What you call equality is a joke though. You couldn't write a more sexist, patriarchal book than the Bible.

I didn't use 'patriarchal' vis-a-vis the Bible as a theological text. I'm talking about the actual institutions anchored by Christian narratives and the actual consequences on women.

Your post I responded to gave a quote from Lewis (which, by the way, hardly expresses patriarchy), then tied that to patriarchy, then you tied patriarchy to rape and oppression. That's all I'm objecting to, not the fact that humans rape and oppress one another for any number of reasons and from any number of justifications.

Hmm...let me be clear. I do not agree with Subfallen (if this his(?) view) that Christianity is necessarily sexist. I know some Christians, whom I admire greatly, who have made a significant amount of effort in or through their congregations to promote more egalitarian attitudes towards women. I also think this is an important part of the history of Christianity. For instance, one of the reasons I used to attend Quaker meetings was because of my respect for their exemplary history of being on the forefront of sexual equality in religious, social, and political arenas.

However, it is an undeniable fact that much of Christianity discriminates against women. The very topic Lewis is discussing is an example. In many Christian denominations (most notably in Catholicism), women are still not allowed to be priests, pastors, or hold other positions of authority in the church. This is a textbook case of discrimination. I have a Catholic friend who wants to become a priest, but because she is a women, she is unable to. How is that not a form of invidious discrimination?

I don't think a discussion about whether this is "sexist" or not is useful--those sorts of discussions tend to be like discussions of whether someone is racist. However, this is a patriarchal system. At minimum, what is meant by describing a system as patriarchal is that only, or primarily, men are in the positions of highest authority. Any hierarchical system that does not allow women to hold the positions of highest authority is thus a patriarchal system. When the Catholic Church denies women the right to become priests, or when Lewis argues that the Anglican Church should not allow women to become priests, they are both working to preserve the patriarchal and thus unegalitarian aspect of Christianity.

He wasn't uncomfortable with the Biblical requirement that priests be male, but with the capacity of men to adequately fulfill that function. And there is absolutely no hint of Sub's definition of patriarchy in the article - just the opposite, in fact.

Conservatives are opposed to women as priests because the Bible teaches that priests and pastors are to be men. There is no general patriarchal system. That's all Lewis is saying, and he defends it eloquently in the article you linked.

Here's subfallen's definition of patriarchy: "the institutionalized use of the masculine for God. This exclusionary male concept of 'God' mirrors and enforces obvious social hierarchies. (I.e. patriarchy.)"

Since Lewis supported an "exclusionary male concept of God" and a male-dominated hierarchy in the church, I'm not sure what your basis for disagreement with him is. Perhaps you think the patriarchal system Lewis supported is justified because it is based on biblical teachings--but that too is subfallen's claim.

You might be correct about Lewis's feelings. Perhaps I am being overly generous to him by reading him as being uncomfortable about the unfairness of only allowing men to hold leadership positions. And as for his actual argument--it is absolute crap. If he wants to understand "masculine" as a metaphor about the relationship of Christ and the Church, then there is no reason that women cannot stand in the masculine role as well as men. If he wants to understand masculine literally, as referring to sex, then his claim that men are "insufficiently masculine" doesn't make sense.

Just to be brief and ignoring all the crap in your post, your understanding of the Lewis article is crap.

Well, I'm convinced.

The CS Lewis article or The Bible?

Either. Anyway, since the Bible is a religious text, I think it can be interpreted in a variety of ways, and so I try to encourage Christians to interpret it as supporting gender equality.

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.

This is fine - but it is basically an admission that what someone thinks of as 'God' is so vague that it could mean practically anything. I can understand that you see a difference between the general concept of 'being a theist' and the particular theology adhered too, but in reality the only only way to address the question is either to admit that either they have no idea what God even resembles, wants, does, numbers, etc etc (which is basically being an agnostic), or to return to my original point about being 99.9% an atheist anyway.

I don't care about winning an exchange I just don't see how you can reconcile these two ideas without fundamental contradiction.

I think OP eventually just said.

1. All ideas/concepts/opinions must be either religious or not religious.
2. "Not religious" is a view on theism and theism is religion.
3. Therefore all ideas/concepts/opinions are religions.

Sounds like a fallacy. I'm not an expert but I want to go for - begging the question. Or just an impractical redefinition of the words.

.

Just to elaborate on this a little more, think about the key problem with Spledour's thread about 'spiritual intelligence'. Although deeply flawed in it's methodology anyway, if it did what Splendour was suggesting (ie show a universal measure of spirituality in humans), then it raises this question in it's most obvious form.

We either have to accept that 'spiritual intelligence' is observable in all humans, but that 99.9% of them are wrong about it's form;

or:

That all religions are equally valid.

In the first case, it is obvious that anyone taking this line is effectively an atheist, only one that is just discounting one less God - but are using the atheist logic to rule out 99.99999999% of other claims to God.

In the second case, you are effectively acknowledging agnosticism, as the number and types of Gods in human history is so vast and wild that it leaves basically nothing firm that can be said about it other than the fact that some kind of supernatural belief system is prevalent in some human cultures - not exactly great evidence for some kind of universal concept of theism by any stretch of the imagination.

God treats them equally in an unequal way. Kind of like how he can kill you out of love or order rape and its not rape or order genocide and its not genocide.

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.

The bible has a lot of wrongs. One of the best ways to change something is to point out is wrongs. Not to ignore the wrongs and twist them into being somehow right. Imo.

Saying that the Bible has a "lot of wrongs" is like saying that The Odyssey or The Inferno have a lot of wrongs. What would be wrong is taking certain passages in these books as if they were personal messages to us today telling us to act immorally. Not all religion is fundamentalism and assuming it is, is foolish.

Who assuming all religion is fundamentalist? Not me. The reality is those passages are use by some to justified wrongs. Pointing out to both believers who accept them and dont puts pressure on those wrongs to no longer be accepted. Not to mention when those wrongs are brought up they aren't usually brought up to believers who agree, they are brought up to those support those wrongs.

Pointing out passages in the Bible that seem to support gender inequality will not convince those who accept gender inequality to stop doing so. Pointing them out to people who do not accept gender inequality will either have no impact, or if it does, either cause them to accept gender inequality (if they think it is a requirement of their religion), or to reject their religion. The first is the opposite of what I want, and the second, if they are already accept gender equality, isn't that big of a deal to me.

The reason I brought up fundamentalism is that it is generally fundamentalist beliefs about the Bible that require it to be morally perfect.

A non believer pointing out passages to believers who support those passages wont convince them to reinterpret those passages. Assertions are fun.

Also if you think they seem to support in equality, well...To me your being disingenuous which is never a good thing.

Or it could put pressure on those who dont hold the views to reform their religion form the inside so it will be more accepted and receive less criticism.
Idk about that it seemed like a dig but that's alright.

Think of the logic of what you are saying. Someone believes that the genders are unequal, at least in part because they interpret the Bible as saying so. You point out that the Bible says that the genders are unequal. How exactly is this going to convince them that the genders are equal?

Let me put it this way, one way to interpret the Bible is the historico-critical method, where you try to figure out what it meant at the time it was written. It is likely that biblical interpretations of some of the epistles using this method will show that some of the NT writers support some inegalitarian attitudes, as did virtually everyone else at the time (in fact, this is an assumption of the historico-critical method, that we understand the meaning of the Bible by looking at the time in which it was written). My point is that this is not the only method of interpretation available for religious believers. Some of these other methods of interpretation support egalitarian readings of the Bible.
I agree with this goal.
Nope, not a dig.

Because contently criticizing a view can change and reform it.

So do i, i just dont think pretending and lying about what i think the bible says is the best way to accomplish that goal. Nor would i feel comfortable doing it.