Why would any woman want to be Christian?

[jstrodel]

Strodel, you are literally one of the worst debaters I have ever come across, and by the looks of it a pretty despicable human being too; scrabbling to make excuses for the most awful immoral things while sniffing with haughty derision at we atheists for daring to disagree with you. You are either a liar, an idiot, or a brainwashed puppet, and this will be the last time I respond to any of your rambling, incoherent posts. However, I feel compelled to put a finer point on my reasoning in a few areas that you seem to have missed in your haste to call me a liberal some more, as though I should take that as an insult.

Not an insult, liberals have accomplished some good things.

Sweet! Okay then, I can feel pretty good about not bothering with you after this, because as you've just said, you have no morality! Your entire moral system is based on a system that can change, meaning what you're advocating isn't some divine, objective morality that is rigid and perfect, but for a command structure, where the whims of your deity inform your morality.

Have you ever read a book on Christian ethics in your whole life? I get sick of responding to these objections because you are so ignorant. The Bible/Christianity does not create an absolute authority in itself, God is the authority.

Now that we know this, don't you dare ever open your fucking trap again to criticize the strength of secular morality, you hypocritical oaf!

Maybe if you weren't making so many insulting statements you could think hard enough to put what you wrote into an argument. How does the knowledge of the God who created everything in history with a specific intention who knows its nature and has a divine order in which he is aware of the specific order that should result fail to deal with the problem of moral skepticism?

You are not even making arguments, it is not surprising you can't wrestle with difficult issues in the Bible.

I'll get to this in a moment, but I just wanted to say that this is the most breathtakingly ignorant and privileged comparisons I've ever seen. And that I know you understand the difference between the two, unless you really are an idiot, in which case... well, either way, why bother?

Why bother typing something if you aren't going to argue it? You are wasting my time.

Well, the reason I brought up Lot specifically is because even after offering his daughters up for gang rape, he was still allowed to leave Sodom as the one moral person in the city. God protects him, allows him to live while striking down the rest of his city for immorality. So... does that not count as something of a hint as to god's opinion on Lot's moral stature?

No, it counts for something that proves that you are not interpreting the Bible using sound scholarly principles, you are interpreting it by making stuff up as you go. There are many leaders in the Bible who are not judged immediately, and others who do suffer like Job. And atheists complain about Young Earth Creationism... You know, there are established ways that people understand the Bible. Go read a book by NT Wright or someone like that.

So, I've never sold anyone out as badly as Lot did there, I live a fairly normal and moral life, yet I'm going to hell for not believing, yet Lot's okay? Yeah, sounds like a fair system.

The Bible does not say that Lot went to heaven. You are ignorant about Biblical interpretation. I wish I could show you what I see. I went to school to study the Bible. You treat Biblical interpretation like it is some sort of apologetic game. Christians treat evolutionary science with great respect and care, whether they accept it or not (some like Mendel and Collins have influenced it deeply). In contrast, atheist views of scripture revolve around exegetical fallacies and amaturish ideas. Picture Penn Gillette holding up the Bible and saying about how it is "bullshit". If Christians had people like Penn Gillete talking about science that way, atheists would have a field day. Well, ok, they do, the fundamentalist movement has people like that. But Christians that are serious about the Bible tend to distance themselves from those guys. In contrast, the atheist movement blindly follows false methods of scripture interpretation.

You probably don't own one Bible commentary and have never used one. You apply a different standard to studying subjects that can produce economic fruit, such as natural science versus subjects that are not connected to economic gain, such as the study of scripture. Well, I am not against studying science, but if you want to have respect for knowledge, at least have it universally and not only have "respect for the truth" as it relates to fields you can use to make money and prove you don't have to submit to divine teachings.

You know, you say we need to interpret the bible, but can you step away from your own position for a moment and try to look at it from the outside? What you're really saying by that is "disregard the actual words there, and just pretend it says something else instead."

Who are you to interpret god's word? Or is god just a bad author? Either way, yes, I do refuse to put myself through the doublethink and mental contortions one needs to go through in order to make an immoral book seem slightly less immoral. Two plus two equals four, Strodel. Not five. We have not always been at war with Eurasia.

Your ignorance is bleeding through. I didn't say that. I take the authority of the Bible very seriously. If you are so convinced that you can follow the Penn Gillette "if I can't see it is valuable, it is BULLSHIT" method, why don't you try and become a lawyer using that method. Lawyers don't have to interpret the law right, "if it isn't literally true from what I can understand, it is bullshit". That is the way science works too, there is no interpretation, "if the words don't feel nice to me, or it feels weird, it is bullshit".

Deut 28 is obviously presenting a dichotomy between consensual and non-consensual acts. I have actually studied the Hebrew words in the passage, the word is "seize", I think it actually means something closer to "fuck" than "rape". It is not translated rape in all translations. Why would there be a contradictory penalty in the same passage, one for rape receiving death and the other not receiving death? It is because it is trying to draw a separate case. The Bible is not going to contradict itself by the same author in the same passage. The most basic principle of interpretation is to understand the original intention through trying to understand how the passage communicates the whole, contextual message. You can go with sound principles of Biblical interpretation or you can go with the Penn Gillette approach. But you can't call yourself an intellectual and study the Bible the way grown ups study it.

I guess my point was that god has no issues preventing certain social things outright, so why does he ease up on slavery so much? You've made a pretty pathetic strawman here to avoid answering my question, so I doubt you will ever approach this debate honestly at all, but everyone else gets what I was actually saying here, right? All the rational people?

This isn't an argument, it is more like "I wonder why God did this that way". For the intellectually sophisticated atheist, it is no problem to go from "I wonder why God did this that way" to "I see my opinion that this state of affairs is superior based on assumptions that I refuse to justify".

So, I'm an empathic being, which means I can put myself in the shoes of others. Do I think slavery would feel good? No, I think it would cause me quite considerable suffering. Being that I give a shit about other people, does that mean I therefore think of slavery as moral, until it affects me? No, it's immoral, because it causes people suffering and excludes them from being able to contribute to society under their own volition. So, from a moral perspective we seek to reduce suffering, and from a cost/benefit scenario, people who don't actively hate their work are more likely to do better, and the intellectual gifts that might be squandered on lives of hard labor in slavery would be better used in a world of self determined paths. There's your empathy.

How do you know that slavery does not eliminate more pain than it produces, for instance, by people selling themselves into slavery to avoid famine? Do you think this sort of economic analysis would be very easy to do? The last few hundred years has shown that it is very difficult to analyze economics from a philosophical perspective (see, Marxism). What makes you think that your approach is so right that you can call into question the foundation of Western civilization? How much time have you thought in your life about the way that slavery interacts with primitive economies? Probably not more than an hour or two. That is all you need to pull a Penn Gillete though.

Is forced, unending slavery immoral? Yep. I can't understand why a person with a supposedly superior divine morality is arguing otherwise.

Since slavery causes pain, you say it is moral to regulate slavery. Is it moral to regulate anything that causes pain? Is it always wrong to not regulate it. I am for legislation banning slavery, but I do not see slavery as an issue that exists as something that is basically separate from other issues. Capitalism causes pain. Should capitalism be seen as an intrinsic evil that is condemned? Well, I think it should be regulated. There is only so much that people can do.

What does this have to do with morality? The people who took slaves were doing an immoral thing... people sometimes do that. What's your point? I should excuse immorality because it happened by force?

How do you think ancient people should handle prisoners of war, who would revolt and kill them if they had the chance? Look at the situation in Iraq, only then, the different in military capabilities was much different. If you had just a small number of men with clubs, how hard do you think that would be to organize. I am not a military expert, but you cannot generalize from the modern world to what the ancient world should do. It is not like they had the resources to contain massive numbers of people or they had the military capabilities to endless subdue them. War is a complicated thing.

And? Am I saying slavery had no positive effects on the world? No, not really. Am I saying that there were much, much better ways to accomplish the same things, and probably surpass them? Yes, definitely. But we'll never know what the alternative history without slavery would look like, now will we?

You are just repeating your tired atheist apologetic. What makes you think slavery could be eliminated in the ancient world in a much easier way? How much time have you thought about this? How many books have you read about this? I have given up my whole life to seek God.

If you are saying slavery had no positive effects on the world and you are using a utilitarian approach, are you saying that slavery is considered to be wrong because it produced more good than bad? You acknowledge that it didn't have any positive effects on the world. How do you know that in the ancient world slavery produced more happiness than pain. These is just using your categories, which are horribly flawed and insufficient to understand morality. But they will do for this exercise.

The thing of it is just this: you have never studied slavery in the ancient world. You have no idea whether it would produce more happiness than pain or whether empathy would lead people to reject slavery or not. You are making it up as you go. You have probably not spent more than 4 hours thinking about this in your whole life. And you think it is perfectly legitimate to call yourself an "intellectual" and say the things you are saying. What if I did that about modern physics, if I spend 4 hours thinking about physics on the internet and then made anti-physics apologetics saying that physics was evil because it created the atom bomb and all these weapons and this and that and that all the physics theories were wrong because they violate COMMON SENSE DICKHEAD principles.

Of course that would be rejected.

Additionally, I suspect you brought up economics as a smoke screen because you know that you're arguing for an immoral and unpopular act, but you can't stop because that would mean admitting defeat to an atheist. Nobody is talking about economics but you. We were discussing morality and rights, which is a different issue that requires a different tact.

It is unsurprising that you are politically liberal that you think you can separate morality from economics. I used to be a leftist. If you are saying you should have empathy for people, wouldn't the empathy be directed towards knowing people economic destiny, and wouldn't that knowledge be relevant. Liberals love political propaganda and platitudes. These things win elections. Cold hard analysis, which is obviously the basis of real love, which takes through real hard work, not through convincing people of the merits of something but through actually doing it. Love and empathy are related to real ends, not the ability to convince people of the value of those ends. Politics is about convincing people to follow certain moral platitudes or this or that. Real love is directed towards people in specific circumstances and understood rigorously and clearly, it directed towards people and not causes or politicians. I think you have some confusion here.

But hey, I'm not surprised that you were being dishonest. It seems it's just a thing that you do, easy as breathing.

Where? What did I say that was dishonest?

Saying all this, just to advocate for slavery? My my, you must be right. Clearly I should bow to you, superior moral philosopher, with your cavalcade of faint ad hominems, constant strawmen and unsupported assertions, and your immoral central position. Yes.

When did I say I was an advocate of slavery? I am an advocate for doing things that help people. The Bible does not advocate slavery, it regulates it. If you want to live in a theoretical utopia, why not live in a Communist nation like North Korea? There you can live at peace knowing that there are absolute moral principles to economic organization. Does that actually produce a better quality of life? No. Is that the same thing as sounding good?

I'd call those nations democracies, you fucking moron.

Which democracies have been run on empathy and mutual agreement? The last time I checked, America and all the countries of Europe have been run on military power, redistribution of wealth and aggressive, often deceptive politics.

Because the bible is a self-contradictory piece of trash written by desert dwelling savages with superiority complexes, and the people that follow it are imbecilic cultists like yourself, or indoctrinated normal people who just throw out the bits they don't like.

Well, there is your evidence, you start off with the presupposition that the BIble is contradictory, so when you see something that looks contradictory, you don't have to try and understand it, you can add it to the "apologetics" pile.

Now I'm done with you. Feel free to respond as you like. Just know that the rest of us are laughing at you, but we're all secretly disgusted with you too, you dishonest, immoral excuse for a human being.

I am immoral? Why? You yourself said that "slavery may not have had only bad effects". You are saying that I am immoral based on a failure to apply very very complicated economic analysis that you yourself cannot do. Your analysis of the situation was entirely based on ad hominem and your own reasoning, you did not cite a single author or do any sort of analysis to support your position. You think that the Bible is something that you can safely disregard and have a presupposition against, though it created the culture that you live in.

When you write, you write words. You start writing, and you don't care if the words you write actually say anything.

---

I...

I... I can't... I'm not equipped to...

It's not... it doesn't... How can... Why does...

It just doesn't work like that... It's so...

ARGH!

I need to get out of here, or I might slam my head into my desk so hard it splits the atoms there and kills us all. I'm almost vibrating at how angry this makes me.

---

Why should I take your feelings to be authoritative? Where does your worldview guarantee the accuracy of your feelings.

Ditto.

You guys are so high and mighty with your political platitudes and cultivated psuedo-feminist sensibilities, but if you you go a judge in America and you see a situation in which you get drunk and something happens with a girl and it is not really clear exactly what happened (rape, consensual, a screwed up situation), the judge will want to know what happened.

You guys are so self righteous and the way that you talk about these issues shows that you lack intellectual depth or discernment. It is like I am watching a television advertisement for a Democratic politician, telling me that if i don't vote for him I am not a feminist. That is where all of this comes from, and that is the level of it. It is propanganda.

You know when you are dealing with political propaganda when you ask someone to justify why it is that they feel some controversial issue is a universal absolute and, instead of justifying it they say "YOU ARE AN EVIL PERSON WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU CAN'T YOU SEE HOW BAD THIS IS". That is when you know that they really have nothing other than the propaganda they believe that has fooled their heart into thinking they have perceived the nature of existence. If you can perceive the nature of existence, share that, but when I see that people refuse to share that and instead utter empty words, my heart is sad because of their great and destructive ignorance.

I do consider myself to be a feminist, and care very deeply about woman. It is something that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about.

[Fruity]

I have stopped feeling sorry for you.

It's not about feelings; it's about what's right and what's wrong. If he took the time to "help" women out by making rules to protect them from their culture, he could have taken the time to instruct them against those cultural rituals. People were ignorant in primitive times, though if god existed he would not be ignorant or culturally biased, which would then make him capable of educating them. Don't tell me that he made those laws for their own protection. Oh... he had to force them to marriage to protect them from being killed... meh! Force men to not kill them instead of forcing them to marry them! Sorry, but... no I'm not sorry... that is just ridiculous.

This is stupid. I'm out.

[EGross]

Since you did not give my points detailed analysis, neither will I give your points detailed analysis. I think the passage about 50 shekels of silver is a specific case of semi-consensual sexual activity. The Hebrew word means "seize".

Actually, there is no Hebrew word for seize in there. It is "find" or "discovers" from the root מצא. A seizing would not be in the קל form anyhow, despite the root.

But I will concede that I did not read the actual text, as I should have done, and I apologize for not having done so. I was lazy, did a quick google search on the verse, and got a "God's Word Bible" that listed it as:

This is what you must do when a man rapes a virgin who isn't engaged. When the crime is discovered...

And for relying on a Christian text, I admit my error of laziness.

Here is the actual text (my translation):

For when a man shall find a young woman, a virgin that is not in the erushah [stage of marriage] (monetary contract, which is before erusin stage where he takes her), and he lays with her and they are found, and the man who lays with her gives to the father of the young woman 50 shekels...[etc]

So the verse obviously means a couple caught in the act, which may or may not be forcible, but the woman has no choice but to be his wife for the rest of her life. That will teach them!

You have probably never done a serious Bible study in your life.

Yeah, all those years in yeshivot and kollel and daf yomi were just for laughs.

As for the rest of your rant (and I refuse to spend the time necessary to correct your misunderstanding of halachah concerning the logical problem posed by this text, the correction, and the status of the woman as a result)...

...[snip]

[jstrodel]

Since you did not give my points detailed analysis, neither will I give your points detailed analysis. I think the passage about 50 shekels of silver is a specific case of semi-consensual sexual activity. The Hebrew word means "seize".

Actually, there is no Hebrew word for seize in there. It is "find" or "discovers" from the root מצא. A seizing would not be in the קל form anyhow, despite the root.

But I will concede that I did not read the actual text, as I should have done, and I apologize for not having done so. I was lazy, did a quick google search on the verse, and got a "God's Word Bible" that listed it as:

This is what you must do when a man rapes a virgin who isn't engaged. When the crime is discovered...

And for relying on a Christian text, I admit my error of laziness.

Here is the actual text (my translation):

For when a man shall find a young woman, a virgin that is not in the erushah [stage of marriage] (monetary contract, which is before erusin stage where he takes her), and he lays with her and they are found, and the man who lays with her gives to the father of the young woman 50 shekels...[etc]

So the verse obviously means a couple caught in the act, which may or may not be forcible, but the woman has no choice but to be his wife for the rest of her life. That will teach them!

You have probably never done a serious Bible study in your life.

Yeah, all those years in yeshivot and kollel and daf yomi were just for laughs.

As for the rest of your rant (and I refuse to spend the time necessary to correct your misunderstanding of halachah concerning the logical problem posed by this text, the correction, and the status of the woman as a result)...

...[snip]

Well, I respect your study of the Hebrew language and of Judaism. I think studying the Bible in a Christian context is different because Christians have the Holy Spirit but I respect the scholarship of Judaism (which has given the modern world the TaNaKh and preserved it). Why not consult what the Talmud says about these texts? I do not believe the Jews interpreted them literalistically, the way some fundamentalists do.

It seems that you have just proved my point concerning the text in question, which does not specify rape (actually I think we may be talking about different texts). It would be good to consult a rabbinic understand of halachah surrounding these texts in the Talmud or elsewhere.

Orthodox Jews who do not live by these texts but read them frequently do not use them to create a culture of rape. They do not interpret them the way that atheist apologists do, although Orthodox Judaism disagrees with the modern feminist understanding of sexuality in some ways.

I considered converting to Judaism and I have never seen any Jewish book (or Christian book) that has ever understood the TaNaKh to teach that rape is an acceptable way to start a marriage. That God may force fornicators to marry may be severe, but I do not see why it is morally problematic.

The Bible does not sanction rape or accept it in any way. The Bible punishes rape with death. Period.

---

I have stopped feeling sorry for you.

It's not about feelings; it's about what's right and what's wrong. If he took the time to "help" women out by making rules to protect them from their culture, he could have taken the time to instruct them against those cultural rituals. People were ignorant in primitive times, though if god existed he would not be ignorant or culturally biased, which would then make him capable of educating them. Don't tell me that he made those laws for their own protection. Oh... he had to force them to marriage to protect them from being killed... meh! Force men to not kill them instead of forcing them to marry them! Sorry, but... no I'm not sorry... that is just ridiculous.

This is stupid. I'm out.

You are saying it is not about feelings, it is about what is right and what is wrong and then you are appealing to your feelings about what is right and wrong instead of actually defending the position.

Your response to a very complex social arrangement in which marriages were commonly arranged and violence was widespread is to say simply "this is just ridiculous".

That is your feelings. None of that is self evident and none of it demonstrates what is right and wrong.

[John V]

So the verse obviously means a couple caught in the act, which may or may not be forcible, but the woman has no choice but to be his wife for the rest of her life. That will teach them!

Was going to point out that "rape" is a bad (or at best contested) translation of that verse. Those verses are a protection for women. A woman not a virgin was less likely to get a husband in that culture. This forced the man who took her virginity (quite possibly by saying he loved her and would marry her) to support her for life. From what I've read the woman could opt out, but as she liked him enough to have the affair, she probably didn't want to in most cases.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Cuts both ways. Why would any woman what to be an atheist?

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/d...ingle.html

---

You know, you say we need to interpret the bible, but can you step away from your own position for a moment and try to look at it from the outside? What you're really saying by that is "disregard the actual words there, and just pretend it says something else instead."

Who are you to interpret god's word? Or is god just a bad author? Either way, yes, I do refuse to put myself through the doublethink and mental contortions one needs to go through in order to make an immoral book seem slightly less immoral.

The history of science has proven that nature does not give up her secrets easily. Learning her ways requires earnest study, deep reflection and sometimes very large expensive pieces of equipment.

Like nature, God also veils his glory. That is as it should be. The Word of God has many levels, each adapted to each person's ability to understand and willingness to learn. Many of its teaching are hard, very hard to understand. Nothing worthwhile is easily attained.

[Whateverist]

Why would any woman want to be Christian?

I got a little nauseous just scrolling through some of the enormous quotes before I even got to some of the epic walls of new words. You'll have to forgive me if some of these potential reasons have already been covered:

• Low self-esteem;

• Self loathing;

• Penis envy;

• Womb pride;

• Or perhaps she was just brought up in an environment oppressive to women, such as a good Christian home.

[EGross]

So the verse obviously means a couple caught in the act, which may or may not be forcible, but the woman has no choice but to be his wife for the rest of her life. That will teach them!

Was going to point out that "rape" is a bad (or at best contested) translation of that verse. Those verses are a protection for women. A woman not a virgin was less likely to get a husband in that culture. This forced the man who took her virginity (quite possibly by saying he loved her and would marry her) to support her for life. From what I've read the woman could opt out, but as she liked him enough to have the affair, she probably didn't want to in most cases.

Since nobody seems to really understand the verse, I thought I'd clarify it.

While I did say that it was a bad translation, I did not say that there was no rape. And for those who have studied such texts in the past, not only the language, but the style is also important.

First, the woman is prohibited from being a zonah, and is enjoined to be a woman of moral character. Sex before marriage would not only prohibit her from marrying certain segments of the population, but would reduce her ketubah by half. (There are also punishments based on the nuance of the text, involved here, which would require more depth to go into, but suffice to say that sShe could be exiled, harmed, or killed.)

Next, the man is not known to her. He happens to see her, he finds her for himself. In the language of the Torah, when one lays with another it is an undesirable act. (A couple of examples come to mind, Reuben who forcibly took his father's concubine and lain with her, with the daughters of Lot who did so with their unconscious father). It is the act of power, of taking control. An acceptable coupling is called "knowing".

The man comes across a naar (the status of a female over the age of three) and lays with her. She is neither cast out, when discovered, beaten, or executed. It is he who is punished directly, by paying an additional fine of 50 shekels to the father, she maintains her full ketubah, because of someone who forced his way on her, which, because it was no adultery, and because nobody witnessed the initial action, and because she is now ruined goods (for future financial transactions by the father), there is no death, but a fine, and he is forced to acquire her.

There are those who might call him a seducer more than a rapist, and either might apply, but in either case, the woman is treated, at first, as the victim. It was not mutual consent. Since the girl could have been 5 or 6 years old (as well as younger or older), based on the wording, modern society would also put the blame on the man if that was the case.

But here is the problem with it.

The girl can never get divorced from him. Ever. He is a creep and she is his. He can marry another and cast her aside to live alone if he chooses, but she will never be free of him. She will be married in a way that makes her equivilant to an agunah, one who is in a marriage limbo, who cannot get a divorce and never remarry so long as he lives (and someone must witness his death).

And her ketubah is worthless, because that is will used when her contract with him is complete, which it never will be until he dies, and if he has sons, she gets no property, and if they are not children from her, she is forced out.

For an extra 50 shekels, he gets a slave, not because he wanted one, but because he was caught. And the girl is condemned to be with him forever.

As an aside, the status of an agunah holds today. A woman can never divorce her husband, but only he can divorce her. He can demand the house, the savings, and everything in exchange for giving her a get (which is not the case in the above), and the reward for being an asshole in this case, is he gets everything and she gets nothing.

That is some of the halachic implications of this pusek. The woman was, and still is property, and the husband is always referred to as the ba'al, or "master" for good reason.

Hopefully this explains things a bit better for those who never bothered learning this pusek.

heh!

[Esquilax]

You guys are so high and mighty with your political platitudes and cultivated psuedo-feminist sensibilities, but if you you go a judge in America and you see a situation in which you get drunk and something happens with a girl and it is not really clear exactly what happened (rape, consensual, a screwed up situation), the judge will want to know what happened.

You guys are so self righteous and the way that you talk about these issues shows that you lack intellectual depth or discernment. It is like I am watching a television advertisement for a Democratic politician, telling me that if i don't vote for him I am not a feminist. That is where all of this comes from, and that is the level of it. It is propanganda.

You know when you are dealing with political propaganda when you ask someone to justify why it is that they feel some controversial issue is a universal absolute and, instead of justifying it they say "YOU ARE AN EVIL PERSON WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU CAN'T YOU SEE HOW BAD THIS IS". That is when you know that they really have nothing other than the propaganda they believe that has fooled their heart into thinking they have perceived the nature of existence. If you can perceive the nature of existence, share that, but when I see that people refuse to share that and instead utter empty words, my heart is sad because of their great and destructive ignorance.

I do consider myself to be a feminist, and care very deeply about woman. It is something that I have spent a good deal of time thinking about.

I wish there was a negative rep button here still, so I could use it on you so hard your fucking computer bursts into flames.

Cuts both ways. Why would any woman what to be an atheist?

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/d...ingle.html

Chad, when I clicked on your link it took me to nothing but an error page, but I think I can tell from the URL where it was supposed to lead. Are you seriously suggesting that youtube comments be held up as representative of the atheist community? Or that everyone who commented was actually an atheist? It's a pretty well known fact that theists troll atheist online presences too, you know.

But also, and I feel like I have to say this just to demonstrate the difference in the atheist vs theist approach to these issues, so what? Sexism is an issue no matter who is perpetrating it, and nobody here is arguing that atheism as a community is free from that, nor that it shouldn't be worked on. It should.

See that? I admitted there's a problem, and we move on from there. Contrast that with the religious response here, which has been to outright deny that there's a problem, even though the institutionalized misogyny there is so, so much worse and pervasive. I wonder why only one side of this issue is capable of any kind of intellectual honesty?

[Creed of Heresy]

It is unsurprising that you hate Ronald Reagan and Joseph Stalin in the same passage. You are probably one of those people who thinks that you can run the world from your enlightened ideas and see how everyone else in history who did mean things was wrong, and if you did it differently you would be nice.

No, actually, I don't have any intention, desire, or inclination to run the world...which, in turn, places me in a position already superior to them. You see, power corrupts, and I'm quite happy with not running the risk of letting control go to my head. If I had the chance to do everything differently, the only thing I would do is immediately abdicate. Meanwhile you're probably one of those people that thinks that everything will just work out according to some unknowable will just because. See, difference here is that I have you pegged to the donkey's ass, but you couldn't even get the nail into the right wall with me even if I laid everything bare for you.

This is the same sort of attitude that leads you to have these kinds of prejudices in the world. I am not sure that I agree with everything that Reagan did, there was a lot of blood spilled in Central America and elsewhere. But he did lead America to overcome the Soviet Union.

Mm-k, first of all, no, actually, it is not. What leads to prejudice is actually one person wronging another and the other getting pissed off about it. Cause and effect. Secondly, Reagan had nothing to do with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and even if he did, what wildly amazing triumph was that, exactly? Was it worth puppeteering a half-score of nations into brutal dictatorships, many of which were actually democracies until he stuck his fat-cat fingers into their business? Was it worth the thousands of dead bodies? Tell me. Is the American flag flapping proudly in the wind for a couple decades worth the thousands of bodies of people who were the very epitome of innocent bystanders?

If you think so, then your moral compass is so fucked up that I'm amazed you manage to find the fridge every day.

It is sufficient for the enlightened to sit back comfortably and enjoy the hard work that has been built by the toil and sacrifice of those who do not have theoretical prejudices that govern their wills. They do not actually need to understand the right course of action, they need only to come to a sense of what is culturally unappetizing. They call this critical thinking.

Nonsensical generalizations and a strawman in the form of a misrepresentation of "the enlightened," where the generalization comes into play, since you never really defined who these "enlightened" are. Are you saying I am one of the Illuminati? While that would be rather flattering and awesome, I am not.

I would prefer to live in the real world, and have my love directed towards real people and real problems as opposed to assume that I know the secret to history that enables people to be nicer than everyone else.

Yes. The real world. So says the man who believes god knocked up a virgin, she somehow gave birth to a child even though the hymen is actually a one-way street [if you lived in the real world you would be aware that if a baby was trying to exit through a hymen-protected uterus, it would be crushed], and he turned water into wine, walked on it, and rose from the dead after being confirmed dead on the planks he was nailed to later when he started shit with the local rabbis. So says the man who also follows a book that states that the earth has a firmament, there are four-legged insects [I've never heard of such a thing and neither have any archaeologists or arthropologists], bats are birds, humanity is descended from two individuals [even though the genetic pool would be so limited from this that we would die out within 14 generations at most], the Red Sea just straight up got separated by invisible force fields, millions of jews just all up and left Egypt all at once [even though there has been no evidence whatsoever for this; seriously, we know the intimate details of Tut's life, but not a trace of a million or so jews who supposedly were kept under yoke and later freed en mass all at once. Funny, that.], the earth was flooded entirely [even though there is no evidence for this, either, quite the opposite in fact, there's lots of evidence that this NEVER happened], and is strangely silent about skydaddy's dinosaurs.

No, do tell me more about the real world. What's that? You can't because you are deluded beyond measure in fictional claims and half-baked myths? Ah. That's a shame. If you don't mind, I'm going to continue paying more attention to scientific pursuits...you know, the thing that keeps making that god of the gaps shrink away every day bit by bit, yet solves those REAL problems...like, you know...AIDS, and diabetes, and cancer [or at least it's trying to], and smallpox, and TB, and the questions of evolution, the universe's origins, the operations of the universe and how and why it functions that way.

I'm sure you have very pressing matters to attend to, yourself. Like thinking that all the problems in the world are caused by not everybody getting on their knees and submitting to a non-existent entity.

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Why would any woman want to be Christian?

I got a little nauseous just scrolling through some of the enormous quotes before I even got to some of the epic walls of new words. You'll have to forgive me if some of these potential reasons have already been covered:

• Low self-esteem;

• Self loathing;

• Penis envy;

• Womb pride;

• Or perhaps she was just brought up in an environment oppressive to women, such as a good Christian home.

Whateverist, if I could give you a hundred kudos for that post, I would click the mouse button to do so so damn hard.