Women's Rights and Religion

[Zazzy]

Women do not have inalienable rights, from a god or anybody. For most of human history, being a woman has not been an existence replete with rights and dignity, in any religion or any place.

It is only with the advent of a more modern civilization with more secular governance that women have begun to enjoy human rights. Churches have not traditionally been stalwart activists for the rights of women, although some (think Episcopalians) have become much better about it.

This has only happened because we, as a culture, have decided to allow it, and studies show that places where women are freer are more prosperous places, so it's clearly better for the well-being of the region to allow women equal (or more equal) rights.

[thesummerqueen]

If women were so vaunted by Christianity, there would be have been female heads of churches. There weren't. Oh, they allowed nunneries, but only to contain them.

[Fidel_Castronaut]

Please read up on the definitions of religion and atheism, m'kay? Also, your quote tags are effed up.

1) reading up on definitions will not give atheists the get-out-out-religious-viewpoints-free card.

Let's see where you go with this.

To say that two opposing view points that differ only in the god they believe in (transcendent or humanistic), that one falls under the guise of religion, and one falls under the guise of non-religion is preposterous and implies that secularism is somehow neutral and above needing to answer difficult questions.

FALSE.

There's a lot of misinformation in that post, so let's start at the basics:

IT is a false dichotomy to insinuate that when given the proposition "God x exists" that one must chose either for or against, and that necessarily both positions are based on faith. I cite Qualiasoup here who gives an excellent demonstration of why this reasoning is flawed and outright wrong:





Secularism has NOTHING to do with religious beliefs. Nothing. You can be an atheist or a theist and be a secularist. Secularism is a political structure on the best way to govern state sovereignty. It is nothing to do with whether god 'x' exists or not.

Start from there and the rest of the above disintegrates into nothing. In short, please stop tossing around ideas that you seemingly don't know much about. This is not a criticism; everyone learns things. But is debilitates your argument when you start off on the wrong premise and continue to build on it.

That is an illusion of religious proportions. Atheists believe in something, and most as I laid out above. That is a long, complex, faith-based series of things to maintain in one's understanding of the world.

FALSE.

Beliefs are mutually exclusive to atheism, unless one states, unequivocally, there are no gods (plural). I can reject god claims as they are given to me. It would be foolish, and give me the burden of proof, if I were to dismiss them all off the bat, regardless of how un-evidenced they are.

Everything you described above I replied to. Seeing as you did not, I can only assume you either didn't read it, or just ignored it. So to clarify, that many atheists are for sexual equality or accept evolution and abiogensis is NOTHING to do with atheism. It is a coincidence that many atheists accept these theories, but understandable considering the severe weight of evidence that supports them and the complete lack of an alternative.

[Bipolar Bob]

I don't think there are any women's rights in any modern religion. From the misogyny of Buddhism...

A women or a man for that matter canonly truly be said to have rights when they have the right to determine their own destiny. I see none of that in the more patriarchal Abrahamic religions and I certainly do not see it in Buddhism or Hinduism either.

Where do you get that Buddhism and Hinduism doesn't have it's own sexism? Name me any female Dali Lama ever? You do know that India is just now getting around to treating rape as unacceptable? You do also know that pre arranged marriages have been, not in all sects, but to many in Hinduism as acceptable?

ALL religions are full of absurdities, not just the Gods of Abraham.

Are you even paying attention? One should look before they leap.

[Ben Davis]

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Post this to Vinnie's 'Atheism Definition' thread!

[Fidel_Castronaut]

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Post this to Vinnie's 'Atheism Definition' thread!

Oh I have, at least in one of them somewhere.

I avoid those threads like the plague because I know they're basically troll threads.

[pineapplebunnybounce]

Wow, hostile much? Not trying to change your views, you will believe them forever and nothing can ever change that. This internet guy is merely offering a counter-perspective to other thinking individuals who might offer intelligent discourse.

Just honest. And I'm not interested in saying things that imply that I'm somehow more polite than whoever I'm talking to, I consider those to be dirty tactics, which is the only aim of saying things like "I'm not attacking your views" thus implying that I do not respect your views. Well, I don't, I hope that has been obvious.

Actually, God does decide who lives and dies, he breathed life into you, and it will leave one day when he calls you back, we all will. Being born is a death sentence. You pass a moral pronouncement that it is "wrong" and utterly immoral for God to decide who lives and dies, but when a pregnant woman decides who lives and who dies, it is her god-given right, err, I mean voted-in right.

Nope. Wrong. God doesn't exist. Yes, women have the right to do abortions, it's a pretty recent thing too. Thank god rights aren't attributed by god, eh?

YES it is utterly immoral for god to decide who lives or dies. Not in his point of view, but in my moral views, yes it is utterly immoral. I don't think the chicken thinks it's very moral of men to put them in small cages and steal their eggs, do they?

Wow, New living translation; thoroughly twisted by Catholic hacks. An utter abortion contrived form the equally absurd The Living Bible. If you have a barf bag handy, read Roman 13, its epic. If you would like accurate context, look at a manuscript that isn't wholly painted with blatant crap, and any scholar worth anything cringes at the mention of NLT. Try KJV:
Servants, be obedient to them that are your masters according to the flesh, with fear and trembling, in singleness of your heart, as unto Christ;

Servants have always existed in the world, not the same as slavery. We are all servants to something, most of America is servant to US Bank, and Visa. We weren't captured in a net and drug off, we voluntarily checked in to our servitude.

Oh really? Some new verses then:
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl's owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)

However, you may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way. (Leviticus 25:44-46 NLT)


Also, I gave you 2 verses previously, mind showing the KJV translations for both? And it's pretty funny of you to say that the KJV is more likely the word of god than other translations.

You are confusing social stature having anything to do with the essential worth God esteems for all mankind. So in your intuition and feeling, you decide who has essential worth and who doesn't?

Not intuition, empirical. Rapists have less worth than doctors. Hitler has less worth than a baby. Everybody assigns worth, you're more willing to die for A than for B. God doesn't exist. He doesn't think all mankind have the same worth, he has his own chosen people who he leads to war with other nations. He saves Noah but kills everyone. He's not really the poster boy for equal rights.

Newsflash, that's not essential worth, that attributed worth. And again, it cannot exist apart from a transcendent framework, it cannot exist in a purely material world. We don't value our kids based on how fast they run, or how good of drawers they are, or how good at checkers they are. They are infinitely valuable and have untold essential worth to God, and to parents that aren't jacked up.

And yet it does exist. You value your kids because they have your genetic material. This is once again, something that has been empirically proven in animals, not humans, but we humans are way more similar in genetics as a whole, compared to other species. But I bet my ass you'll pick your child over someone else's child everyday if it ever gets down to it.

What I am saying, is when Evolution is the prime backbone of a societies' values, eugenics comes into play.

And I explicitly said that eugenics is not any part of evolution and it's a human rights issue. Are you just going to ignore what I say and repeat yourself?

Human rights are trampled for "the greater good" and men with short mustaches wreak havoc. When we adopt a new societal value based on nothing other than evolutionary biology, we mustn't cry foul when we reap the extrapolated metaphysical outworkings; ie., unbridled bloodshed. I fear a world where the checks and balances of life's sanctity is removed and exchanged for a morality firmly planted with it's feet in mid-air.

If you're trying to accuse noncreationists of championing eugenics, you should stop right here because that's a very dishonest stance and I have not brought up eugenics or suggested that I support eugenics. If you want to carry on, you can start a new thread and I will explain to you why it has nothing to do with evolution and everything to do with human rights.

So even the most esteemed secular scholars from Oxford and Harvard are buying into that silly old book? Most of recorded human history, is contained therein, you don't have to believe everything you read, but to blatantly call the bible "fake" is a bit childish and exposes your mis-understanding of top-level secular scholarship..

Argument from authority? If you have prove that the bible accurately records history or the word of god or science just present them. No one has yet.

One day, when this facade of a non-moral construct erodes and collapsible under the weight of its "new morality", as did our Roman ancestor's, complaining will fall on deaf ears.

It's rather sad that you think morality only exist if there's a god. I don't know what I'd do if I thought I could only get moral values from and external source and not myself. Also not quite sure what you're hinting at.[/quote]

[hppavilion]

You know, in Genesis God actually basically says "Go forth and be sexist."

[Brian37]

If women were so vaunted by Christianity, there would be have been female heads of churches. There weren't. Oh, they allowed nunneries, but only to contain them.

You won't see a female Dali Lama or female Sikh or female Shinto leader either, at least not anytime soon.

[thesummerqueen]

Nope.