Why religion was necessary; why it no longer is.

[Lion IRC]

Heh, Lion, ya took me a bit too literally on the point about history and who it is written by. Context, good sir. Lemme address your counterpoints in the number they were brought up:

1: Name me a single major worldwide religion, as in sizable enough to affect political matters, where a woman can attain the highest rank available to a man. Catholicism, islam, protestant christianity, judaism, buddhism, shintoism, hinduism...hmm...nope, none of those have any gender-equality going for their hierarchies...quite the opposite, in fact...

“Political matters” exist no matter whether religion is involved or not and religious females get involved in politics too – often doing a better job than males. So I don’t think politics is relevant.

Now, I could argue that Eve played a key role in the foundation of Abrahamic religion and Mary played a key role in the foundation of Christianity (certainly Catholicism) and that Hinduism has female deities, and that Taoism affirms male/female, yin/yang, etc etc. But that would be quibbling. And in any case, I don’t accept that hierarchy structures are the best way to measure the influence of genders in a religion.

In fact, I don’t think gender is particularly relevant at all because so many women freely choose to belong to those religions irrespective of whether (for example) Jesus was a man.

I think care needs to be taken when (male) atheists try to talk about and on behalf of women and their religion.

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Heh, Lion, ya took me a bit too literally on the point about history and who it is written by. Context, good sir. Lemme address your counterpoints in the number they were brought up:

2: Well we can naturally select to get rid of them. I naturally selected to do so myself. Naturally, the selection has actually done a fantastic job of becoming far more curious about the world surrounding me.

Yes. And religion also concerns itself with curiosity about the past, the present and the future.

I find that present day science isn’t so much answering questions as it is ADDING new questions to the list of things about which know very little.

I’m not sure who needs a God of the Gaps more – the cave man who thought the universe was no more than perhaps a hundred miles wide or the modern day cosmologist who contemplates an infinity of multiverses and who, like Nick Lane, wonders whether we will ever be around long enough to find out.
We dont have forever. It's getting darker. Everythings getting further away.

(Nick Lane suggests a theory about advanced alien civilizations self-destructing long before they ever get a chance to use their advanced technology in a way that might give rise to inter-galactic panspermia.)