Father Michaellod was horrified to find his New Guinea native parishioners all preferred hell to heaven. It took him some time to find out why. On the mission picture, hell was depicted as a place of eternal fire, peopled by dark-skinned beings with spearlike pitchforks. Heaven, on the other hand, was depicted as a place of cloud and mist, among which many white people stood, pale and menacing.

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About Tim Flannery

Timothy Fridtjof Flannery (born 28 January 1956) is an Australian mammalogist, palaeontologist, environmentalist, conservationist, explorer, author, science communicator, activist, and public scientist. He is especially known for his 1994 book The Future Eaters, on the natural history of Australasia, which was adapted for television in 2006, and his 2006 book...