Name:JMD •
Title: "Women Without Superstition" book •
Date posted: 04/29/07 21:06
Q: "Women Without Superstition"
Editor, Annie Laurie Gaylor, who notes in her intro to the book:
"The religious war against women's rights continues unabated today around the world. Whether the issue is violence, birth control, abortion, education, or dress reform, the message against freedom for women is the same from the fundamentalist branches of Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Hinduism. Every freedom won for women, large or small, from women wearing bloomers to riding bicycles to not wearing bonnets in church, to being permitted to attend universities and enter professions, to vote and to own property, was opposed by the churches."
Quotes from Elizabeth Cady Stanton:
"The real difficulty in woman's case is that the whole foundation of the Christian religion rests on her temptation and man's fall, hence the necessity of a Redeemer and a plan of salvation. As the chief cause of this dire calamity, woman's degradation and subordination were made a necessity. If, however, we accept the Darwinian theory, that the race has been a gradual growth from the lower to a higher form of life, and that the story of the fall is a myth, we can exonerate the snake, emancipate the woman, and reconstruct a more rational religion..."
"It is one of the mysteries that woman, who has suffered so intensely from the rule of the church, still worships her destroyer and licks the hand that's raised to shed her blood."
"..It is often asserted that woman owes all the advantages of the position she occupies to-day to Christianity, but the facts of history show that the Christian Church has done nothing specifically for woman's elevation."
"..The worst features of the canon law reveal themselves to-day in woman's condition as clearly as they did fifteen hundred years ago. The clergy in their pulpits teach the same doctrines in regard to her from the same texts, and echo the same old platitudes and false ideas promulgated for centuries by ecclesiastical councils. According to Church teaching, woman was an after-thought in the creation, the author of sin, being at once in collusion with Satan. Her sex was made a crime, marriage a condition of slavery, owing obedience; maternity a curse; and the true position of all womankind one of inferiority and subjection to all men; and the same ideas are echoed in our pulpits to-day."
"Lecky, in his History of Rationalism and his European Morals, gives facts sufficient to convince any woman of common sense that the greatest obstacle in the way of the freedom and elevation of her sex has been, and is, the teaching of the Church in regard to her rights and duties. Women have ever been the chief victims in the persecutions of the Church amid all its awful tragedies, and on them have fallen the heaviest penalties of the canon law. But the canon law did not confine itself to social relations; it laid its hand with withering touch on the civil law, and blighted many personal and property rights accorded woman under the Roman Code."
"..So long as the pulpits teach woman's inferiority and subjection, she can never command that honor and respect of the ignorant classes needed for her safety and protection. There is nothing more pathetic in all history than the hopeless resignation of woman to the outrages she has been taught to believe are ordained of God."
"To rebel against all authority, however hoary with time, when unjust and oppressive, is the only way to liberty and life..."
"There is a class of gentlemen leaders in the Church and State, in sacred and in profane literature, in history and in fiction, in art and in polite society, who evidently have contempt for woman, who are always dictating as to her sphere of action, her manners, dress and home duties, her morals and mental capacity, who evidently neither respect nor appreciate the sex."
"..no form of religion that subordinates one half the race to the other, can be said to benefit that half denied individual responsibility & independence and none of the tortures of the inquisition are as cruel & wicked as has been the perversion of the religious element in woman's nature in making her believe that these laws & devices of men emanated from the Creator of the universe. And as if all these teachings were not sufficiently humiliating, they insistently proclaim that our nature & highest happiness calls for this kind of authorized subjection.."
"There is no power by which the human soul can be held in such bondage as through the religious emotions; no realm of thought where it is so difficult to displace error with truth as the religious realm. And so long as we base our religions on the fundamental error of a 'male God' it is in vain to struggle for woman's equal status in the church..."
---
"The religious persecution of the ages has been done under what was claimed to be the command of God. I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do to their fellows, because it always coincides with their own desires."
Susan B. Anthony
"Every denial of education, every refusal of advantages to women, may be traced to this dogma [of original sin], which first began to spread its baleful influence with the rise of the power of the priesthood and the corruption of the early Church."
Lillie Devereux Blake
"In order to excuse this theory of woman's inferiority on account of her sex, which was utterly in conflict with pagan views, there was set up the absurd dogma that all women must be punished because of 'Eve's sin'...how absurd this theory is."
Lillie Devereux Blake
"The more heretical women become - i.e., the more they think, criticize, and make up their minds for themselves, instead of humbly asking their husbands, as enjoined by St. Paul - the sooner they will reach a position of dignity and independence."
Hypatia Bradlaugh Bonner
"Given, a man with moderate intellect, a moral standard not higher than average, some rhetorical affluence and great glibness of speech, what is the career in which, without the aid of birth or money, he may most easily attain power and reputation in English society? Where is that Goshen of mediocrity in which a smattering of science and learning will pass for profound instruction, where platitudes will be accepted as wisdom, bigoted narrowness as holy zeal, unctuous egoism as God-given piety? Let such a man become an evangelical preacher; he will then find it possible to reconcile small ability with great ambition, superficial knowledge with the prestige of erudition, a middling morale with a high reputation for sanctity..."
Marian Evans (a.k.a. novelist George Elliot)
"Often, the battered woman is religious, a threefold problem. First, most religions teach that marriages, if not actually made in heaven, should last, and divorce, even if allowed, is a disgrace. Secondly, the religious battered woman has read the bible and knows very well its opinion of women. There are in excess of two hundred bible verses that specifically belittle and demean women. Her low opinion of herself is buttressed by her religion. Third, she has been praying when she should have been acting...Because she is religious, she has developed no inner strength that is meaningful or useful to her in times of crisis. She has relied on prayer to the extent that she has lost the power to act, to cope, to initiate, to solve problems, to reason."
Anne Nicol Gaylor
"The world has seemingly awaited the advent of heroic souls who once again should dare all things for the truth. The woman who possesses love for her sex, for the world, for truth, justice and right, will not hesitate to place herself upon record as opposed to falsehood, no matter under what guise of age or holiness it appears."
Matilda Joslyn Gage, 'Woman, Church & state', 1893
"The bible teaches that a father may sell his daughter for a slave, that he may sacrifice her purity to a mob, and that he may murder her, and still be a good father and a holy man. It teaches that a man may have any number of wives; that he may sell them, give them away, or swap them around, and still be a perfect gentleman, a good husband, a righteous man, and one of God's most intimate friends...It teaches almost every infamy under the heavens for woman, and it does not recognize her as a self-directing, free human being. It classes her as property, just as it does a sheep: and it fobids her to think, talk, act, or exist, except under conditions and limits defined by some priest."
Helen H. Gardener
"Every earnest thought, like every earnest thinker, adds something to the wealth of the world. Blind belief in the thought of another produces only hopeless mediocrity. Individual effort, not mere acceptance, marks the growth of the mind. The most fatal blow to progress is slavery of the intellect. The most sacred right of humanity is the right to think, and next to the right to think is the right to express that thought without fear.."
Helen H. Gardener
"If the Bible says what it means, and means what it says, the woman of ordinary mentality will discover that in the part of the Holy Book which is devoted to her sex, she will find horrors, terrors and obscenities that she had never dreamed of which her clerical teachers had never told her of, and that much of the teaching from the pulpit regarding women is not true."
Josephine K. Henry
"I don't advise opening the Bible aimlessly and reading aloud the first passage that meets the eye. You might violate a censorship law. Strict censorship would mean that the Bible would have to be sold from under the counter."
Ruth Hurmence Green
"I regard the Bible as I do the other so-called sacred books of the world. They were all produced in savage times, and, of course, contain many things that shock our sense of justice. In the days of darkness women were regarded and treated as slaves. They were allowed no voice in public affairs....It gives me pleasure to know that women are beginning to think and are becoming dissatisfied with the religion of the barbarians."
Eva A. Ingersoll, The Woman's Bible Part II, Appendix, 1898
"There is no justification for the common claim that Christianity was responsible for the abolition of slavery...The abolitionist movement took its impetus from the secular humanitarianism of the Enlightenment. Many of the leading abolitionists were nonbelievers... Christians like William Wilberforce who actively opposed the slave trade were far from typical: with the honourable exception of the Quakers, the attitude of most of the Churches towards abolition was in America actively hostile, and in Britain (to use Wilberforce's own words) 'shamefully lukewarm.' The Churches, of course, had no difficulty in citing scriptural authority for their attitude. The Old Testament sanctions slavery (Leviticus 25, 44-46): the New Testament contains no condemnation of it: and St. Paul told slaves to obey their masters."
Margaret Knight
"Group loyalty over individual rights and personal achievements is a peculiar feature of fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe in a particular way of life; they want to put everybody in their particular straitjacket and dictate what an individual should eat, what an individual should wear, how an individual should live everyday ife... Fundamentalists do not believe in individualism, liberty of personal choice, or plurality of thought."
Taslima Nasrin
"It's a well established fact of human psychology that a person - or a culture - which represses its sexuality will experience great sexual cravings. And the greater the repression, the more depraved the desires will be. A prudish, Victorian culture has the darkest underside. And a man who has foresworn all sexual contact is going to be tormented by his desires for it. Clearly for some men the witch-craze was a golden opportunity to lust after woman the whore and carnal hag while punishing her for being the object of his fantasies and transgressions."
Kay Nolte Smith
"..The history of the Church does not contain a single suggestion for the equality of woman with man, and still the Church claims that woman owes her advancement to the Bible. She owes it much more to the dictionary."
Marilla M. Ricker
"..History, both ancient and modern, tells us that the condition of women is most degraded in those countries where Church and State are in closest affiliation, and most advanced in nations where the power of ecclesiasticism is markedly on the wane. It has been proved that, whatever progress woman has made in any department of effort, she has accomplished independent of, and in opposition to, the so-called inspired and infallible Word of God..."
Marilla M. Ricker
"We must not allow the religious fanatics of our period to take away from us the contributions to humanity brought to us by hundreds of years of toil and strife against superstition."
Queen Silver
"In 1632 a book was published in England in which it is declared that 'the reason why women have no control in Parliament, why they make no laws, consent to none, abrogate none, is because of original sin'! This is the whole story in a nutshell. All the abuses, humiliations, cruelties, and indignities heaped upon woman in Christian countries may be traced directly and squarely to this source - the fable of original sin."
Susan H. Wixon
"In the face of a history replete with abuse, cruelty, scorn and dogmatic insolence toward woman, the Christian church still has the audacity and impudence to declare that it has been her friend - that it has done everything for her elevation and advancement. It says that what she is to-day she owes to the church. A blacker falsehood was never uttered."
Susan H. Wixon
Mary Wollstonecraft, 'A vindication of the Rights of Women', 1792:
"Strengthen the female mind by enlarging it, and there will be an end to blind obedience..."
"Slavery to monarchs and ministers, which the world will be long freeing itself from, and whose deadly grasp stops the progress of the human mind, is not yet abolished."
"I love man as my fellow; but his scepter, real, or usurped, extends not to me, unless the reason of an individual demands my homage; and even then the submission is to reason, and not to man."
_________
"There are and will be those who think I [JMD] have gone overboard. Let them rest assured that this assessment is correct, probably beyond their wildest imagination, and that I will continue to do so."
(Mary Daly)
:-D
Name:Panluna •
Date: 04/29/07 22:33
A: My religion lets me be the boss.I don't kowtow to anyone.Ever watch Catwoman starring Halle Berry?Listen to the dialogue about cats and independence.Free the mind!!!! then the rest follows.We are never truely free... .There are always obligations just choose wisely.
Name:Ladyhawk •
Date: 04/29/07 23:30
A: "...All the abuses, humiliations, cruelties, and indignities heaped upon woman in Christian countries may be traced directly and squarely to this source - the fable of original sin...."
Which is even worse when you realize that those imposing the rules were ignorant of their own doctrine, as original sin is not gender-specific, but (from Wikipedia)"... the fallen state of humanity. The interpretation in Western Christianity is that original sin is the general condition of sinfulness (lack of holiness) into which human beings are born (Psalm 51:5)." Further, when it's THE original sin, the term refers to the joint disobedience of Adam and Eve.
So basically it was just a power play, in which people/women were enslaved and/or belittled because their fear of damnation trumped their common sense and their husbands/fathers thought Christ had annointed them as masters of their families. I rather think "Saint" Paul's hand is in there somewhere.
There is power in knowledge, and freedom as well. Once you know the truth, you can no longer be enslaved by lies.
Name:Anchorite •
Date: 05/22/07 5:06
A: I didn't see Catwoman, but I sure love cats. Though their magic is random.
Name:Shlomo •
Date: 05/22/07 5:23
A: Ladyhawk,
I agree the concept of "original sin" is the culprit in all aspects, not just womens concerns only, it has shaped the thinking of many thinkers, writers, commentators, science etc. Ah, yes Julie Newmar [hisss]
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/22/07 15:41
A: Anchorite,
Have you seen CATWOMAN starring Halle Berry?
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/22/07 15:44
A: Shlomo,
Will we ever be forgiven for Eve's Original Sin?Why was Adam so dumb that he listened to Eve in the first place?....guilty by association.
Name:Not Dattaswami •
Date: 05/22/07 18:04
A: .
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/22/07 18:40
A: Not Dattaswami,
Silence is golden.Right?
Name:CanuckChick •
Date: 05/22/07 19:00
A: Ok - Adam and Eve in the garden. Adam, while being quite fond of Eve, says to God: "I notice that you made Eve with a wonderful and beauteous shape delightful to the eye". God says: "That was so that you would love her".
Adam then says: "Her laughter is as wondrous as a flight of nightingales, and gladdens my heart." God says: "I did that so that you would love her."
Adam: "Her eyes are like twin stars in the firmament and sparkle with the light of a thousand suns." God: "I did that so you'd love her".
Adam: "But I notice that she's not the sharpest pencil in the box. One of these monkeys here could probably out-think her on a good day."
God: "Why Adam, I did that so SHE would love YOU."
From the Gospel According to CanuckChick.
Name:Shlomo •
Date: 05/22/07 19:12
A: Panluna,
The sin of Adam and Eve were theirs and theirs only, they were punished for failing to repent [ exile from gan [garden] eden, not eden itself ]. Sins are not handed down, this idea was formulated by Christianity [original sin]. The event in the garden is why repentence is still the requirement today and always will be till the end. In other words, there is no free ticket or ride as it were.
Name:JMD •
Date: 05/22/07 19:46
A: Adam and Eve are myth... and so is 'original sin.'
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/22/07 19:53
A: Canuckchick,
Ha Ha very funny!! Do you have complete version of your bible?We could add it to JMD's booklist.
Name:JMD •
Date: 05/22/07 20:03
A: Gnostics have a different perspective.
Name:CanuckChick •
Date: 05/22/07 21:51
A: Schlomo said: "The event in the garden is why repentence is still the requirement today and always will be till the end."
If Adam and Eve failed to repent after their "sin" in the garden of Eden, and your statement above is accurate, of what sin must WE now repent?
Name:JMD •
Date: 05/22/07 23:39
A: Repent of the sin of Ignorance !
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/23/07 0:38
A: Good one,JMD!!
Name:Shlomo •
Date: 05/23/07 1:01
A: Canuckchick,
First of all, you can thank Paul for originating the idea of original sin [Rom 5:12].
The Adam and Eve existence was actually spiritual. A person is born innocent - not evil, not good either, but innocent. Man enters the world free of sin, with a soul that is pure and innocent and untainted. We are given a clean slate. But we are not born into an innocent world. The world we are born into is one of challenge, difficulty, pain and evil. But all these are merely means to an end: it is through facing challenges that we grow as human beings, going through difficulty we bring out deeper resources from within, through pain we become stronger and by combatting evil we create a world of good. In the beginning Adam and Eve were pure beings who entered a perfect world. There was no pain, death, etc. in their world. The "knowledge of good and evil" was a tree that they were told to stay away from in order to maintain this perfect world. "On the day you eat from the tree you will become mortal."
God gave us a choice to either remain perfect in a perfect (spiritual) world, or we can ingest the knowledge of good and evil and become imperfect, mortal. God created us with a purpose. Mortality wasn't its punishment, but its natural consequence.
So too the other "curses" - pain in childbirth and difficulty in making a living are the natural consequences of Eve's choice, because from now on, all achievement has to be earned, which means that nothing can be "born" without hardship. As descendants of Adam and Eve we have inherited this path - the path of facing challenges, fighting evil and trying to bring the world back to its previous perfection."
Name:CanuckChick •
Date: 05/23/07 12:48
A: Schlomo - I agree with much of what you said re natural consequences.
You say that the first humans were created in a perfect state, knowing neither pain nor death. Also: "As descendants of Adam and Eve we have inherited this path - the path of facing challenges, fighting evil and trying to bring the world back to its previous perfection."
While your post is very thoughtful, it does not really answer my original question: "....of what sin must we now repent".
Name:Panluna •
Date: 05/23/07 15:02
A: CanuckChick,
"of what sins must we repent"?any thought or deed that causes harm would be my answer.
Name:sam •
Date: 05/23/07 21:33
A: JMD,
The many quotations that you brought in this post are excellent, and one of them says:
"It is one of THE MYSTERIES that woman, who has suffered so intensely from the rule of the church, still worships her destroyer and licks the hand that's raised to shed her blood."
And Ladyhawk gave her opinion, and she is right when she said:
"There is power in KNOWLEDGE, and FREEDOM as well. Once you KNOW THE TRUTH, you can no longer be enslaved by lies. "
But I would like to add one important factor to those that she mentioned to make the TRUTH, TRUE TRUTH.
KNOWLEDGE + FREEDOM + LOGIC .
It is unlogic to slave the one who gave us life and carried us for 9 months, and fed us from her body, and gave us the true love, and taught us, and took care of us until we stand on our feet, and she never stop from doing all those things even when we are full grown up.
We should not forget that the mother/sister love is the pure love and nothing can be equal to it.
After all that, can we turn our back , and be unfair to them, and slave them?, where is the LOGIC.
Men and women are EQUAL in the sight of God. God created them as PARTNERS, NOT AS MASTER AND SLAVE, and gave each of them his/her specifik work to create life support it and sustain it.
Here I am going to bring a quotation about the love of mothers, and i am sure that some will not accept it only because it came from the others which they do not like, period (unlogical).
"A man asked the prophet Muhammad, "whom we should love more? our father or our mother. " And the prophet answered him saying, "YOUR MOTHER, YOUR MOTHER, YOUR MOTHER, THEN YOUR FATHER".
That is the message from Islam.
If this comes from Buddha or Krishna or Jesus or any other, it is the same. The idea is to love and respect the women/mothers for what they done for us, and I think that Muhammad was right, even if some do not like him.
Women are the pillars that support building a notion, for that, they should be given the FREEDOM and the KNOWLEDGE to bring GOOD NATION, and this is the only LOGICAL way to achieve this target.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, was right when she said,:
" the message against freedom for women is the same from the fundamentalist branches of Christianity, Islam, Judaism or Hinduism".
----FUNDAMENTALIST, created their own religions, and teaching, that is a fact, and by doing this they tinted the good face of the religion and changed the holiness of it.
"St. Paul told slaves to obey their masters." (Margaret Knight),
--------and those Muslim who kept slaves, they are not following the Islam religion, because they ignore what came in the message and they never followed the steps of Muhammad. The "Khaliph OMAR" saying and telling the Muslims, "WHEN DID YOU START SLAVING PEOPLE?, WHILE THEIR MOTHERS BORN THEM FREE", and he was deffending a young Jew when he heard that he wasn't treated well while he was racing with Muslim youngsters.
People are born free and they should always be free (FREEDOM). That is the meesage of Islam.
JMD, it is also, " one of THE MYSTERIES", that people follow blindly (that goes for many educated ones too, in all groups), and they believe in "MYTHS" and they cannoth differentiate between the right and the wrong. The only one thing that bring people out of this cycle is to get rid of all the relgious schools and their mixed education, and replace them with schools teaching the values of life, the love (not one sided love), the peace and how to care about each other and about our world, adding to them the sciences and arts and among them introduce the science of logic, because without it people could mix betwwen the right and the wrong.
God bless you all.
Name:Shlomo •
Date: 05/24/07 5:54
A: Canuckchick,
I appologize, some times I go to the left tangent.
To simplfy what I was referring to is to understand that Adam and Eve's sin of arrogance, disobediance, etc. is theirs only, no one else is to repent for them.
Everybody else born after that are subject to every sin in the world by virtue of the fall from perfect to imperfect via the knowledge of good and evil. When I say subject to sin does not mean you are born in sin, it means everybody's yetzer hara [evil inclination] has gained strength now, compared to its previous lack of strength in the garden. One of the secrets is this, a person is born innocent and not until that person learns right from wrong, usually about the age of 12, does the yetzer hara kick in and that person(s) are held responsible for their actions or lack thereof.
Now that the knowledge between good and evil is known, the fight is on for an equal balance between our yetzer hara and yetzer tov [ good inclination ] or ideally to have yetzer tov as the master at all times which is a difficult balance. As Panluna said, any thought or deed that is from the yetzer hara is a sin. How do you know what is a sin and what is not? You study and understand the 613 commandments written [ Torah / Bible ] and the Ketuvim [ writtings - Solomon, Psalms, etc.]. I am not trying to preach or convert you, so please do not misunderstand. The sin for you to repent is not Adam's or Eve's, but your own personal sins of thought or action, whatever they maybe, is the key.
Name:CanuckChick •
Date: 05/24/07 13:06
A: Shlomo: Your post makes a great deal of sense to me.
However, we ARE in fact paying for Adam and Eve's sin, in that we have lost the privilege of eternal life.
God told the first humans: "And Jehovah God also laid this command upon the man: ""From every tree of the garden you may eat to satisfaction. But as for the tree of the knowledge of good and bad you must not eat from it, for in the day you eat from it you will positively die."". (Gen 2:16,17)
It is, therefore, implied that these humans would not have to face death, as long as they remained obedient to God's rule.
Once they sinned, they were no longer perfect, and so were unable to pass on perfection to their offspring. "...The soul that is sinning - it itself will die." (Ezek 18:4)
Hence, the need for a second Adam, a perfect human being who would prove that mankind is capable of living an earthly existence, without sin (lawlessness), and remain faithful to God's rulership. Enter Jesus. Although he lived a blameless life on earth, he chose to sacrifice this life, "....a ransom in exchange for many" (Matt 20:28), to redeem us from death.
Do we not today have the same attitude as the first humans? We think we know what's best for us, and so go our own way, without regard for God's laws.
From what I have read in the bible, I believe that God's original purpose was for a beautiful earth filled with humans who (out of their free will) acknowledge God's right to rulership.
Although humans were originally created perfect, we were not designed to govern ourselves. Jeremiah 10:23 says: "I well know, O Jehovah, that to earthling man his way does not belong. It does not belong to man who is walking even to direct his step."
Before Jesus' sacrifice, we were powerless over death. "For the living are conscious that they will die, but as for the dead, they are conscious of nothing at all, neither do they anymore have wages, because the remembrance of them has been forgotten. Also their love and their hate and their jealousy have already perished, and they have no portion anymore to time indefinite in anything that has to be done under the sun." (Ecc 9:5,6)
"All that your hand finds to do, do with your very power, for there is no work nor devising nor knowledge nor wisdom in Sheol, the place to which you are going." (Ecc 9:10)
God's requirement for us now? "This means everlasting life, their taking in knowledge of you, the only true God, and of the one whom you sent forth, Jesus Christ." (John 17:3)
I believe that God's original purpose for the earth and humankind will see its fulfillment. "With that I heard a loud voice from the throne say: ""Look! The tent of God is with mankind, and he will reside with them, and they will be his peoples. And God himself will be with them. And he will wipe out every tear from their eyes, and death will be no more, neither will mourning nor outcry nor pain be anymore. The former things have passed away."" (Rev 21:3,4)
