Although I was too horrified and disgusted by the idea of a person who honestly doesn't think women are oppressed or discriminated against in the US, I can't go and let that just sit there and stink up the forum with ignorance.
Except that I'm not a Catholic, and that my church dollars go to funding my specific church, or to the three mission trips(one proselytizing, two not). You need to grasp that there are different Christian sects other than Catholicism. Most of them, in fact, split from the Catholic church because of the Pope and his misuse of power back in the Middle Ages.
You need to grasp the power of examples! Of course there are other Christian sects, and with differing beliefs come differing fundraising techniques.
I'm not revising anything. I'm talking about modern Christians, who appreciate electricity and indoor plumbing, but aren't too crazy about people trying to push free love and sexuality on them.
And most of this worlds wars happened before Christ was born, through the almost constant exchange of power of the Middle East. That wasn't over religion though. That was over land and power and money.
...
Christians aren't murdering or spreading propaganda. Christian extremists are, and my going to my church isn't funding them, because we know well enough to stay out of political nonsense. Christian violent crimes against people are isolated incidents by extremists at best. Once again, you're putting too much emphasis on a label. I could point out every single crime caused by an agnostic or atheist, but quite frankly, that's irrelevant.
First, your point about "land and power and money." It's interesting to hear this from a Christian, because it's a classic Islamic excuse for why Sunnis, Shi'ites, and Jews are at each others throats, and an incredibly transparent lie borne of the modern age. Was it just land, power, and money back when the Crusades were launched, and the entire Papacy and clergy whipped up masses for the Holy Land with iconic Christian propaganda never before unleashed on such a wide scale? For the Byzantines, it was about power, but for the soldiers who joined the armies and the Muslims who rose to defend their holy sites, it was most definitely religious. And those motivations have continued right through today; suicide bombers don't blow up while screaming "LOL INFIDELS PRAISE ALLAH" for anything other than pure, unbridled religious delusion. No matter what the people at the top desire—a new Islamic state, a theocracy, or the elimination of foreign interests—their strokes and mechanisms rely on religion. And fundamentally, from the birth of history to the second you're reading this, the Middle East has been divided because of religious groups more so than their respective ethnic groups. There will be peace in the Middle East when religion is in pieces.
The same broad strokes are painted with religious urges in the United States.
Moral panic, the
religious right, and the
prosperity gospel are all far-reaching movements that have enacted anti-human, regressive policies and facilitated acts of violence and stunning, venal disregard for humanity. And they aren't composed of raving lunatics or suicide bombers; no, they're the rank and file believers; the kids who attend youth worship; the families who show up for church every other week; the placid retirees who smile and affirm "Under God" when giving the pledge of allegiance. It's only with massive popular support that some of this country's most prohibitive and egregious policies have come to exist. Have two easy examples:
- Gays are humans, and they want to get married. But oops! TEH BIB-EL sez them gays are "UNNATURAL" and this is an offense b4 teh almighty gawd (actually, the case for gay-hate in the Bible is even flimsy, but the religious don't let that stop them). Thanks to religious people, governmental initiatives to ban gay marriage have popular support, and gays can't marry in several states. But what if gays don't believe in Christianity? Too fucking bad, because religious people imposed their moral standard!
- Fuck, a condom broke! You need an abortion, but the Christian populace decides to amend state laws to support their religious views on the topic. You're out of luck! Defeated by the rank and file modern Christians again! Perhaps they have some spare compassion to give you—but usually only if you confess that you're a vile whore for having sex in the first place.
I could continue, but most of the offenses are covered in my original large post in this thread that illustrated how freedom of religion is most definitely
not yet a reality in America. "Modern" Christians are still responsible for an awful lot of repressive behavior and attitudes, and they're not afraid to voice it. Perhaps now you'll try to limit the definition of "modern" Christians even further to avoid including the group who thought "Obama is a muslin", but keep limiting your definition of "Good Christians" and soon, you'll have no one left for the party. One of the most tread-out defenses in this forum is the one that most religious people are conveniently excused from perpetuating religious evil, and the opposite is true; religious people are the
power base for the entire thing. Priests, religious politicians, etc. couldn't effectively lobby if their constituency didn't support religious agendas that invade liberty.
But religion doesn't even need to be judged by its extremes, because even its docile proclamations are terrifyingly evil. Most "modern" Christians might discount violence or extremists, but swear by the "Good Book". Let's open the good book for a second:
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
How do you like that, girls? Because Eve spat in the eye of God and he blinked,
you have to have a painful childbirth and also get the bonus of being ruled over by your man. God, you ol' misogynist!
For there are many unruly and vain talkers and deceivers, specially they of the circumcision:
Whose mouths must be stopped, who subvert whole houses, teaching things which they ought not, for filthy lucre's sake.
In other words, "you goddamned money-grubbing Jews, with your damn Torah-this and dreidl-that! Shut the fuck up!!" Whoa, who knew the New Testament, which is supposed to be the part of the Bible without all that genocide rape stuff, could be so profane and hateful?
The vision of Obadiah. Thus saith the Lord GOD concerning Edom; We have heard a rumour from the LORD, and an ambassador is sent among the heathen, Arise ye, and let us rise up against her in battle.
A Re-enactment of Obadiah 1:01 for the Modern Agesteve150: so like i did the mescaline and...i saw this vision of god man
jxm109: holy fukn shit dude
steve150: yeah he totally said i should like...go beat up my neighbor, that pussy named edom, and like break some stuff in his garage
jxm109: do it man, god said so so u better not risk damnation or somethin
steve150: lol tru, bbl intolerance
The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.
So, God really
did fix the roulette wheel. Imagine what those sinners in Vegas will think when they realize gambling is all part of the lord's plan!
And many more absurdities and brutalities lie at
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/. If modern Christians are abiding by a book as this, we've got more to be worried about than we thought. Of course, you could do like Thomas Jefferson and take scissors to your bibles to cut out the good parts that you believe then, and stick with those only. But if you're that far, why not throw out the whole damn rotten system and research your own ethics?
Finally, an entire host of savage religious wars and acts over Christianity have taken place since the time of Christ, of which the bigger ones can be sampled at
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_war.
Much like every other group in the country. Go to Youtube and search for atheist. You'll find many more of them than Christians. The ratio of Christians/Atheists on the Internet is tipped heavily to your favor.
Not true. There are definitely more vocal atheists than vocal Christians on the Internet, but it's simple demographics that there are more religious people on the Internet, by far.
In Islamic communities, women are oppressed. I don't think we can argue about that. But what does that have to do with Protestant Christianity?
Just as you've accused me of only looking at the extremists, it seems you consider sexism only when it's expressed in extreme, violent examples. Sexism is an ill that permeates
everything and has been reinforced with steel by religion.
- Women can't hold the priesthood in many denominations.
- Women are considered inferior in many religions. (Check this again to see how kind the Bible and Christianity are to women.)
- Women are confined to traditional familial roles in many religions and stigmatized for deviation. I can personally offer this in the context of Mormons, who relegate their women to handling kids after Sacrament meeting or going to "Relief Society" to plan social events and relief efforts for priesthood holders. Women become old maids in a heartbeat and are expected to have lots of children. But this is all over religion; the cliché stereotype of giant Catholic families has been around for decades.
- "But teh wimmenz r better at social stuff lol" bullshit, and it's not voluntary. When you force heaven or hell on a woman with the path to heaven involving subjugation to the male, it's not so easy to just blow off traditional familial roles.
Other religions claim a much more destructive role in sexism; Christianity is somewhat less if only by the grace of the laws and feminist movements in Christian-populated countries and western civilization. But you went beyond religion; you said that women and no other minorities are oppressed or discriminated against today in America. This is just an incredible, incredible statement. I'm still working up my chops on definitive indicators, but here's everything I remember off the top of my head:
- Objectification of women undermines their professional clout and general credibility. You see this in all kinds of TV shows about offices life; the ugly trope of a work-bimbo permeates them often.
- Women are more likely than men to suffer injuries from or be killed by intimate partners. (There's a reason we have battered women's shelters.)
- The wage gap; women earn 70-80% of what men do in equitable positions. Women have brains and are human beings, so what's the issue? You say that it's because of "employers who think they can get away with it," but why do the employers think that? Because the stars aligned and spelled out a message that "you can probably get away with this?" No, but of acceptance of sexist attitudes in American culture! They know they can get away with it because women have an entire history of being discriminated against, and most women—rather than fight it and risk being known as man-hating, shrill hags who don't shave their pubic hair—just accept it to avoid trouble. Employers get away with it because they're sexist fucking bastards.
- Speaking of work, women are still discriminated against entering some professions. (Before you say, "but men have teh muscle 4 doing hard labor," women can gain strength just as well as men; they merely don't have such a highly-corresponding increase in muscle mass and bulk.) A recent study found that fat women are discriminated against in the workplace even more so than fat men.
- Rape. There are many things about most rapes that tie them to misogyny and sexism. It's very depressing to read about, so look it up yourself, or just hearken back to the days when rape victims didn't have a chance in hell of getting a fair trial. It was like that right on up to modern times (and probably still happens) in the Deep South.
- Males are praised more in the classroom than females, correlated with less female vocalization or participation with time in later education.
- Traditional gender roles. Women are expected to endure the incredible pains of pregnancy, childbirth, and menstruation, and submit most of their adult lives to the rearing of children. Many career dreams might as well be male-only, because the double dose of maternity leave + parenting commitment disqualify many women from equitable career tracks.
- But that's not it. Women endure all this pain, and where's the empathy? Periods, in the male world, are something to bring up when you're complaining about how a woman's being bitchy, or something to laugh at with bleed jokes. Pregnancy is gross stuff unless you've got a fetish, and childbirth? Heh, your "pain" stopped at the orgasm you had to conceive your child. And stuff like the placenta, stretch marks, and other indignities? Ewww, out of sight, out of mind! There is a startling lack of empathy and understanding of the female condition.
- Speaking of a startling lack of empathy, it's evident in the balance of sex, too. Sex is much more likely to be composed of female giving male oral and then intercourse than shared oral or male to female only. How is that fair? "LoL buT puSsies taste GrOSs!!" Your dick probably doesn't taste like strawberry cupcakes either, but men have the privilege of being primary breadwinners and gender roles. And many men, if their girl didn't put out oral, would probably make this fact known to their friends with vigorous complaint.
- When people get married, who gets the mate's last name tacked on to their own? Right, women take the male name, as if for males to signify ownership, just like the usage of "Mr. and Mrs. [Male Name]" in legal documents.
- To try and end this, these things and others reveal that we live in a society with male privilege. Males can go farther and have it easier in education, in careers, in the bedroom, in legal proceedings, and in social interaction and settings. The United States is still fighting the power; admittedly, it's terrible in many other "civilized" countries (try being an attractive woman and walk down the streets of an Italian city without being dirtily catcalled, or shudder to acknowledge how rampant the ball-less "machismo" concept is in Latin countries). Anyway, I've only begun researching the perspective of privilege, but in the meantime, there's a nice checklist that drives home what it means to be male in this society, and elucidates many of the oppressions and discriminations women have to deal with: http://web.archive.org/web/20040808070642/http://colours.mahost.org/org/maleprivilege.html
Human history has been perpetually marred by sexism. The existence of women used to be much worse, confined to the home, fucked when desired, forced to rear children and risk death with each pregnancy, and omitted from civilization at large. We've only come this far because of the brave, century-spanning fights of feminists and humanists, and we still have far to go.
Me and Zeality will never see eye to eye on the matter of religion, but the robust debate and exchange of ideas is the type of win that all can enjoy.
And this is where science and religion differ. If God or any other omnipresent universal being made him or herself evident and observational, science would correct itself to record and classify the phenomena. But religion can never deviate from the conclusion it's already made for itself. The real open minds and curious ones lie in science and skepticism.
