Lola,
Thanks for responding. It was a tough decision to remove your post, but I did want to make it clear to everyone that I did, and you did address the questions directed towards you. I addressed parts of your comments to let you know why I made the decision.
There is hardly a topic that raises more animosity among people as much as religion. Politics is up there, but religion certainly holds its own. People have different levels of faith, and it can change over time for them. It is generally not a rigid belief they hold their entire lives. Their beliefs can vary over time. This goes for all religions, and most are represented on the island. Faith is a personal thing for each person, and that faith should be respected as that person's beliefs. But it should not be mistaken for fact. Is it a fact or faith from the Old Testament to believe that Adam and Eve lived for 900 years and Noah started having children when he was 500 years old? It depends on your faith.
Humans have been around for about 200,000 years. Most of that time was not recorded in history. Religion was no doubt a part of their lives. Even Neanderthals had burial rites, which constitute some form of religious beliefs. So while "recorded history" goes back 5000 years, there is 195,000 years of history where religion played a role in all aspects of human life including wars. I still say its safe to say that the banner (guise) of religion has caused more war and death than any other single cause.
https://whistlinginthewind.org/2012/...-cause-of-war/
And I think you may have misinterpreted my going the extra mile to reach you. I have always welcomed and even helped websites that promote Negril and Jamaica. DennyP's Hedo site, Xavier's Jamaicans site, Wellesley's My Island Jamaica site and Bob's OneStop site just to name a few. When I was trying to reach you, it was because you were "aligned" to sites where their true intention was not to promote Negril or Jamaica, but their own agenda. There are some terrific sites out there, but there are also some nasty sites that could almost be classified as "hate" sites. I feel that is why you "got it". You realized the anger behind the true intentions of those sites. You saw them for what they were and your beliefs changed.
And the idea of changes in beliefs can be just as pertinent to a country as it is on a personal level. Counties are not static entities in a vacuum, but ever changing by things both in and out of their control. When I first moved here, beliefs on the island were different than they are now. There was no real concern about stray animals (other than goats), but now you can now see Jamaicans walking their dogs and owning house cats. That was unheard of when I got here. And homosexuality was a taboo subject.
Even after nearly 15 years here, in 2005, Prime Minister PJ Patterson actually said "I'm no Chi Chi man" when confronting the Opposition insinuations that he was homosexual and declared it to be the worst attempt at demonization by the Jamaica Labour Party (JLP). Zoom forward ten years to 2014 and former Prime Minister PJ Patterson called for more tolerance for homosexuals in Jamaica.
PJ Patterson stated, “It’s an issue, I know, where people have very strong positions, but we have to find a way of moving away from polarised positions into one that accepts that differences of race or colour, differences of class, [and] differences even in terms of sexual preferences may have to be addressed in conformity with the prevailing global environment in which we live. Those who wish to have changes must accept the right of persons to speak freely, reflecting their convictions and they can’t expect to have all the say going one way, they must expect others to have contending positions”.
With the advent of JFLAG, Jamaican attitudes are changing as their beliefs change. That is the nature of Jamaican culture, as well as virtually all other cultures in history. Cultures have been around for tens of thousands of years and change happened for each culture to arrive at where we are at the present day.
