Women are Inferior, Property, and Unclean

1/4 of Women are Inferior Debate

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       Moving away from how different the early Church and Jesus’ teachings were, we’re going to set our sights on the entire Bible as fair game for analysis! This includes pointing out flaws in God’s logic, contradictions of the Bible, and simply immoral things that God is totally cool with. This post in particular is going to focus on how women are inferior to men, are equivalent to property, and are very unclean! Since there’s so much material about women in the Bible, an upcoming blog post will be on the topic of why women should shut up and stay in their place.

           

        That’s right, Christians! Women are inherently inferior to men. They’re also barely even seen as people in the Lord’s eyes; it would be more accurate to call them ‘property of men’. Don’t take my word on it though; take God’s Word on it; an infallible, perfect, living word of God’s teachings and the history of the Israelites. Boy, I sure do love having my misogyny justified by the thinking of Bronze Age desert nomads!

The rest of my post will indirectly show the inferiority of women, but a direct statement that women < men is found in 1 Corinthians 11:3, where Paul clearly states that the pecking order is God > Christ >Man > Woman. Don’t blame society for gender roles; it’s clearly God’s plan!

One of the most blatant examples of how women were barely treated like people (and definitely less than men) lies in the Law code of the Israelites in Deuteronomy 22:23-29. Once you read through that, try not to be shocked by God’s decree. I’ll walk you through it, in case you’re having a hard time interpreting the implications of this Law.

            Verses 23 and 24 tell the Israelites that if a man sleeps with a woman pledged to marry, then they are both to be stoned to death. Now, this seems (relatively) fair, since both were caught in adultery. But the real catch is in the latter part of verse 24, where the reasons are given for each person’s death: “the young woman because she was in a town and did not scream for help, and the man because he violated another man’s wife” The implication in not screaming for help is that the woman enjoyed intercourse with the man, and so should be stoned. The man deserves death not because he raped another human being, but because he “violated another man’s wife” Basically, ‘you ruined my property and shall receive death’.

            At least in verses 26 and 27 the woman isn’t penalized for being the victim. The reasoning for this is that the woman (pledged to be married) was out in the country, and so could not be heard screaming. This scenario is likened to “someone who attacks and murders a neighbor”, so the woman is given status as a human being for now.

            The ‘best’ part is when a man rapes a woman who IS NOT pledged to be married. In this scenario-depicted in verse 28 and 29, the man who rapes the unpledged virgin must pay the father 50 shekels of silver and must marry the woman and never divorce her. Why is this case so different from the other scenarios where the man was to be stoned to death in both cases of rape? The only logical explanation here is that in this case, the man ‘broke it’ and therefore had to ‘buy it’, in reference to the ‘you break it, you buy it’ policy that some stores employ for their merchandise. It seems that the men in other scenarios were ONLY put to death because they messed with another man’s property! In the case of an unpledged virgin, she is no one’s property. But when he takes her virginity, she is essentially ‘broken’ since no man will marry someone who isn’t a virgin. Therefore the man must purchase her and stay wedded to her. This clearly shows the ‘women are property’ mentality that the Lord has.

           Another horrendous example of how the Lord values women is seen in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah, namely when the angels visit Lot. God tells two angels to go and fetch Lot and his family from the city which he is destroying for its wickedness. During this process, Genesis 19:1-8 occurs. Now, what just happened in this passage? Allow me to explain: God sends the two angels to get Lot and his family out of Sodom before its destruction. While the two angels are entering his house, a mob of bisexual rapists demands the two angels for their gang rape. Lot, instead of handing the two angels over, says this: “Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don’t do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof.”

            What?? Lot just tossed his daughters out into a mob with the intention of GANG RAPING them. This man is the one God deems righteous enough to be saved from the destruction of Sodom which is itself being destroyed for wickedness; a man that offers up his daughters to be gang raped with no hesitation. Quite clearly, God does not find wrongdoing in Lot’s choice to throw his daughters to gang rapists, because the angels continue to offer Lot and his family salvation from the destruction of Sodom. This is a tell-tale sign that God finds women lesser than men. Even in the story of Samson in Judges 13-16, the two wives that Samson marries are portrayed as deceitful and manipulative, constantly betraying Samson for personal gain. The propaganda-like portrayal of women in the story of Samson isn’t directly ordered by God, but we can see how Jews saw women (thanks to God’s earlier decrees). This idea put out by God can be seen influencing the disciples of Jesus’ life also, as the disciples were baffled as to why Jesus, a rabbi, would be talking with a woman (John 4:27).

            Not only are women inferior and property, they are also more “unclean” than males! In Leviticus 12:2-5, women remain unclean for a certain amount of days after childbirth. When a boy is born, the mother is unclean for a total of 40 days. But when a girl is born, the mother is unclean for 80 days! Females are literally TWICE as unclean as males, according to the Lord.

  

          Now that we have all the reasons for why women are inferior, property, and more unclean than men, let’s get down to the thought process behind these extremely sexist (but true because God said so) conclusions. The one apologetic response I’m anticipating is that the sexism and misogyny in the Bible reflect ancient societies’ perception of women; not God’s. And if you’re thinking this, then you’re correct-but also disproving God.

           It is IMPERATIVE to realize that the Laws in the Bible were ordained by God. The Laws about being more unclean for birthing girls and ruining another man’s wife/property were DIRECTLY from God circa 1400 B.C. If you believe the Bible, then you must understand that God told the Israelites these Laws, and that they MUST be true coming from God. If you believe in the Bible and God, yet still believe that women are equal to men, YOU ARE WRONG. God KNOWS women are inferior to men, and definitely values them lesser than men-as seen in Lot’s “punishment” in Genesis 19:1-8. If you value the God of the Bible’s word and regard him irrefutably correct and unable to lie (Attributes of God), then women are all these things without a shadow of a doubt.

           But what’s MY reasoning on why God would think so lowly of women? Well, the non-believer’s approach is that the Bible and God are man-made constructs. This alone explains why God shows remarkably human thinking despite being a transcendent, supreme being. I think-with 99% certainty- that God was conjured up by men, and therefore displays the thinking of men and justifies it. Why are women portrayed as mediocre in God’s eyes and actions? Because God is made by man and man at this time thought women were mediocre. It doesn’t help that later generations of Israelites would read these Laws and think “Yeah, God’s right! Women are garbage!” Even in one orthodox Jewish community, women in positions of high power were photoshopped out of a newspaper. The thought process of these tribesmen are preserved and regarded as God’s word-and therefore correct-to this day!

Top picture is before editing

            Next week I will be rebutting whatever apologetic response Phillip has mustered up (although I think I hit the nail on the head). Let me remind you that this is not my belief or opinion on women. This is yours.

Jesus Never Abolished the Law - Rebuttal

3/4 of Jesus and Abolition of the Law debate
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        Firstly, ouch. That’s a lot of ad hominem you’ve got going on. Secondly, I don’t see how a fundamentalist and literal interpretation of the Bible is a bad thing, as you make it out to be. You can’t start drawing lines on what is and isn’t literal in the Bible, or it loses its meaning! People will disagree on what is literal or figurative, and then bam! You’ve got about…well, an estimated 33,000+different interpretations of the same text!

Figurative interpretation of Genesis as opposed to the literal 7 days of creation

           

           After reading through his blog post and the passages taken from Galatians, I see now that obedience to the Law does NOT correlate with righteousness. I concede that point. I also agree with the purpose of the Law stated in Galatians3:19-21, which is to remind us that we are sinners. I find a similar explanation for the purpose of the Law in Romans7:7-8. This allows Hebrews 10:3-4 to make more sense; that “it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins.” Sacrifice of these animals wasn’t to cleanse sin, according to these passages, but rather to raise awareness of the sin we commit, and thus give us a need for Jesus as the ultimate sacrifice (Hebrews9:26).

            

           However, when Phillip goes back to how Jesus fulfilled the Law, he comes to the conclusion that it (the Law) is no longer needed. I assume he takes this from the part of Matthew 5:18 that says that nothing will “disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished”, and his interpretation of “accomplished” is the prophecies that Jesus fulfills when he is crucified and rises again. However, in that same verse, Jesus says that nothing from the Law will disappear “until heaven and earth disappear”. This is confusing because it means that either “until everything is accomplished” and “until heaven and earth disappear” is synonymous, or they are contradictory. If we take the definition of “until heaven and earth disappear”, that would mean that the Laws would still be relevant for a really, really long time. Furthermore, I don't know why Jesus would address the Law and righteousness as if they were related somehow. It’s a tricky passage, but hey; if it were an easy book to interpret, there wouldn’t be tens of thousands of different guesses at the true meanings-so at least I’m not the only one!

This time, this is LITERALLY the body of Christ

            

            And a quick side-note: your analogy with test-taking is inaccurate. A more accurate version would be finishing a test, having the teacher tell you that you will be retaking the test every week until the end of the year, and assuming that that means you don’t have to retake it every week until the end of the year. I seriously cannot stress enough how important it is that Jesus states that the Law is here to stay for a very long time.

           

             In response to Phillip’s claims about my theories, I also disagree. A quote from Phillip shows his view on my first theory: “Well Daniel strongly implies that believers willfully chose to ignore the words of Christ concerning the Law because of a desire to attract Gentiles to their faith by making it "easier."” Firstly, I wouldn’t say ‘ignore’ so much as ‘make a reason to ignore’. Secondly, I didn’t make this one up. My observation of Acts 15:8-11 (spoken by Peter) and Acts 15:19-21 (spoken by James) is that the Apostles did indeed make it easier for Gentiles to accept Christ by writing to them (as opposed to something else, I do not know) about the Laws to follow. An interesting thing you want to note here is that they made acceptance of at least part of the Law mandatory for the Gentiles. Yes, the same Law that Phillip said is “no longer needed”, is now being taught to Gentiles by the Apostles. So it seems that these early Christians in particular still obeyed at least part of the Law, recognizing that Jesus never abolished them. Props to you guys, Peter and James, for sticking to Jesus’ words!

            
            Phillip also says “Judaism was already easier than the polytheistic paganism of the Gentiles”, and this simply isn’t true. Being a Jew meant following ALL of the Laws ordained by God, which were much stricter than the “laws” of the gods that allowed their followers to be sexually immoral, murder, steal, etc. This claim is just plain false. Moving on, Phillip takes note of the persecution that Christians encountered, which Jesus himself warned of, but also blessed (basicallymartyrdom (2) (3)), making “blessedness” go hand in hand with persecution as a Christian.

            My second theory he didn’t even try to refute since it is so obvious that Christians today throw out Laws for the sake of convenience. They don’t even have to be Old Testament Laws and teachings; Christians today throw out ANY teachings, OT and NT, that conflict with modern society. In addition to my examples with the Ten Commandments (OT), Jesus’ teachings (NT) about both adultery and divorce are constantly broken amongst Christians, but it seems that everyone simply overlooks his teachings about these things…for convenience. I fully encourage you to read Jesus’ entire Sermon on the Mount; find the things that Jesus tells you to do or not to do, and notice how no Christian follows these commands. Disregarding NT teachings from the Apostles is also commonplace in first world Christians, mainly the ones that tell us women are weaker and belong subject to the husband (blog on that coming up).

            Attacking my theories, he writes a good amount based off of his misreading. He creates a false dichotomy that only one of my theories must be true because they contradict each other, but he failed to notice that when listing my theories I placed a little “and/or” in between them! Yes, that means that the first can be true, the second can be true, or both can be true. Next time, read a little more carefully to avoid creating an argument that is both fallacious and not applicable.

          In an effort to refute your point about Jesus and refusing to stone the adulteress (which is mandated in Mosaic Law), I tried looking up more about the situation and found a page that apparently claims that this is an argument used by atheists to contradict Jesus! I’ll refer you back to that page to make whatever sense of it, because I personally don’t care whether Jesus followed the Laws or not. I care about what he said in Matthew 5:17-20 in regard to the Laws. This has nothing to do with that, so we call it a red herring.

And must I say, it is MUCH easier to create a rebuttal than to, should I say, throw the first stone.

Jesus Never Abolished the Law

1/4 of Jesus and Abolition of the Law debate
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 Jesus Said What?

 Before we get to the main point of my first entry, I’d like to make one thing clear. You MUST keep an open mind when reading this. Forget about being told to shut your ears or risk the devil laying little hell spawn doubts in your brain that pick away at your religious fibers until you’re an empty husk of your former self; that’s not going to happen.  Try to follow along as unbiased as possible, because this is going to be fun. Maybe not for you, but for me it will be, so you should feel happy for me.

Now, today we will be reading the Bible! “Oh boy” you might immediately think. You know everything important about the Bible already! Why do you need to listen to another iteration of Jonah and the giant fish, or Samson and lion-carcass honey? Well, this blog is not like what you’ve been told all these years of your life. This blog is going to teach you about flaws, contradictions, and fallacies of the Bible, along with some things that Christianity got wrong (it just got personal, didn’t it?). So, let’s delve into our first, and probably most important, Bible lesson!

The passage I have chosen has been spoken by none other than Jesus, the Three and Only, Christ, at the Sermon of the Mount. Yes, the one with the infamous beatitudes, which I’m sure some of you have permanently ingrained in your brain due to rigorous repetition in multiple Bible classes for at least a decade of our short lives. This passage follows directly after the beatitudes, but was never poured over in the same way which we studied the beatitudes. Why is that? Well, let’s find out!

Matthew 5:17-20

¹⁷ “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. ¹⁸ For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.¹⁹ Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven. ²⁰ For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.

So what was that all about? You may remember skimming over it, as I do myself, but never really reading it. Well, what importance does it hold to be my first blog post? Let’s go nice and slow to figure this out, piece by beautiful piece. And feel free to refer back to the text whenever your mind feels like coming up with justifications for this, shall I say, “threatening” passage.

          One thing that we need to know is what the “Law and the Prophets” are. Well, what Jesus means by this, which is soon mentioned in verse 17, is the Old Testament. What? How did I get

“Old Testament” from “Law or the Prophets”? Well you see, the first five books of the Bible, the Pentateuch, are commonly known for their long and very specific rules listed for the Israelites to follow. The Prophets are those like Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Daniel that foretold of Jesus’ coming. In general, the Old Testament is accepted as the Law and Prophets which Jesus (and the rest of the Bible) refers to.

Jesus says here in verse 17 that he didn’t come to ABOLISH the Law or the Prophets (Old Testament), but to fulfill them. “But Mr. Daniel! I was told in Bible class that Jesus threw out the Old Testament, which is why we don’t have to follow the Laws of the Pentateuch!” Well Billy, Jesus never said that. He specifically said that he DIDN’T throw out the Laws or the Prophets. I have some speculation on why Christians would want to disregard more than half of the Bible, but let’s finish reading the passage first.

           

Jesus continues on about he didn’t come to abolish the OT in verse 18, stating that “until heaven and earth disappear”, not a single word will be removed from the Law. If you thought you could weasel out of that first verse, this second one kind of binds you to ‘a really really really long time’ until the Laws are abolished. These fun Laws mandated by God himself aren’t going anywhere, Jesus confirms. In verse 19, Jesus mentions how those who don’t follow even one of these Laws will be called “least in the kingdom of heaven”, whatever that means. In general, Christians don’t really care about being called “least” in heaven! As long as I get to heaven, I’ll settle for least of the best! But verse 20 is where things get a little more troublesome for Christianity.

      Verse 20, and I quote (I promise; you can check the original text above), says “For I tell you that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the Pharisees and the teachers of the law, you will certainly not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Uh-oh spaghetti-o. “Did Jesus just say that obedience to the Old Testament Laws is equivalent to righteousness, and that righteousness is needed to get into heaven?” That he did, Billy! Some might say that this directly conflicts with when Jesus says he is the only way into heaven, but that’s a contradiction I’m less focused on right now. I’m wondering more about how in Jesus’ name (literally) did Christians conclude that Jesus abolished/threw out the OT Laws? Here, Jesus is making himself quite clear: ‘I am not abolishing the Laws. You need the Laws and extreme righteousness to enter heaven.’ For the sake of avoiding argument on the shaky contradiction of what gets you into heaven (although that’s a pretty big problem in and of itself), I’ll pay more attention to how he explicitly says that he ISN’T abolishing the Laws or the Prophets, aka the Old Testament.

            How did Christians interpret ‘I abolish the Law’, from “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law”? My two favorite theories are these: Christianity threw out the Old Testament despite Jesus’ teachings because it made Christianity remarkably easier to follow, and/or because the Law and Prophets are not compatible with modern, civilized society.

            

          My first theory about making Christianity easier to follow I hope is self-evident. Getting into a religion is much easier when the pass to heaven is “Accept Jesus as God” compared  to the much more difficult task of “follow every single Law”, especially when these Laws could compose a Holy Book in and of themselves. When the early church realized that Gentiles weren’t exactly flocking to become obedient robots, they perhaps changed the rules a little bit so that Gentiles would find the sect of Christianity more appealing.

            

          My second theory is quite easy to see in action today if my first theory was a little hard to believe for you. Imagine today’s society, namely the United States of America. Now, we can’t even get past the 10 Commandments before breaking the rules such as not taking the Lord’s name in vain, keeping the Sabbath holy, honoring your father and mother, not stealing, not bearing false witness, and not coveting. Most of these are broken daily by the majority of Americans! And the commandment about not coveting your neighbor’s possessions is literally the ENTIRE idea behind Capitalism! 

Broken literally and figuratively

        Imagine if we Christians had to also follow Laws that mandated the stoning of adulterers and sorceresses, and repetitive verses that set up regulations on keeping slaves! No modern society could function under these barbaric Laws! It doesn’t help that the God of the Old Testament is often portrayed as a sociopathic murderer (contrary to what the New Testament is all about).This would explain quite well why Christians have ditched the Old Testament; for convenience. Not because Jesus said so, or because Jesus made the Law obsolete, but rather because we don’t want to follow Christianity correctly if ‘correctly’ is ‘psychotic’. This is one of the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity, that Jesus abolished the Law and made it non-applicable to us. But clearly-one of the most basic beliefs in Christianity-is wrong.

But Jainism on the other hand....

Attributes of God

Attributes of God: God is eternal (2) (3), omnipotent (2) (3), omnipresent (2) (3),  infinite in understanding (2), perfectly holy, the only God (2), incapable of lying, Creator of the whole universe, slow to anger and abounding in love (2) (3) (4) (5) (6), Savior, and in general, is all good and perfect (2). And some more that I didn’t mention can be found Here.

I will refer back to this in future blog posts, just in case you are tempted to doubt the decree of God or his messengers (via the Holy Spirit). Use this list anytime you feel like questioning God’s actions as immoral, unjustified, or anything that is opposite of God’s listed attributes.

According to these (taken from the Bible), it is impossible for God to be evil, not omnipotent, not perfectly holy, etc. because circular reasoning is completely valid when making an assertion about who created the entire universe and what happens after we die; these are obviously not important enough to back with evidence found within the last 2,000 years. The Bible is God’s Word because the Bible says so, therefore God is everything listed above.

Checkmate atheists