Abuse of women as the basis of religions.

[gullyfourmyle]

ZYX

Abuse of women is the reason religions were invented.

A few years ago, I decided to compare the world's most popular religions to determine what the major differences were between them. To do so I set up what I considered to be the primary tenets of religion based on commonalities. They were things like did they believe in one god or many, did they have a holy day, believe in the existence of a devil entity and so on. Instead of finding a lot of differences, I found a lot of commonalities. So many in fact that it turned out the only real differences were in the customs that formed as a result of geography, language differences and technology - such as the advent and access to printing presses and thus readily available printed material.

While determining the commonalities current events were evolving and crimes against women were appearing with alarming frequency in the media. I added this to the chart and when I checked off the boxes I determined every religion had as a pillar of its existence the concept of strict control over "their" women often to the point where women were considered property or beasts of burden with fewer rights than the beasts of burden and less value.

Since I'm most familiar with the Christian religion it was easiest for me to look in the King James version of the bible to see how it treated women. I decided I'd start at the very beginning and keep going until I found something if anything definitive that would point to an agenda against women.

Out of 31,102 Verses and 1,189 Chapters it only took the writers of Genesis 3 chapters and 72 Verses to blame the entire human condition on women and curse them for eternity. That is the most monstrous penalty ever visited on any definable demographic in recorded history. Nothing any woman or group of women could have done can have warranted victimizing every female descendant for all time.

When you read Genesis with that in mind, the intent behind the creation of the bible is revealed and it has nothing to do with there really being a God. The idea of a God was an invention to provided sanction for deeds done and deeds yet to be done with the convenient built in opportunity to shift blame for outcomes such as deaths, mistakes and then seemingly unexplainable events to a "higher" level.

Since science was at the time unknown, magic was the fall back position. As anyone who has ever seen modern day magicians perform sophisticated illusions, it isn't hard to imagine credible audiences falling for supernatural explanations when rational explanations and CSI forensic skills were still millennia in the future.

When you read Genesis with this in mind, the premise of the Book reads like what it really is – the public face of a conspiracy to shut women out of decision making opportunities in the only way possible – taking the blame for it off the shoulders of men who could be assigned blame by their womenfolk and onto a supernatural being who was inaccessible to women in every way.

For this to be plausible certain conditions had to be present and accepted universally. First and foremost, the notion of a God had to be understood and accepted by both men and women.

There had to be ring-leaders who did not buy into the notion of a God as a deity who was the prototype upon whom the species of man was based. Magicians typically do not believe in their own magic any more than religious leaders believe in God the way their congregations do. They can’t or they’d never be able to plan anything. They’d always be hanging around waiting for God’s agreement or disagreement. That never happens.

The book of Genesis must have taken a long time to write and it must have been done without women getting wind of it. Or if one or more did, they must have been put to death or otherwise have been prevented from speaking out. Most likely it would have been via traumatic injury that was then related to a God has spoken event. The perpetrator(s) would of course have gotten clean away with the act.

By page two, Chapter 1, Verse 26 God conceives of making the human species based on himself (not herself and mother nature – that kind of tells you right there who the authors were).

A while back I was talking to a competitive horsewoman and asked what her thoughts were about why women were so prominent in the competitive equestrian events. Her response was that horses perceive women’s natural propensity to nurture which is right in line with a horse’s herd mentality and mutual nurturing, mentoring and a matriarchal society.

Men on the other hand in equestrian events tend to view the animals as a vehicle from whom the challenge is to see what can be gotten out of the animal in competition. It’s not about the animal as much as it’s about the skill of the rider. This is a generalization but as a man I can see the signs written large through every aspect of human cultural evolution. Horses have paid dearly for their association with man as opposed to their association with women.

Still in Verse 26, God having just finished providing a lush, fertile planet; populates it with a vast menagerie of life, then, inexplicably turns over the care of this resource rich planet to mankind without a single thought to conservation, sustainability or restoration.

This Verse is the bedrock from which the rape and pillage, hallmarks of Christianity, from which the environmental destruction of the planet springs – and completely sanctioned by God.

As a species, we have existed in various forms for about two and a half million years. European civilization as traced from human DNA recovered from sites in Germany has concluded that European civilization is about two thousand eight hundred years old.

If you consider that science says the planet has existed for about four and a half billion years, that gives you an idea how long the creation part of the bible took before man was awarded dominion over all of the creatures of the earth and every other thing on it and how short a time it’s taken us to the threshold of the extinction of life on earth thanks to chemical and nuclear emissions.

That does not strike me as a logical move on the part of a God smart enough to create the universe and the complexity of life on earth.

The creation of all life on earth took place on day six. Still on day six God finally made the man and woman the planet was about to be turned over to. No names given but they were not Adam or Eve. They were someone else and we never find out who they actually were. But it was they who were chosen for world domination. All of this happened in Chapter 1.

Adam and Eve happened in Chapter 2 and Adam finally shows up in Verse 7. At this point it’s clear that whoever wrote Chapter 1 didn’t read Chapter 1 Verse 27 and passed off Adam as the guy who gets the keys to the planet. That’s the sort of thing a modern editor would have caught – a human error as opposed to a divine error. An error so fundamental it’s a fatal flaw in the foundation of both the Jewish and Christian religions. It gets worse.

By Chapter 2 Verse 16 the premise is set up and then defined in Chapter 17. That provides for the framing of Eve who has yet to even materialize on the scene. She was doomed from the concept stage when the tree of knowledge became iconic as the ultimate temptation along with its fatal punishment.

The rationale that supports it is preposterous – Adam is warned not to eat it because upon eating the fruit he would suddenly become aware of the notions of good and evil. What is preposterous is that the notion of good and evil cannot be understood without making the target entity aware of what good and evil are. Once the explanation is made, eating the fruit is redundant. Without understanding good and evil, there is no way to offer a deterrent on that basis that could hope to be an effective deterrent unless the fruit were defined as a poison. If that were the case, then God would have to lie to Adam with intent – which he did with the entire Tree of Knowledge concept – it was just an excuse to set the stage for Eve’s victimization.

Such a conundrum is as I said; a man-made construct that has somehow withstood logical scrutiny for four thousand years or more and still counting. Well not somehow. It’s unassailability was probably reinforced with brutal murders by various religious forces often enough to entrench the ideas to the point where there are still plenty of people around today who believe Genesis happened as written.

In this day and age to most of us that seems extravagantly childish. But we are only about fifty years or so from most of modern society believing the same thing despite Darwin - the world’s still greatest and most famous authority on earth worms and later - Evolution.

At any rate, Adam was told that upon eating the forbidden fruit he would pay with his life. No deadline was set but the implication seemed to be that death would be swift. Bear in mind that at this point Eve is still a figment of God’s imagination and there has never been any evidence that mankind could ever have been immortal – especially as pampered, naïve nitwits living the Life of Reilly in the Garden of Eden.

Just before Eve shows up on the scene, keeping in mind this is now day 7, not 6, God once again conjures all the life forms he made the day before as if he’s had a senior moment and has completely forgotten he’s already done all that.

Then he makes Eve as Adam’s helpmate. At that point Eve shows up as a fully formed woman made from one of Adam’s ribs, a rib he apparently didn’t need, who has yet to give birth to anything or anyone.

Adam was made of dust. Eve on the other hand was made of sterner stuff – solid bone and bone marrow (if we take the bible literally)! Right there we know woman is going to be capable of stuff that would see a man crumble.

And now we have a second set of man and woman none of whom were born.

Scientifically speaking, unless you are the result of a sperm fertilizing an egg, you are not human; you are a construct – a biological robot a concept alien to human thought process since the science for it is more than four thousand years in the future.

In the case of the Day 6 man and woman, no particular set of special instructions were defined other than to go forth and multiply which they surely did. Since this story was really written by man and did not originate in the mind of a deity, no off switch was provided for the leveling out of the population. That early in history, the concept of over-population was outside of the human consideration to imagine. If the story had really been devised by a supreme being, it would already have been demonstrated over and over again what happens when a species outgrows its environment and would and could not have been left out of the calculations. So these two set about over populating the planet and have done such a good job of that, that we as a species have wrecked the planet.

Back in the Garden of Eden, Eve meets the serpent – not yet the devil and not yet evil. The serpent tells Eve the truth about the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

To understand the truth of that you need to know some science.

God as an entity of any sort cannot exist except as the electrical field which holds all matter together and that is part of every activity in every part of the universe and every other universe to infinity. To exist in any other way would be to leave a detectible heat signature. We have detected the electricity but not a God-signature. So if man were made in God’s image, then for that to be true, we exist as part of the electrical field along with everything else that exists. In that sense, we cannot die we simply fade back into the electrical field.

If that is true, then God lied, not the snake and Eve cannot be faulted for believing the serpent because she had no way to reference the difference between a truth or an untruth. What she saw was merely a discrepancy that in the face of one and the other, must be harmless.

Eve did not compel Adam to eat the fruit. He made his own choice.

Afterwards, they were ashamed and felt they had to hide their nakedness.

That this is a construct and not a biblical one is born out by the number of tribes living around the equator into modern times who have not felt it necessary to wear clothing.

Clothing is a requirement of humans who evolved mostly hairless in the tropics that needed protection from cooler temperatures to migrate north in search of new territory. After wearing clothes for a long time, a shyness develops about nudity. There is no sin attached to nudity. There is only an artificial unfamiliarity with our natural state – especially as we age and attractiveness is diminished.

When God shows up he is angry with Adam but he reserves his real wrath for Eve who is entirely blameless.

She takes the brunt of his wrath and her punishment is what the entire exercise was about - her status reduced to that of a slave and her existence reduced to one round after another of emotional and physical pain.

The serpent was punished for exposing God in his lie, not for telling a lie himself (assuming the serpent was male). If the serpent wasn’t male then every female serpent was thus unjustly victimized as well by association.

That all of this is supposed to have been how the earth and everything on it was formed is way too self serving for me to believe especially when you consider women until very recently in history were not allowed to learn to read but what was written and the plot behind the writing was the root instrument of their abuse.

None of this is to say that there aren’t good elements in religions. If there weren’t women would have rebelled. There is just enough to ease the mind in religions to gain women’s cooperation and even misled devotion and not much more.

Is there hope for women going forward?

Only as long as the “free” internet lasts. It is the best instrument of communication and freedom of speech that has ever existed. If the electrical grid and the net ever goes down, women will lose their rights in the name of religion in a generation or less.

If you look at third world countries and developing nations of the second world, abuses of women are still fundamental to how their societies function. They are still beasts of burden and property to be bought and traded.

The human condition would be far more comfortable for all if this were not so and with the proper education of all women, our over-population problem could at last be reversed and the planet could start to heal.

Religion has a lot to answer for.

Edited May 3, 2013 by gullyfourmyle

[Moonlight Graham]

You need to condense your post into at least 1/2 the length because hardly anyone is going to take the time to read all of that. Or at the very least give a short summary of your main points before expanding on it a that length. Just trying to help

[August1991]

You need to condense your post into at least 1/2 the length because hardly anyone is going to take the time to read all of that. Or at the very least give a short summary of your main points before expanding on it a that length. Just trying to help

Agreed. In addition, the OP seems to be obsessed with Christianity rather than other religions.

For example, I don't recall ever meeting a female Buddhist monk (but I have met a few women Protestant pastors).

If we expand the notion of "religion" to "central banking", the poster may have a point. To my knowledge, there has never been a female governor of a "major" Central Bank ever. (I think a woman is current chairman of Russia's central bank - she's not the first woman to hold that post either - but I don't know if that counts.)

Edited July 15, 2013 by August1991

[Wilber]

Bit long winded but the OP raises an interesting issue. Just how much of the inequality between men and women has it's roots in religion, including in the corporate world?

[Michael Hardner]

There is an inherent problem in such discussions, as you necessarily have to discuss how one gender exploits some kind of advantage over the other - hence the inequality. McLuhan spoke of how men use their fascination with technology to keep women at bay from the huts of power. Religion arose from the technology of the printed word. Well, actually, the word was a symbol, and it was 'printed' in clay but it was men who mastered and hoarded this technology.

So we're again at a quandry: do we, as a people, step in to mitigate an imbalance or do we allow 'natural selection' to occur and let men dominate an area of activity, accumulating power by the by ?

Any creation - be it religion, writing, heavy metal, or poetry - speaks to the creator and the audience, and the ideas contained evoke a recognition of truth and beauty. As such, the receiver of the message already had something inside them that enabled the message to take root.

Sexism and xenophobia ... all of these things are in us already. They were in us from the beginning, and didn't arrive thousands of years later with the invention of religion, heavy metal, or video games. They're basic ingrained untruths that helped us to evolve, that are needed less and less as we continue to evolve.

Religion is a particular curiosity, as it also contained elements of enlightenment and paths towards collective and individual happiness and codes for brutal execution of law and order too.

[Mighty AC]

So we're again at a quandry: do we, as a people, step in to mitigate an imbalance or do we allow 'natural selection' to occur and let men dominate an area of activity, accumulating power by the by ?

Any creation - be it religion, writing, heavy metal, or poetry - speaks to the creator and the audience, and the ideas contained evoke a recognition of truth and beauty. As such, the receiver of the message already had something inside them that enabled the message to take root.

Sexism and xenophobia ... all of these things are in us already. They were in us from the beginning, and didn't arrive thousands of years later with the invention of religion, heavy metal, or video games. They're basic ingrained untruths that helped us to evolve, that are needed less and less as we continue to evolve.

Well said. The 'culture' of most animal populations would be considered immoral by western human culture. The physically strong generally dominate the physically weak and improve the chances their DNA will be spread. This practice is generally good for a wild population as it ensures the strong and best adapted organisms do the bulk of the breading; improving population strength.

We humans have insulated ourselves from the natural selection process though. Cultural evolution is now what effects us the most. We are slowly, but steadily, overcoming our violent and brutal nature through the inheritance of ideas. Dawkins calls the cultural ideas we pass to each other, memes.

The Abrahamic religions really just reflect the more brutal, male dominated, slave owning, ghost believing culture that existed at the time of writing. Like bad genes in a natural population, most bad ideas die out relatively quickly. Unfortunately, like a virus these religious 'memes' have evolved complex protection and reproduction systems.

The bad ideas have been granted a cultural suit of armour. We are told that religious ideas are divine, sacred and impolite to criticize. The ideas and protection systems are injected into us at a young age, before our mental immune systems are fully developed. Like any other virus, the religious variety is difficult to fight once it takes root. The host then acts as a carrier who spreads the viral ideas to others and contributes to their cultural defense system.

Fortunately, work is being done to strip away the protective sheath religious ideas still posses. Like medications though, the spread of these anti-virals is not uniform. More work has to be done to get them into the Middle East, Africa and even the United States.

[carepov]

The Abrahamic religions really just reflect the more brutal, male dominated, slave owning, ghost believing culture that existed at the time of writing. Like bad genes in a natural population, most bad ideas die out relatively quickly. Unfortunately, like a virus these religious 'memes' have evolved complex protection and reproduction systems.

The bad ideas have been granted a cultural suit of armour. We are told that religious ideas are divine, sacred and impolite to criticize. The ideas and protection systems are injected into us at a young age, before our mental immune systems are fully developed. Like any other virus, the religious variety is difficult to fight once it takes root. The host then acts as a carrier who spreads the viral ideas to others and contributes to their cultural defense system.

Fortunately, work is being done to strip away the protective sheath religious ideas still posses. Like medications though, the spread of these anti-virals is not uniform. More work has to be done to get them into the Middle East, Africa and even the United States.

Do you have an explanation for the elements in Japanese culture that are blatantly sexist?

[dre]

I thought the OP was really well thought out and well written.

[August1991]

Maybe I'm wrong about "religion".

IMV, central banks are the modern-day version of a Papacy/Mecca/Ganges. And the US (Obama) is about to appoint a woman to the US Fed.

Janet Yellen

Edited July 16, 2013 by August1991

[gullyfourmyle]

My original post is based on Christianity because that is the religion I'm most familiar with not because abuse of women is less in other religions. In fact it is generally worse. As for the length, well I don't write in point form.

Some misconceptions that need to be cleared up:

Abuse of women existed long before the printing press. It's a form of bullying and bullying is part of the nature of all living things as a survival of the fittest trait we are all hardwired with. We educated humans strive to rise above this because we see value in all people, weak or strong. Indeed that is one of the main reasons we are the most successful of the higher life forms. High intelligence is only rarely paired with a superior physique.

However it's entirely wrong to assume that members of other species abuse their weaker sexes (not always the female). While bullying does occur, it's again a form of establishing the pecking order as a rule and often only the alpha male and female in a group are allowed to breed. There are thousands of variations on that theme. We as a species though are the only ones who have based all of our our known history on the concept of fashioning our females into objects, slaves, subjects to conduct heinous experiments upon as a matter of course and so on.

No religion is exempt and aboriginals were as bad at it as anyone else.

It is delusional in the extreme to think that as we've become more educated as a species that we have become less savage and brutal. Current events should continually remind us that our brutish natures exist under a very thin veneer and are harnessed only by Criminal Codes, Justice and Penal Systems and modern forms of communication.

For instance, take away the internet and most of the social freedoms won by women would vaporize in very short order. Take away the electrical grid and women would find themselves in a very frightening and dangerous world.

As for women in banking, women are making great strides in the banking world. Two of my women neighbours are bank vice-presidents and one of my relatives was one also. It's only a matter of time before women rise to the highest ranks. Their only limitation is men with an agenda.

As far as religions go, I once charted all of the world's major religions to see where their differences were in order to see if I could tell where the conflicts came from. They are all the same but for customs. So the religious conflicts are not at all about anything to do with God. They are all to do with the same old thing - trying to establish dominance. Push and shove.

If the middle eastern Muslims were fighting to protect the environment from abuse by oil hungry countries, we'd have to be on their side and the war would fizzle out. But the war isn't about that; it's about them trying to protect and spread a super abusive culture globally that promotes abuse of women and children. The oil issue is merely a tactical diversion for them that western countries can't afford to ignore.

Therefore, we as a recently more lenient culture and one that believes in the concepts of honour, honesty and fair play are sociologically vulnerable to moderate Islam which is the "foot in the door" for radical Muslimism. That most of these people are good contributing members of our society is beyond dispute.

However they and through them, we as a society are in a Trojan Horse situation that Europe is beginning too late to understand the ferocious danger they represent.

Even moderate Muslims treat their women like second class citizens by our standards and our mental hospitals are beginning to fill up with their emotionally and physically battered women. This situation is not one they can hide indefinitely. The inherent abusive environment of the Muslim religion is powerfully visible from the vantage point of a mental health professional.

At some point we are either going to ban Islam or have a civil war on our hands.

Modern history and current events have shown conclusively that Islam is not a religion that values the principles this country was founded on. Same in the US. Since the War of 1812 there has been peace in North America. Now that peace is threatened and the threat has its core the brutal abuse of women and children by people who are trying to perpetuate stone age belief systems.

Edited July 18, 2013 by gullyfourmyle

[bleeding heart]

If the middle eastern Muslims were fighting to protect the environment from abuse by oil hungry countries, we'd have to be on their side and the war would fizzle out. But the war isn't about that; it's about them trying to protect and spread a super abusive culture globally that promotes abuse of women and children. The oil issue is merely a tactical diversion for them that western countries can't afford to ignore.

This is a pretty astonishing remark, and rather contradicts your earlier assertions (in the same post!) about "hardwired" desires and modes of dominance and the primacy of power among human affairs.

The current "war on terror" (which isn't even the first one declared) is not something radically new, in my opinion; it's a continuation of old policies, albeit with some novel components.

Certainly I agree that extremist Islamism derives from their own aggression and power-hunger (I'm simplifying of course); I even agree that "moderate" Islam is way too damn conservative for my taste.

But to paint the West as reactive victims against Muslim aggression is absurd. Like I said, the complex of international policies is more a continuation of Western modes of aggression than a genuine defensive set of maneuvers.

For example, when the Western nations join with tyrants in opposition to democratic movements--a profound part of our history, including recently, as no doubt you know--people get angry. And not just extremist Islamists (though their anger is justified also in this regard).

More startlingly and importantly, the West has been directly, intentionally and materially supportive and involved in far worse acts of terrorism than those we get so self-indulgently sanctimonious about in recent years. Do you not consider our aggression and violence to be as serious a problem as that of others?

If not...why not?

[gullyfourmyle]

I agree with everything you've said Bleeding Heart. Christianity has been the cause of more brutality, bloodshed, and every other form of abuse we could imagine and then some. However, one thing we have come to understand in recent years is that we don't need to convert everyone to Christianity. We don't have to kill everyone who disagrees with us. Islam has not arrived at that enlightened state and I doubt it ever will. Not because they lack the intelligence but because we are all going to lack the time.

Global Warming and Climate Change, the weather components of Chemical Winter are going to accelerate far beyond what our deluded meteorological scientists have predicted so far. When the ice caps and glaciers melt, they are going to do so all at once. If you have trouble believing that try watching what happens to ice cubes floating in a rum and coke. They seem like they are never going to melt. Then they're gone in heart beat.

I used that method to predict the collapse of the Larson B ice shelf in Antarctica. The scientists said in 1998 that it would take a thousand years for the ice shelf to calve from main body. I said it could happen at any time. It was a chunk of ice the size of Rhode Island. Huge. It collapsed in 2002.

Africa will be overwhelmed by drought within the next 20 to 50 years if not sooner. Billions will die. Other locations around the equator will be no better off. Take a look at what is happening in the States this summer. Just a taste of things to come.

What the scientists should be looking at is maps of what the planet looked like 10,000 years ago to determine what the planet looks like with the ice caps completely melted. That is where we're going and it'll happen fast. Lake Ontario will resemble an inland sea. Most of Toronto will be under water. That sort of thing. Google some old maps and you'll see what i mean. Religion is not going to help at that point.

[Michael Hardner]

Christianity has been the cause of more brutality, bloodshed, and every other form of abuse we could imagine and then some.

That particular religion is so pervasive that it is impossible to separate its influence from other cultural factors at play in western culture. To simply state that is a form of bigotry and Chauvinism that would not be tolerated if it were said about other groups.

[bleeding heart]

I agree with everything you've said Bleeding Heart. Christianity has been the cause of more brutality, bloodshed, and every other form of abuse we could imagine and then some. However, one thing we have come to understand in recent years is that we don't need to convert everyone to Christianity. We don't have to kill everyone who disagrees with us. Islam has not arrived at that enlightened state and I doubt it ever will. Not because they lack the intelligence but because we are all going to lack the time.

For the record, I wasn't referring to Christianity at all; and I believe the Christian influence on Western culture has not only negative, but positive aspects as well.

No, I was referring to brute foreign policy, as practiced and defended by the religious and the secular alike..

[DogOnPorch]

Here's a new tale of a woman meeting abuse at the hands of the religious. It seems that this isn't isolated, either.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2367152/Norwegian-woman-reported-raped-Dubai-jailed-16-months.html

That should teach her not to do that again...

[Mighty AC]

Tough love. It is important to learn not to be raped.~

The shift away from fossil energy and the fall of middle eastern theocracies can't come soon enough for my liking.

[cybercoma]

It's important to learn not to be raped? How about its important not to rape.

[Mighty AC]

I even included a ~ as a clue.

[cybercoma]

Ah. I forgot about this punctuation.

[DogOnPorch]

Tough love. It is important to learn not to be raped.~

The shift away from fossil energy and the fall of middle eastern theocracies can't come soon enough for my liking.

What's interesting is that other than the odd source, her plight is generally not being reported on in the MSM. Is it the old 'rape is the woman's fault' at work in our media that makes it a non-story? That is...she should have known better than to travel to Dubai on business?

[Mighty AC]

"You shouldn't have worn that dress!" I think that is partially true. I also think that relativism is partially to blame. To many of us seem to say 'Who are we to impose our moral standards on another culture?'

If a person is raised from birth to believe that women are property, gays are evil or those with a different skin colour are inferior, can we blame him/her when they commit evil acts? What if they are also taught to believe in gods, ghosts and magic and accept that they are commanded to hold these evil beliefs? I say there is universal morality, based on human well-being and we can and should be demanding change for the better. I also think that this is impossible as long as dogma is so prevalent.

[cybercoma]

I thought this image was interesting given the context of this thread. More women have been killed in the US, since the War on Terror began, than all of the people killed by terrorist attacks in the US, US troops killed in Iraq, and US troops killed in Afghanistan combined. You want to talk about violence against women? You don't need to drag religion into it.

[DogOnPorch]

I thought this image was interesting given the context of this thread. More women have been killed in the US, since the War on Terror began, than all of the people killed by terrorist attacks in the US, US troops killed in Iraq, and US troops killed in Afghanistan combined. You want to talk about violence against women? You don't need to drag religion into it.

But, this thread really isn't about that. If a woman is raped in Canada, she doesn't go to jail while her rapists go free, as a rule.

"You shouldn't have worn that dress!" I think that is partially true. I also think that relativism is partially to blame. To many of us seem to say 'Who are we to impose our moral standards on another culture?'

If a person is raised from birth to believe that women are property, gays are evil or those with a different skin colour are inferior, can we blame him/her when they commit evil acts? What if they are also taught to believe in gods, ghosts and magic and accept that they are commanded to hold these evil beliefs? I say there is universal morality, based on human well-being and we can and should be demanding change for the better. I also think that this is impossible as long as dogma is so prevalent.

I agree that cultural relativism is certainly a factor. The soft bigotry of low expectations. What else do we expect out of these folks? Proper behaviour? That's the realm of the West.

Edited July 19, 2013 by DogOnPorch

[cybercoma]

But, this thread really isn't about that. If a woman is raped in Canada, she doesn't go to jail while her rapists go free, as a rule.

Nope, she doesn't. What does happen here that shouldn't is judges blaming the victims for being raped because of how much they had to drink or what they were wearing, instead of putting the full accountability on the rapist for his actions.

I'm not interested in talking about how much better the laws in Canada are than oppressive theocratic nations. We know they're abusive. The fact that they're worse than our society, however, has allowed people for far too long to explain away what we do because we're not as bad as the absolute worst of humanity.

Edited July 19, 2013 by cybercoma

[DogOnPorch]

Nope, she doesn't. What does happen here that shouldn't is judges blaming the victims for being raped because of how much they had to drink or what they were wearing, instead of putting the full accountability on the rapist for his actions.

I'm not interested in talking about how much better the laws in Canada are than oppressive theocratic nations. We know they're abusive. The fact that they're worse than our society, however, has allowed people for far too long to explain away what we do because we're not as bad as the absolute worst of humanity.

As mentioned in my previous post...the soft bigotry of low expectations. What happened to that judge in Manitoba? Did he face review and perhaps issue apologies? Did Canadians protest? What about the judge in Dubai? Isn't arresting the victim of rape for adultery (unless she can find 4 male witnesses to counter it) standard procedure under Sharia in Muslim majority nations?