Dude, I thought you were smarter than that. So you are saying Shamanism is just a healing practice like acupuncture? And there is no spiritual element to it? Really? Ua neeb is more than that...
Believe_N_Me in her original post has a valid point. Why does Hmong Atheist in here do not use the same standards/logical reasoning for their view of Shamanism as they do toward Christianity? All I see from the replies is more "attacks" on Christianity. Shamanism is more than just a healing practice. There is an element of the supernatural in the practice.
First, I want to say his thread is a great conversation, an important one. There is a lot of confusion with this subject because people are debating from different planes. Not only that, they are often confused about what is culture and what is religion. I'm no anthropologist, but my take is this: Shamanism has deep roots in culture. It's organic and comes from a people's adaptation to their environment. It's an accepted way of doing things (wedding, funerals) with stories behind them. These stories are not only the voice of our people, but they are the building blocks of culture and identity.
Christianity (which used to be Jewish stories and culture) has been processed, packaged, and divorced from the Jews. The difference is eating rice from the straw vs eating rice cereal from a box. Except in this case, you're not even eating rice, your own plant anymore. You're eating from a different culture, like wheat. You're eating bread. Wonder bread.
Now on a different plane of debate, the scientific one of whether shaman and Christian stories are true. No. They would not pass the scientific method. But no scientist would even bother putting these stories through the scientific method because these stories are not about scientific truth. They're about humanity.