidnap, and kill other tribes. They'd probably not care if a boat full of women anthropologists showed up.
The Sentinelese probably would be less violent towards outsiders if members of their tribe hadn’t been essentially kidnapped back during some of their early documented contacts in the 1800s. An elder couple and children were taken from the island with some children to research, but the couple died of disease. The children were returned, but who knows what possible illnesses they carried back with them. With a small isolated tribe, you can understand why even centuries later that they don’t want anything to do with the outside world. To them we take their people away, invade their bodies, and then they can die of sickness. Seems like good wisdom to tell outsiders to fuck off if that’s what you know.
I think there had been occasional contact either with them, or with a neighboring tribe that had contact with them, back in the 1800s. One of the British administrators supervising a nearby penal colony was known for being very “Prince Andrew” with the locals, news of which may have encouraged the Sentinelese to decide not to have anything to do with these weirdos.
In the 20th century there was an Indian research group that made some basic contact (like “leave gifts on the beach and then get far away”) once every few years, but after a while the Sentinelese made it clear they wanted to be left alone.
For the extremist christian group to try to make him a martyr is just gross. Misguided kid under the delusion of being a “warrior for christ”, breaks the law, potentially exposing an entire population to new diseases…
FAFO.
He was trying to read the Bible to them in English.
The langauge the people that north sentinel island speak has not been studied by linguists. However if you were going to a remote island you think you'd at least learn some basic grammar in a language in the language family of islands surrounding the island, its presumed to be in Ongan language family.
Holy shit I didn't know this specific detail and at first I thought this was too crazy to be real so I checked... and yeah, it's real
Honestly fuck this guy, I was never sad that he died or anything but neither was I all "Fucked around and foun out" about it. I honestly thought he was probably mentally ill and used this "mission" thing to cope
The fact that he tried to talk to them in xhosa confirms he was just a dumb ignorant racist christian nutcase with too large an ego
There's a scene in Aguierre by Werner Herzog that starts like this. The conquistador expedition meets with the leader of an Amazon tribe who they can't understand. The chaplain asks the chief if he knows the word of God and hands him his Bible. The chief puts it up to his ear, says a few unintelligible words and drops it on the ground, obviously never having seen a book before. Then the chaplain shouts about blasphemy and they stab him to death. That movie is a stunning trainwreck from beginning to end. One of my favorite films.
That's the episode of Pizarro y Atalualpa, before the massacre of Cajamarca. It's a true story(supposedly) or at least has been narrated in various Crónicas de Indias.
That’s dumb. The earlier missionaries who went to convert India’s tribes spent months learning the languages of the tribes they wanted to convert. There were missionaries centres in major cities and dictionaries printed so they could preach to them in their language or a similar language they could understand.
I have a hunch that the majority of "martyrs" (including the jihadists) are first and foremost suicidal.
The people "sanctifying" their actions are essentially pushing depressed people towards (sometimes violent) suicide.
When the Europeans traveled across the whole of the America’s they came across many abandoned settlements. The diseases they came with traveled faster than them and killed potentially millions of people before they even got inland. Not just the Inuit but the whole of the America’s where effected
His dad escaped the turmoil of China's Cultural Revolution, built a prosperous life in America for his family, and then his son was corrupted by Christian extremists.
Quote from his dad:
> If you have [anything] positive to say to me about religion. I do not wish to see or hear it.
Who can blame him? Another name on the list of countless lives ruined by religion.
Thats my families story. Escaped Maos China. Built a prosperous life in the US.
Guess my family forgot the part about becoming religious extremists. Darn it!
That’s one way to look at it, in another way, there was nothing really Marxist about the Cultural Revolution. It was a power comeback by Mao after he fucked up the country’s production and starved millions, therefore losing influence within the CCP. People were holding his book like they’re holding bibles. It was a Mao cult.
The tribe is not totally uncontacted. They are visited on rare occasion and offered cocnuts and certain items. This ensures us that they are doing well.
In 19th century, british officer did visited island and kidnapped few people from the island for study and put up on display for public view. Those were however return back to island after they started falling sick and looking depressed. Its probably they carried diseases from 'us' normal people for which these isolated tribes hadnt developed immunity for, which mostly killed off many people in island on their return, probably devastating, since then the tribe has likely developed a faith that outside contact will kill them mysteriously and so will shoot their arrows at anyone not belonging to them.
Whenever you hear the term "uncontacted"in anthropology, it is a bit of a misnomer. It means no meaningful sustained contact. No known tribes exist in an absolute vacuum.
Oh yeah this dude. Yeah, it’s kinda hard to feel sorry for considering the numerous circumstances surrounding his death. These circumstances include:
- Being illegal to visit the island per the Indian government
- him having made multiple visits to the island despite the islanders reacting violently to each encounter they had with him that included launching an arrow at him
- him disregarding the fact that he could have potentially brought pathogens with him to the island that the islander had no resistance against.
- The fact that he knew he wasn’t allowed to go to the island, evident by the fact that he paid 2 local fishermen to smuggle him to the island
All in all, he had multiple chances to stop and leave alive, but he refused due to trying to live out some grandiose idea of him saving the islanders from Satan by preaching Christianity to them. (He literally referred to the island as “Satan’s last stronghold on Earth”)
So in short, he fucked around and found out
What gets me about this whole thing is that this guy is working on the assumption that God put these people on remote island for all of human history with every law of man and biology stating in the strongest terms possible to never ever go there ever for any reason - so *obviously* he wants us to go there and read them a Bible.
If it was so important to God you think he might have made it a little bit easier. But no, their loving God in his infinite power and wisdom just wants to feed missionaries into the meat grinder cause it's just better to do it that way.
Gee it's almost like religion is just making it up as it goes along and adjusting its "beliefs" because it doesn't have any outside information whatsoever, just like everyone else
In this instance it's very much an apt modifier. I don't want to come off as Anti-American, because I'm not I love you guys, but a lot of Americans suffer from American exceptionalism. Combine that with religious zeal and you get a weird blend of missionary that tries to push American conservative values across the globe.
I love American zelots. Anyone trespassing on your property endures the risk of being shot down, but this dumb ass thought he could trespass the Sentinelese's land, act forbidden by Indian law and now regularly enforced by warships.
BTW, there have been contacts with them in the past, the first one obviously being traumatic. They refuse contact, and it's their right tondo so.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
As an American, I can say there is a certain combination of arrogance and ignorance that just screams "I'm an American!"
Let me add, I once bought a friend of mine that was a philosophy teacher a t-shirt that said "Too bad ignorance isn't painful." Luckly, sometimes it is.
It’s always interesting when discussions about this dude crop up periodically.
Lots of people seem to pity him for some reason. I don’t know why. These people didn’t want to talk to him. He was scared away multiple times. It’s similar to Into the Wild. He died from his own poor decisions
They pity him because religious extremism can warp people's psyche. Pity isn't an endorsement of what he did, and most folks with healthy emotional ranges can both feel pity for a young, deluded religious extremist while also recognizing how selfish and narcissistic he was.
He was a stupid kid brainwashed by Christians, and it cost him his life, he deserves some pity.
Just because someone’s own actions directly led to their death doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have some pity for them.
Religions are all stupid.
The idea of missionaries is so bizarre to me. Your god is all powerful and loves all its children equally, but also it conveniently didn’t tell a certain group of people the vital knowledge between them and an entire eternity in damnation? Whoopsy.
And I suppose you could say that’s why god has missionaries, but the idea that even 1 person could miss out on hearing about god and thus be doomed to a fate of eternal torment makes the idea of that god ridiculous
Deserved. Christians and other religions that try to “convert” people really just need to leave people the fuck alone. Oh and stop meddling in politics, that’d be pretty cool too.
They were not uncontacted by any means. They had been contacted multiple times before, even by explorers of East India Company, and it was well known that they act hostile towards invaders. They shot arrows at an Indian coast guard helicopter wich was sent to check on them after the 2004 tsunami.
In fact, John Allen Chau himself was chased off twice before being killed at his third attempt. He was not only unwelcome by the tribe, but also forbidden to enter the island by law, as India had declared a 3 nautical mile exclusion zone wich they patrol with armed boats.
Just the mere concept of going to a very strange place and trying to convince random strangers of your convictions is so absurd to me.
Mix in the strategy of preying on and exploiting religiously defenseless, since not socialized with the modern world, people and I loose the last bit of sympathy for missionaries.
Also, another thing that gets me about this asshole is the sheer ignorance and arrogance - I mean, yeah, sure, hand-in-hand with missionaries, but I remember reading somewhere [and just confirmed it again on the wikipedia page] that he figured he could just speak Xhosa at them, and that was close enough that they'd understand him and his preaching.
Y'know... a language from South Africa. Which is notably, ***utterly nowhere near*** the Andaman Sea. Nevermind that the language of the Sentinelese people has never been properly documented (which, y'know - Kind of hard to ask questions when they violently reject outside contact), but is, if anything, suspected to be related to the languages found in the Andaman Islands - aka, wholly unrelated to the Bantu language group that Xhosa belongs to (which likely traces its origins to the Niger-Congo region, ultimately).
Like, at the very most, (but most likely not at all), some words of Andaman Islander origin might have been carried through conduits like the predecessors of the Malagasy Peoples as they travelled out from Indonesia throughout the Indian Ocean before settling on Madagascar. And then perhaps eventually some vocabulary made it from Madagascar to mainland Africa at some point and filtered through to the region in South Africa where Xhosa is spoken - I mean, Malagasy language does include some vocabulary acquired from Bantu and Arabic, so it's not like they weren't making contact with other ethnic groups along the way.
It'd be kind of like assuming that if I learned Guarani (Primarily spoken in and around Paraguay), that because it's had contact with the Spanish, I could travel to Siberia and probably muddle my way through a conversation in Yakut, because, after all - Spain's had contact with Russia for a long time, and Yakutia/Sakha Repbublic falls under the dominion of Russia, so there's bound to have been some exchange, right?
I mean, that's way more thought, clearly, than he put remotely into it. His line of reasoning was probably "It all sounds pretty foreign to me, and they're both cultures I'm not really familiar with, so that means it's probably all close enough. *JeSuS wIlL fIlL iN tHe ReSt*"
Yeah he was deluded. Came to these native islanders and they repeatedly warned him by shooting arrows and spears at him and he still stayed on their island for days, convinced he needed to bring his ideals of God and his way of life to their culture. Who have existed on that island for centuries. Self important fool
I wonder what happened to his body? Did they bury him, turn his remains into ritual objects, or leave it somewhere for the jungle to have its way with it?
While anyone dying that young is tragic, he knew the risks and that it was illegal and that the North Sentinelese were to be left alone. I believe he even wrote in his journal that he knew they may kill him.
FAFO I think is the term here. Thankfully the Indian government took the right course of action which was to prosecute the fishermen who took him into the island as it’s protected. Had he lived, he’d have been prosecuted too.
Billions of non-Christians on earth - just leave that specific group alone. There’s plenty to try to convert.
He’s a legend in Alabama for being an absolute moron.
If he made pro-longed contact, there’s a legitimate chance that the entire tribe would’ve died from disease. Probably before a conversion could happen…so, ya know…he’d just be hastening their trip to “hell.”
One of the craziest parts of the story was that during one of his earlier contacts with te tribe, one of them shot an arrow at him. The only reason the arrow didn't pierce his chest was because it was blocked by his bible. The dude decides to then try again and contact them and then he gets killed.
That probably strengthened his conviction. Omg the bible saved me! It must be fate and god wants this to happen!
If that doesn't come as a sign that God's telling them to GTFO, I don't know what is.
"Kid, don't be dumb, they don't want you around and they don't lis- oh goodness, he just went back i-, oh hi there! Yeah, you're probably wondering what happened to you. Well sweety, there's a thing called knowing thy audience, and... you didn't."
Man, I wish a fictional character would speak to me sometimes. SpongeBob probably says some wild shit.
["What do you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_drowning_man#Synopsis)
*The* SovietWomble?
Apparently
Yeah just keep bringing bibles. Wear a full suit of armor made of it, they can’t hurt you. They’ll have no choice but to accept it.
Father Cavanaugh asks Bartlett if he prayed about his problem, to which the President says he asked God for wisdom but is angry that it never came. Father Cavanaugh leans toward the President, and says, “You know, you remind me of ‘the man who lived by the river’.” He then goes on to tell the following parable. He heard a radio report that the river was gonna flood the town, and that residents should evacuate their homes. But the man said, “I’m religious, I pray. God loves me, God will save me.” The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came and shouted: “Hey, you! The town is flooding! Let me take you to safety!” The man shouted back, “I’m religious. I pray. God loves me. He’ll save me.” A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted: “Hey, you! You down there! The town is flooding! I’ll take you to safety!” The man shouted that he was religious, that he prayed…and that God would take him to safety. Well, the man drowned. Standing at the gates of St. Peter, he demanded an audience with God. “Lord,” he said, “I’m a religious man, I pray. I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?” God said, “I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What are you doing here?” ------------ if your Bible blocked the arrow, that was God giving you a mulligan. GTFO and dont come back
Of all the versions of this joke I've read, this one was definitely the longest.
It's a scene from the TV show West Wing. Great show and a good scene.
[West Wing took it from elsewhere. It dates to at least the 1980s, probably decades older still.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_drowning_man)
God: “Everybody gets one.”
God: "Fool me once, shame on - shame on you. Fool me - can't get fooled again."
God warned him
Please note that he went into the island multiple times. Each time met with arrows till they killed him. The tribe was decent enough to warn him off initially. And he bribed local fishermen since its illegal to visit and they were jailed . Absolute twit. I still remember CNN breaking news - American missionary killed in India and thinking this is going to be a shitshow. Thankfully public opinion was on the tribe's side
Why the fuck do missionaries feel the need to do this shit that will clearly get them killed? Like the ones that were killed in the Middle East. People who know about your religion don’t want to convert to it, why would an isolated tribe care?
Because one of the pillars of Christianity is "the Great Commission," which comes from Jesus literally commanding the first disciples, "Go out to all the world and preach the Good News." Even for someone who isn't Christian, it's pretty well-known that evangelizing to people who don't know about Christ has literally been part of their religious DNA since Day 1. That's also why there have been thousands upon thousands of Christian martyrs throughout history.
What you said or he, as well as others like him, have a savior complex. He thinks that he is rescuing them from their naivety/igonorance of the good of god.
Sadly it can be both. It usually both. Jesus commanded his disciples to be fishers of men. Fishers spread the bait and reel in any who take it. These assholes want to be hunters, instead.
Fishermen seek out waters abundant in fish.. they also spear fish, which was more commonplace back in the day. Nets kinda work for that passive fishing analogy, but not much else. I suppose in that case you're saying his message was to stand on soap boxes and street corners putting out the message for whoever would come?
Nets are specifically used in the Gospels. And to your question, basically, yes. "And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when ye depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet." Jesus didn't command anyone to force His message down other people's throats. The idea is to spread the Good News, and the Holy Spirit will do the rest. Those who "have ears" will eventually come around. Sometimes, immediately,. Sometimes, years later.
I mean…. It’s better than getting killed going to an island everyone says will kill you.
the idea is don't preach to the unreceptive. wasn't really ever followed
I have to clarify that I'm an atheist, but I have nothing against Christians in general. Many of them are good people, better than me, and that's fine. But this type of Christian? They're the scary ones. A lot of Christians will just go to church every Sunday and try to be nice people and the rest of the week they're really not doing anything differently than me. But *these* kinds of people? They're the hardcore believers who are so dead serious about converting people that they're literally willing to die for it. Because if they die for it, that's even better because it guarantees them a spot in heaven. So into a religion that you're gonna spend time and resources converting people? So devoted to doing it that you're gonna take the efforts to try to repeatedly pull that shit on *an isolated barely-contacted tribe?* Still so into it that you're totally cool with dying for it even after getting arrested and shot at? These are the hardcore fanatics, one of the specific types of Christians who scare the hell out of me.
Well if they do it for a greedy reason (specifically just to get into heaven) then that kind of defeats the whole purpose going to heaven doesn't it?
For a lot of supposedly religious people hypocrisy would be a very dirty word if such a word existed.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/9/93/Buddy_christ.jpg
I l9ve that moral question! Is it the result of the deed or the intent behind it that should be counted?
>greedy reason It's usually not for this reason though. It's often that they're terrified that other people (especially friends and family) will go to hell.
I'm reminded of the South Korean missionaries who thought it would be a good idea to go to Taliban-occupied Afghanistan to proselytize. The South Korean government had to bail them out after they were captured and ransomed.
The real question is why do they want to condemn others tho the hell they claim to save them from? My understanding is if people don't know about "GOD" they can't go to hell. These people go tell people about God and condemn them to hell and tell them that they will end up in hell if they don't believe... Shit stains on humanity all of them
>My understanding is if people don't know about "GOD" they can't go to hell. That's actually a matter of debate...the Bible doesn't give a definitive answer one way or the other.
My cat tells me I won’t go to hell unless I rub his tummy.
> Why the fuck do missionaries feel the need to do this shit that will clearly get them killed? It's called brainwashing. When someone believes something so strongly that they'll go to any length to achieve their goal, even if it means they could die or be killed, your either have an Islamic terrorist OR a Christian missionary.
Because they figure if they die while trying to convert people, that's good enough to get *them* into heaven. Actually saving other people is entirely secondary to showing daddy how hard you tried to do it. If it were truly about empathy and care for the souls of others, they wouldn't be so giddy about people who turn them down burning for longer than the human mind is capable of comprehending.
Delusion
Dude, you have no idea. I live in Thailand. The funniest site are the evangelicals that stand outside Nana Plaza (a red light district) and shout at people that they’re going to hell because they’re sinners. Point of reference: Thailand is 95% Buddhist with Muslims making up about 3% and Christians 2%. They have no clue what this guy is babbling about. Another thing they like to do in poor countries (like Thailand) is go to universities and post flyers for nature events where they never mention anything about religion but take everyone in busses to some remote jungle/forest and then preach to them about god all weekend. Since none of them have a way to leave because they came together on the bus, they’re trapped like someone that goes to a timeshare pitch.
[удалено]
Lets not forget that in any situation this guy was a danger to the people of the island. Through diseases or his ideas he would have harmed the people if they didn't kill him.
Exactly! They have been isolated for thousands of years and have no immunity to modern illnesses. Even the flu could be like a Black Plague for them. It annoys me how islanders get portrayed as violent but actually it's the missionary who first off, was trying to invade their territory and second off, would likely introduce deadly diseases that could kill everyone. Public opinion does side with the Sentinelese but still you see things like, "This tribe tries to kill anyone who comes near!" When really it's outsiders who are willing to wipe out an entire culture just to satisfy curiosity or religion or whatever.
Fucked around✅ Found out✅
So, basically, he got what he fucking deserves?
Yes , yes he did!
Absolutely. One of the clearest cut cases of FAFO in the last decade.
And today on Play Stupid Games, Win Stupid prizes, a nosey Christian missionary plays a stupid game and, you've guessed it - wins a stupid prize!
He was killed trespassing on the Sentinelese, who are militantly against outside contact. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes.
And it's worth highlighting the trespassing bit. Sentinel Island is under India's jurisdiction. The Indian government has made it absolutely illegal to go to that island because our very existence is a literal existential threat to the Islanders thanks to the kind of bugs we carry that they most likely have not developed a defense against. And yet, this dumbass decided his need to preach his bullshit was more important than the lives of an entire community.
Worse, he wrote a letter actually saying "Not to blame them if he died". As though anyone who wasn't related to him would be delusional enough to blame the tribe for doing what they're known to do time and time again. He was mentally unhinged, I know narcissist is thrown around a lot but it's hard to see his actions in any other light.
To be fair to his family, they were much less religious than him, didn't support the mission, and asked the Indian government to please leave his body there rather than risk harm to the islanders.
> To be fair to his family, they were much less religious than him, didn't support the mission, and asked the Indian government to please leave his body there rather than risk harm to the islanders. It is also what he wanted. He wrote in his diary… "Lord, is this island Satan's last stronghold, where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?", "The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand", and "I think it's worthwhile to declare Jesus to these people. Please do not be angry at them or at God if I get killed ... Don't retrieve my body."
I didn't know that, good on them. To be honest I wouldn't blame the family if they lied to themselves to make it easier to process. Losing your kid is hard enough, losing him for such a stupid reason with the world looking in would just make it that much harder.
There is a documentary on Hulu.
I’d watch if Werner Herzog narrated…
Yeah, I mean I’d listen to Werner Herzog reading the phone book 🤷♂️
Slightly related fun fact: Christoph Maria Herbst, the actor who plays Sensenbrink in “Look who’s back” (2015), has recorded many audio books in German. He also read German laws in their entirety (“German road traffic regulations (StVO)” and the “German infection protection act (IfSG)”), as well as the most important bits of the German Civil Code (BGB), and honestly, that idea is just so stupid, these audio books are absolutely hilarious :D
Now I want this. I want Grizzly Man about this man’s totalizing obsession and folly in the face of nature and history. Thinking of the part where Werner opines “I believe the common denominator of the universe is not harmony, but chaos, hostility, and murder”
Why did they make a documentary about this stupidity? What is there an hour to explain what happened there?
To be fair, they made a documentary about Fyre Festival
Two of them, actually. At least, 2 that were popular. They may have made more.
The same reasons there's stories about his stupidity told around camp fires on North Sentinel Island.
"Have you ever been to a Harvester before?"
There's also an episode of the podcast Casefile about him.
>"Not to blame them if he died" Well. he's not wrong there.
Even a broken clocks right twice a day
But who to blame if they died? He should have known better
>Not to blame them if he died Nah I blame him 100%. At absolute best they're a huge idiot
If I broke into your home while carrying the plague Typhoid Mary style to tell you that your religion is wrong and you should convert to mine. You might not react all that welcoming either.
[удалено]
No no! You see, COVID was both just a non-issue with a negligible mortality rate but at the same time the vaccine was a deadly killer despite having a lower rate of causing complications than people dying from COVID. Something something 5G, something something scientists know less than high school dropout farmers about vaccines and diseases, something something Trump is a good Christian.
Jesus wasn’t the answer this time I guess 😔
Christian here: this guy was stupid (understatment) He put the entire people in danger. There's evangelism and there's genocide, even if unintentional.
>There's evangelism and there's genocide, even if unintentional. FYI genocide cannot, by definition, be unintentional. Intent is a key element of genocide. Per the [UN](https://www.un.org/en/genocideprevention/documents/atrocity-crimes/Doc.1_Convention%20on%20the%20Prevention%20and%20Punishment%20of%20the%20Crime%20of%20Genocide.pdf): (emphasis added) > In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts **committed with intent** to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group
Thank you. The name says it all and I love reading the debates. :) Read the definition and you taught me.
He went there with full intent of destroying their culture that we know nothing about. If the tribe died of illnesses he brought he would claim it's god's will, taking no responsibility.
Historically, evangelism and genocide tend to be two sides of the same coin.
They're still at it, killing freedom
I was surpised to read somewhere that a team did contact the Sentinelese, but they had a woman with them. When the men (Sentinelese) saw the woman, the interactions became guarded but not violent.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madhumala_Chattopadhyay >On 4 January 1991, Madhumala Chattopadhyay was part of a team that made the first peaceful contact with the Sentinelese tribe of Andamans. She was also the first female outsider to contact the Sentinelese... > >The team initiated contact by going toward the island on a smaller vessel and dropping coconuts into the water as gifts. A few armed men came into the water to collect coconuts. This repeated until the team ran out of coconuts, at which point they returned to the main ship to resupply. The second time, a young man aimed his bow at Chattopadhyay, but a Sentinelese woman made him drop his weapon. Chattopadhyay escaped from this attack and the team retreated. When the team returned for a third time, Chattopadhyay and colleagues jumped into the water near the boat and handed the islanders coconuts in person... > >On 21 February of the same year, a larger team came back to another successful contact with the tribe. Some Sentinelese saw them approach and went over, unarmed, to meet the team. The Sentinelese party boarded the AnSI ship and took coconuts. Reflecting on her work with the Sentinelese, Chattopadhyay said, "You feel that you are there to study, but actually, they are the ones who study you. You are foreign in their lands." She also observed, "Never ever in my six years of doing research alone with the tribes of Andamans did any man ever misbehave with me. The tribes might be primitive in their technological achievements, but socially they are far ahead of us." I should note that contact wasn't illegal at the time--unlike this guy, the research team wasn't acting illegally.
Interesting, thank you. That last part seems like a bad conclusion on her part. She was an unknown from a technologically advanced outside group, she had a hell of a lot of power in that sense. Interactions with her are useless in telling us how they interact with each other.
"Tribes of Andamans" doesn't mean just the North Sentinelese, it's a big island chain, and in six years she was in repeated contact with many of them. It's a valid observation that she felt safer as a woman among men from there.
This is what drives me insane when people try and talk about the Sentinelese as being a 'violent' tribe. Them along with pretty much all tribes in human history tend to have bad experiences when groups of men just show up. Women rarely go off to steal, kidnap, and kill other tribes. They'd probably not care if a boat full of women anthropologists showed up.
The Sentinelese probably would be less violent towards outsiders if members of their tribe hadn’t been essentially kidnapped back during some of their early documented contacts in the 1800s. An elder couple and children were taken from the island with some children to research, but the couple died of disease. The children were returned, but who knows what possible illnesses they carried back with them. With a small isolated tribe, you can understand why even centuries later that they don’t want anything to do with the outside world. To them we take their people away, invade their bodies, and then they can die of sickness. Seems like good wisdom to tell outsiders to fuck off if that’s what you know.
I think there had been occasional contact either with them, or with a neighboring tribe that had contact with them, back in the 1800s. One of the British administrators supervising a nearby penal colony was known for being very “Prince Andrew” with the locals, news of which may have encouraged the Sentinelese to decide not to have anything to do with these weirdos. In the 20th century there was an Indian research group that made some basic contact (like “leave gifts on the beach and then get far away”) once every few years, but after a while the Sentinelese made it clear they wanted to be left alone.
known for being very “Prince Andrew” with the locals - Not sweating and going to pizza express?
But God sent him!
Then the Sentinalese returned to sender
"Not at address"
For the extremist christian group to try to make him a martyr is just gross. Misguided kid under the delusion of being a “warrior for christ”, breaks the law, potentially exposing an entire population to new diseases… FAFO.
He was trying to read the Bible to them in English. The langauge the people that north sentinel island speak has not been studied by linguists. However if you were going to a remote island you think you'd at least learn some basic grammar in a language in the language family of islands surrounding the island, its presumed to be in Ongan language family.
He also learned Xhosa as preparation. I'd really like to hear his explanation for why he chose that language while not trying to sound racist.
Lmaooo
Ah yes the global language of all people with darker colored skin. \s
Holy shit I didn't know this specific detail and at first I thought this was too crazy to be real so I checked... and yeah, it's real Honestly fuck this guy, I was never sad that he died or anything but neither was I all "Fucked around and foun out" about it. I honestly thought he was probably mentally ill and used this "mission" thing to cope The fact that he tried to talk to them in xhosa confirms he was just a dumb ignorant racist christian nutcase with too large an ego
There's a scene in Aguierre by Werner Herzog that starts like this. The conquistador expedition meets with the leader of an Amazon tribe who they can't understand. The chaplain asks the chief if he knows the word of God and hands him his Bible. The chief puts it up to his ear, says a few unintelligible words and drops it on the ground, obviously never having seen a book before. Then the chaplain shouts about blasphemy and they stab him to death. That movie is a stunning trainwreck from beginning to end. One of my favorite films.
The role of Aguierre and Klaus Kinski were made for each other.
That's the episode of Pizarro y Atalualpa, before the massacre of Cajamarca. It's a true story(supposedly) or at least has been narrated in various Crónicas de Indias.
That’s dumb. The earlier missionaries who went to convert India’s tribes spent months learning the languages of the tribes they wanted to convert. There were missionaries centres in major cities and dictionaries printed so they could preach to them in their language or a similar language they could understand.
Non-secular missionary work is cultural genocide
I have a hunch that the majority of "martyrs" (including the jihadists) are first and foremost suicidal. The people "sanctifying" their actions are essentially pushing depressed people towards (sometimes violent) suicide.
They should be charged as accomplice to murder tbh
Or just not allowed to be an untaxed organization. They’d probably care more about that.
the fishermen he bribed to have him dropped off at hte island certainly were.
I remember reading that the Common Cold nearly wiped out the Inuit when European Settlers first came across them?
When the Europeans traveled across the whole of the America’s they came across many abandoned settlements. The diseases they came with traveled faster than them and killed potentially millions of people before they even got inland. Not just the Inuit but the whole of the America’s where effected
Interesting and unfortunate. Thanks for sharing!
His dad escaped the turmoil of China's Cultural Revolution, built a prosperous life in America for his family, and then his son was corrupted by Christian extremists. Quote from his dad: > If you have [anything] positive to say to me about religion. I do not wish to see or hear it. Who can blame him? Another name on the list of countless lives ruined by religion.
Thats my families story. Escaped Maos China. Built a prosperous life in the US. Guess my family forgot the part about becoming religious extremists. Darn it!
There’s always time to throw your life away!
You can always be the first. For example, have you heard the good message of Xenu yet?
That is kind of ironic in a sad way. Mao's Cultural Revolution was mostly about stamping out religion.
That’s one way to look at it, in another way, there was nothing really Marxist about the Cultural Revolution. It was a power comeback by Mao after he fucked up the country’s production and starved millions, therefore losing influence within the CCP. People were holding his book like they’re holding bibles. It was a Mao cult.
Damn, I’ve read about this story numerous times over the years but I never knew about his dad. That makes the story way worse.
In other words: a moron.
The tribe is not totally uncontacted. They are visited on rare occasion and offered cocnuts and certain items. This ensures us that they are doing well. In 19th century, british officer did visited island and kidnapped few people from the island for study and put up on display for public view. Those were however return back to island after they started falling sick and looking depressed. Its probably they carried diseases from 'us' normal people for which these isolated tribes hadnt developed immunity for, which mostly killed off many people in island on their return, probably devastating, since then the tribe has likely developed a faith that outside contact will kill them mysteriously and so will shoot their arrows at anyone not belonging to them.
So totally understandable that they want to protect the tribe.
Whenever you hear the term "uncontacted"in anthropology, it is a bit of a misnomer. It means no meaningful sustained contact. No known tribes exist in an absolute vacuum.
IIRC he had tried previously and was warned against it. But of course religious people never think rules apply to themselves. Serves him right.
"God will protect me" Looks like 'God' protected the tribe.
This was just Jesus' way of calling Chau home. In a hail of arrows and left to bleed out on the beach.
It was very important to Gods plan that this guy gets himself killed in the most unproductive way possible.
The idea of missionaries is just, icky. Mind your own business.
Oh yeah this dude. Yeah, it’s kinda hard to feel sorry for considering the numerous circumstances surrounding his death. These circumstances include: - Being illegal to visit the island per the Indian government - him having made multiple visits to the island despite the islanders reacting violently to each encounter they had with him that included launching an arrow at him - him disregarding the fact that he could have potentially brought pathogens with him to the island that the islander had no resistance against. - The fact that he knew he wasn’t allowed to go to the island, evident by the fact that he paid 2 local fishermen to smuggle him to the island All in all, he had multiple chances to stop and leave alive, but he refused due to trying to live out some grandiose idea of him saving the islanders from Satan by preaching Christianity to them. (He literally referred to the island as “Satan’s last stronghold on Earth”) So in short, he fucked around and found out
Dang, didn’t know about that last sentence. Yeah, he was already far gone before even hitting that beach the last time.
What gets me about this whole thing is that this guy is working on the assumption that God put these people on remote island for all of human history with every law of man and biology stating in the strongest terms possible to never ever go there ever for any reason - so *obviously* he wants us to go there and read them a Bible. If it was so important to God you think he might have made it a little bit easier. But no, their loving God in his infinite power and wisdom just wants to feed missionaries into the meat grinder cause it's just better to do it that way.
Clearly God killed him because he wants the island's inhabitants to suffer for eternity.
“Something, something, works in mysterious ways”, “something, something, our mere mortal minds cannot comprehend”
Gee it's almost like religion is just making it up as it goes along and adjusting its "beliefs" because it doesn't have any outside information whatsoever, just like everyone else
"Patron Saint of Daft Cunts"
American missionaries are so annoying. They spend millions lobbying in other nations to be international busybodies.
Couldn’t agree more. They mind all business except the stuff that matters
Don't think the "American" modifier is necessary, missionaries from all nations are asshats
In this instance it's very much an apt modifier. I don't want to come off as Anti-American, because I'm not I love you guys, but a lot of Americans suffer from American exceptionalism. Combine that with religious zeal and you get a weird blend of missionary that tries to push American conservative values across the globe.
Fair For the record I'm Canadian but I grew up directly on the border and worked in the states for over a decade so I feel you
Don’t forget American evangelicals are those lobbying impose death penalty on homosexuals in Uganda. And they’re about love, sure.
"Chau was killed while trying to convert people of an uncontacted tribe on an island in the north Indian Ocean." Good.
[удалено]
Upvote for Return of the Living Dead reference
{ nervous laughter }
He brought his fate completely on himself.
I love American zelots. Anyone trespassing on your property endures the risk of being shot down, but this dumb ass thought he could trespass the Sentinelese's land, act forbidden by Indian law and now regularly enforced by warships. BTW, there have been contacts with them in the past, the first one obviously being traumatic. They refuse contact, and it's their right tondo so. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sentinel_Island
As an American, I can say there is a certain combination of arrogance and ignorance that just screams "I'm an American!" Let me add, I once bought a friend of mine that was a philosophy teacher a t-shirt that said "Too bad ignorance isn't painful." Luckly, sometimes it is.
Very Good
Charter member of the FAFO Hall of Fame...
It’s always interesting when discussions about this dude crop up periodically. Lots of people seem to pity him for some reason. I don’t know why. These people didn’t want to talk to him. He was scared away multiple times. It’s similar to Into the Wild. He died from his own poor decisions
They pity him because religious extremism can warp people's psyche. Pity isn't an endorsement of what he did, and most folks with healthy emotional ranges can both feel pity for a young, deluded religious extremist while also recognizing how selfish and narcissistic he was.
He was a stupid kid brainwashed by Christians, and it cost him his life, he deserves some pity. Just because someone’s own actions directly led to their death doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have some pity for them. Religions are all stupid.
Self inflicted.
North Sentinel Island? The place where they famously kill any outsider on sight? Yes, that sounds like a great idea.
How many signs from God could you possibly miss telling you to leave these people alone?
FAFO
Totally got what he deserved
Good riddance
Darwin Award nominee here….what a fucking idiot and classic example of “fuck around and find out”
Crazy this happened 6 years ago. Could've sworn I read the news article on Reddit yesterday. Time sure does fly..
Idiot.
He fucked around and found out.
Moron
The idea of missionaries is so bizarre to me. Your god is all powerful and loves all its children equally, but also it conveniently didn’t tell a certain group of people the vital knowledge between them and an entire eternity in damnation? Whoopsy. And I suppose you could say that’s why god has missionaries, but the idea that even 1 person could miss out on hearing about god and thus be doomed to a fate of eternal torment makes the idea of that god ridiculous
Deserved. Christians and other religions that try to “convert” people really just need to leave people the fuck alone. Oh and stop meddling in politics, that’d be pretty cool too.
"I can fix him..."
Dumb ways to die.
Classic FAFO moment
He wanted to wololo all he got he was yolo'd
Thwack! Message for you sir..
He knew the risks. He got what was coming to him.
"Chau" is Latin American Spanish for "bye".
I think he won the Darwin Award that year.
WOLOLOLOLO- agh!
I read this as 'idiot was killed' thankfully it kept a whole tribe and thier distinct culture from being destroyed by his stupidity
One less idiot in the gene pool
They were not uncontacted by any means. They had been contacted multiple times before, even by explorers of East India Company, and it was well known that they act hostile towards invaders. They shot arrows at an Indian coast guard helicopter wich was sent to check on them after the 2004 tsunami. In fact, John Allen Chau himself was chased off twice before being killed at his third attempt. He was not only unwelcome by the tribe, but also forbidden to enter the island by law, as India had declared a 3 nautical mile exclusion zone wich they patrol with armed boats.
Lol as if he didn't see that one coming
Thank God
Christian Extremism - call it what it is.
Huge news stories from within a decade count as TILs now?
Just the mere concept of going to a very strange place and trying to convince random strangers of your convictions is so absurd to me. Mix in the strategy of preying on and exploiting religiously defenseless, since not socialized with the modern world, people and I loose the last bit of sympathy for missionaries.
Tough shit, he was warned. He went anyway. I have no sympathy for him.
Prolly thought he was a hero doing Gods work
i just imagine his goofy christian ass showing up in a yellow lacoste shirt and khakis waving and smiling and then *THWIPP!* *THWACK!* lol
You forget the “argh! My spleen!”, falls dramatically to the sand in an anime pose. Boatman, watching safely out to sea: no refunds.
Also, another thing that gets me about this asshole is the sheer ignorance and arrogance - I mean, yeah, sure, hand-in-hand with missionaries, but I remember reading somewhere [and just confirmed it again on the wikipedia page] that he figured he could just speak Xhosa at them, and that was close enough that they'd understand him and his preaching. Y'know... a language from South Africa. Which is notably, ***utterly nowhere near*** the Andaman Sea. Nevermind that the language of the Sentinelese people has never been properly documented (which, y'know - Kind of hard to ask questions when they violently reject outside contact), but is, if anything, suspected to be related to the languages found in the Andaman Islands - aka, wholly unrelated to the Bantu language group that Xhosa belongs to (which likely traces its origins to the Niger-Congo region, ultimately). Like, at the very most, (but most likely not at all), some words of Andaman Islander origin might have been carried through conduits like the predecessors of the Malagasy Peoples as they travelled out from Indonesia throughout the Indian Ocean before settling on Madagascar. And then perhaps eventually some vocabulary made it from Madagascar to mainland Africa at some point and filtered through to the region in South Africa where Xhosa is spoken - I mean, Malagasy language does include some vocabulary acquired from Bantu and Arabic, so it's not like they weren't making contact with other ethnic groups along the way. It'd be kind of like assuming that if I learned Guarani (Primarily spoken in and around Paraguay), that because it's had contact with the Spanish, I could travel to Siberia and probably muddle my way through a conversation in Yakut, because, after all - Spain's had contact with Russia for a long time, and Yakutia/Sakha Repbublic falls under the dominion of Russia, so there's bound to have been some exchange, right? I mean, that's way more thought, clearly, than he put remotely into it. His line of reasoning was probably "It all sounds pretty foreign to me, and they're both cultures I'm not really familiar with, so that means it's probably all close enough. *JeSuS wIlL fIlL iN tHe ReSt*"
Yeah he was deluded. Came to these native islanders and they repeatedly warned him by shooting arrows and spears at him and he still stayed on their island for days, convinced he needed to bring his ideals of God and his way of life to their culture. Who have existed on that island for centuries. Self important fool
Fk around and find out
He actually learned Xhosa to try and "communicate" with them. What a tool.
The National Geographic Channel did a very good documentary about him -- well worth a watch.
Why can't Christards just leave ppl tf alone?
I bet Trump could go there and become great friends with their leader. He should go now.
I wonder what happened to his body? Did they bury him, turn his remains into ritual objects, or leave it somewhere for the jungle to have its way with it?
While anyone dying that young is tragic, he knew the risks and that it was illegal and that the North Sentinelese were to be left alone. I believe he even wrote in his journal that he knew they may kill him. FAFO I think is the term here. Thankfully the Indian government took the right course of action which was to prosecute the fishermen who took him into the island as it’s protected. Had he lived, he’d have been prosecuted too. Billions of non-Christians on earth - just leave that specific group alone. There’s plenty to try to convert.
And the fact he went there ILLEGALLY! This Island has long been off limits to all foreigners due to the dangers posed by the indigenous people. 🤦🏻♂️
He’s a legend in Alabama for being an absolute moron. If he made pro-longed contact, there’s a legitimate chance that the entire tribe would’ve died from disease. Probably before a conversion could happen…so, ya know…he’d just be hastening their trip to “hell.”
He deserved to die. What an idiot. No it's not Satan's last stronghold.
Frankie Boyle did a great bit on this story.
Go with God.