How many years have people been
worshiping various religions? For all that praying, following,
supplicating, donating, asking forgiveness, being subservient, humble,
believeing what we pray for will come to pass, what has it wrought? Is
any religion for that matter working? There are still wars,
strife, poverty, and no religion is so sublime that we swoon in the
presense of their deciples.
With regards to this one point only, what has it done for the women in
the world? Accounting for roughly 50% of the population what percentage
are still under the thumb of a biased and highly prejudical system or
in the working world, glass ceilings. What about all those women
dominated by a bunch of beared jerks ranting about fallacies?
When do we decide to fix the nonsense?
As I have written before, the idea that women are
not equal to men and subservient to them has historical precedents. Many religions perpetuate this view,
which its adherents then situationally enforce in their lives and
coerce their children into believing. The article in the link discusses
Christianity's role in this process, and the Wikipedia link touches
briefly on Islam's complex and occasionally, enlightened view on the subject.
A patriarchal structure also provides insight into the treatment of women.
No one should ever have to watch a woman beaten to a pulp by a
father, step father or
boy friend, or belittled to the point their self esteem is
destroyed. Nor is it acceptable to witness the
same behavior of a sister or daughter in the name of honor or
religion. No parent should ever have to live with the horror
of a
daughter beaten or traumatized by a husband, boyfriend, or brother and
it is even less acceptable for a court to overlook or ignore
such behavior. Consider the effect it also has on their young children.
Rather than discussing historical excuses explaining why women's roles are
defined as they are in society, as if anything that can be said or
written by anyone, including so called gods or governments,
one simply has to decide women being treated as inferior to men is
unacceptable. No edicts by anyone claiming authority on the
subject are unchallengeable.
"As long as the world shall
last there will be wrongs, and if no man objected and no man rebelled,
those wrongs would last forever." - Clarence Darrow
"One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws.
Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws." - Martin Luther King
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his
conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects
afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so
much as for the right." - Henry David Thoreau
"Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless and corrupt." - Mahatma Gandhi
"If the machine of government is of such a nature that it
requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then, I say,
break the law." - Henry David Thoreau
"Public
opinion sets bounds to every government, and
is the real sovereign in every free one.”
- James
Madison, Public Opinion, December 19, 1791
“We are at the very
beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we
grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the
future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can,
improve the solutions, and pass them on. It is our responsibility to
leave the people of the future a free hand. In the impetuous youth of
humanity, we can make grave errors that can stunt our growth for a long
time. This we will do if we say we have the answers now, so young and
ignorant as we are. If we suppress all discussion, all criticism,
proclaiming “This is the answer, my friends; man is saved!” we will
doom humanity for a long time to the chains of authority, confined to
the limits of our present imagination. It has been done so many times
before ...
It is our responsibility as
scientists, knowing the great progress which comes from a satisfactory
philosophy of ignorance, the great progress which is the fruit of
freedom of thought, to proclaim the value of this freedom; to teach how
doubt is not to be feared but welcomed and discussed; and to demand
this freedom as our duty to all coming generations.” - Richard P. Feynman, What Do You Care What Other People Think?
"Women have to risk civil disobedience for their rights." - Sonia Johnson
Visual Representations of the Mistreatment of Women
The first two are from the Mormons, and just is case you thought the Mormons have smartened up, here is the latest move to keep women in their
place; Utah Senate committee unanimously approves bill to decriminalize polygamy. Now anyone can collect women like goats or sheep and you no longer have to be a Mormon to do it.
Living in a society in which
women are exposed to the symbology of subservience suggests this treatment is acceptable.
How primitive are we that we overlook humans being branded with any symbol evidencing support for a set of beliefs?
Doing so has a negative impact on all of our daughters' futures. This article offers one view of the impact such treatment has on them.
That is not to say the founders of religious traditions have not provided excellent ideas on morality and
ethics, but to assume that their ideas are beyond question dooms us to failure. Men for centuries have been inventing ways to
enslave people, not just women, including rewriting the supposed words of gods to create credibility for their behavior.
The following links to stories and articles
illustrate examples of such behavior. The fact that
this type of treatment is permitted
anywhere in the world with so called democracies continuing to do
business
with countries in which the mistreatment of women is accepted, just because
they buy arms or make investments in the nation, says
all you need to know about the values the leaders of democracies hold.
The picture above illustrates
the treatment of blacks in the United States as inferior and
subservient. What has it done for the Black community?
We have daughters and have seen first hand the effects of negative
treatment
they have received at the hands of men. I also watched my mother
beaten to a pulp by my father on numerous occasions and lay in bed as
a child while she was abused. So if agreeing that women are
subject to the power and mastery of men is what it takes to be a devout
practitioner of any faith according to the diciples claiming such, then
I tell them and the god they supposedly represent take a hike.
I attribute being their gods being male because I cannot see how any mother of daughters would agree to
permit such treatment of their daughters, unless they are so
browbeaten by their religious beliefs that they cannot think like
decent beings. I stop short of calling them human beings because
those that would permit genital mutilation of their daughters which continues to this day, or those that would permit their daughters to be collected like sheep
by polygamy, or beaten by diciples of faith, to be part of the problem as well and so they too can take a hike.
To get why I take the position I do, watch this video again as a parent and ignore it in the name of faith.
God As Superhero
When I lay in bed dying inside thinking about how my mother was being treated by my father
I used to hope and dream for a great hero to come along and defend my
mother. And when in times
where things looked so bad that the only respite was refuge in the
dreams of superheros saving us, I came to understand how important
faith and belief in a super being god was. A lot of people benefit from that vision.
"Now
faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not
seen." - Hebrews 11:1
God is portrayed as a father and the people of earth his children. The
portrayal never fit the circumstances with the father I knew.
Where was god when my mother was beaten up and she needed protection?
Beyond Helplessness to Doing Something About It
Two
ideas spring from the description of god as a father, one is that a father should hope that his children will
grow and prosper and do the best they can in all things. Ideally
that hope would not be limited to only achieving what that father has
done, but far exceeding it. That idea was discussed in the book Siddhartha by
Herman Hesse (full text of book here.)
Siddhartha goes on a
journey to attain spiritual enlightenment and on the way meets
the spiritual god/father Gautama the Buddha, the Enlightened One.
Siddhartha speaks to Buddha and
is given the chance to join Buddha's order, but does not. He believes
that each person is unique and must seek his or her own enlightenment
individually as Buddha did. Simply adopting another's teachings
in their entirety, no matter how great the teacher is, does not fulfill
one's destiny. Science is a perfect example of it. Einstein was
brilliant and paved the way for understanding the relationship between
energy and matter. But do you think for one second that Einstein
would be happy if no one ever thought they could expand the knowledge
he revealed, and add to the understanding he did not have? Think
as a loving parent for one moment and ask yourself how pleased you
would be if your child were to take everything you knew and vastly
improved on it.
Another way to think about it is to imagine one day the skies open
up,
and
everyone in the world sees this massive image of a god descending from
the heavens, and suddenly the entire world around them is transformed
to
a thing of indescribable beauty. All of those that have died
previously suddenly rise up and glowing like brilliant holograms are
transported to
the heavens. This deity offers you and those around you the
chance to follow his instructions completely and you will be
absolved from all sin forever.
In such circumstances life gets pretty
easy because you are now resolved of all problem solving, including
deciding what is
good and evil, right or wrong and so on. Men and women trying to
determine what is good and evil like a god is supposed to be
the cause of their fall from grace and being cast out of the Garden of
Eden. If everything in the world was supposedly created by god, then
trying to judge any part of it clearly as good or bad is a huge waste
of time and a significant act of hubris. It might be better just to
figure out how things work, yin and yang. The other problem with
following the god from the sky is that it does absolutely nothing for
expanding the teachings of a father god and your own understanding of
how things work.
As a parent of daughters, we afford them the right, the hope and the
privilege of being equal in all respects to men, and even greater in one fundamental respect, which is
the ability to give birth to and nurture another human being. We stand up and
defend them against any teaching or suggestions that deny view.
The visionary people whose examples were followed in
establishing religions certainly did not build up grand institutions and edifices to
demonstrate their beliefs. Those that came after, the religious
bureaucrats
are responsible for that, and as they demonstrate, do everything their
power to protect their "investments and holdings" and of course if they abuse your children, cover it up. They protect the
only view of godliness they understand, which is the rear view mirror
approach.
However, there are thousands of years in the future, and what applied in many
respects historically needs new inspiration and insight. If
insight into enlightenment in the future cannot be trusted to the
offspring of the gods and must be interpreted with guidance from
religious bureaucrats mired in dusty books and hypocrisy we are in trouble.
But at the very least citizens can defend their republic and the people in it
to prevent malign religious behavior from injuring the half the
population that mothers its children, from abuse by zealots and
fanatics who cannot think past rotting parchment and the poor excuse of
men that feel empowered by some historical and outdated concept of their
superiority.
For insight into the consciousness and spiritual insight
attributed to Christ, Buddha, Moses, Richard
Maurice Bucke and others describe it as a "cosmic" consciousness. Bucke's book on it is here in its entirety. If the book is old, it does not mean it is out of date any more than bibles and other works are.
Resources
