Quote:
Originally Posted by vixticator
Ok, now I'm going to give you some Biblical passages and ask you to interpret them in a way as to support gender equality. Good luck.
Gen. 3:16 To the woman he said, "I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
Eph. 5:22-24 Wives, submit to your husbands as to the Lord. 23For the husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church, his body, of which he is the Savior. 24Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit to their husbands in everything.
1 Cor. 11:3,7 Now I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.
1 Tim. 2:12-13 A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. 12I do not permit a woman to teach or to have authority over a man; she must be silent.
There's more, of course, but let's see how you interpret this as to support gender equality.
Well, there are a number of ways I can go here. I could appeal to the teachings of Jesus, who seemed more egalitarian than Paul in some ways. Obviously Jesus's teachings take precedence over Paul's.
I could argue that the Bible clearly teaches a general point that all are equal before God--and that includes men and women. Since it is inconsistent with equality before God that only men are allowed to hold power--and really inconsistent with Christian ideals of mutual submission, then the verses you quote here are either being misinterpreted or taken out of context, or are meant as specific advice to actual congregations, or reflect Paul's cultural attitudes, not God's perspective on the world.
But I don't want to do this with all four at once--tell me which of them you would like me to initially focus on and I will.
Also, remember that I'm not saying that any of these interpretations are "true." In my view, religious texts are not meant to be read as if they were car manuals. The history of religion shows that religious texts can be used to support a myriad of conflicting moral attitudes. My main concern as a non-Christian is that Christians interpret the Bible as a motivation to act morally. Thus, I support attempts to understand the Bible as promoting gender equality. I certainly wouldn't try to convince those who do understand the Bible this way that they are incorrect.
Part of this is my general view that where the anti-theists like Harris and Dawkins go wrong is in thinking that the way forward is to convince everyone to become atheists. I obviously don't have a problem with trying to do so, but I think it is equally as valuable, and much more realistic, to convince religious people to accept forms of religion which are slightly less fundamentalist, or which are less traditional in their attitudes towards women, homosexuals, other religions etc.