Yeah, I get that, but it’s said to be the older women, AFAICT the matrons of the tribe, who are upholding the tradition of clitoridectomy. These are presumably women who are already married and mothers, if not grandmothers, so they’re not in the marriage market now and their social status isn’t dependent on their horniness.
Until and unless somebody shows up with the cite I asked about, I’m remaining skeptical about this “sexual competitiveness” explanation for why older women in groups that practice FGM so strongly support younger women’s continuing the practice.
The clergy and the body of a church are at the same level of society. Both attend the church voluntarily, neither is in a position higher or lower than the other. As for your claim that I haven’t addressed your point about me “equating voluntary attendance with authority”, I have addressed that point at length, so therefore your statement that I’ve refused to address that point is not true.
I apparently know what words you posted on the board better than you do. Your intention may have been different from what you actually wrote, but there’s nothing I can do about that.
Ah, so when observed reality is different from what you believe, you simply respond by declaring that you think something different from what can be observed in reality, as if the fact that you think something makes that thing true. That probably explains why we’re having trouble reaching agreement. I’m willing to change my thoughts to meet what can be observed rather than merely declaring that whatever I think has to be true.
I searched for a church that was seeking a new rector and found this diagram on the first website that I found. As you can see, the vestry selects a search committee and the search committee is responsible for finding, interviewing, and selecting candidates. When a final selection is made, the vestry then takes over and holds a vote. The bishop has an advisory role, but the actually choice comes entirely from the church body by means of the vestry.
Ah, so what you’re not insulting women by saying that they’re almost all stupid. Instead you’re insulting them by saying that they’re almost all being manipulated and are unable to realize this, despite the fact that they aren’t stupid.
And then again, lots of them are elected. But even if we look at one of the few churches where the selection process is not controlled by the church body, that body still has power over the clergy. If the church body in a Catholic diocese found that the priest appointed for them was simply not fit for the position, they’d be able to petition to the diocese and the person would be removed. I’ve known situations where this happened.
You’ve already admitted that you haven’t read his book, so you have no basis for that accusation. Government is male-dominated. Even Dawkins, stupid as he is, surely knows this. So when he demands that government’s power over everyone’s life be vastly increased, he’s demanding that men’s power over women be vastly increased. And I am not backtracking from this claim or any portion thereof.
Sorry, no cite; I read about this many years ago and it wasn’t even on the Internet ( why do people think everything is on the Internet ?). As for why; because younger girls who like sex are obviously more likely to attract straying husbands. In most cultures, marriage isn’t about sexual pleasure in the first place, especially for the woman.
As I recall, the claim was that clitoridectomies were the form of FGM pushed by women, apparently to reduce competition; while the males tended to push for FGM that involved sealing the girls up to insure virginity. Both of which are strategies found fairly common in the animal world, although animals are limited to things like sperm plugs, pheromones and terror to control the fertility of others.
So you assert that only a “tiny” portion of the religious world allows the ordination of women. Well, off the top of my head I can name the follow denominations that ordain women: Anglican, Baptist, Church of Christ, Church of God, Church of the Nazarene, Community of Christ Episcopal, Lutheran, Mennonite, Methodist, Presbyterian, Quaker, Unitarian, United Reformed Church. I’m sure there are many others if you want to look it up. In any case, your claim that only a “tiny” portion of the religious world ordains women is false.
But although I enjoy repeatedly proving that your claims about female clergy are flatly wrong, it’s irrelevant to any debate about whether the church oppresses women. As I already said, clergy do not wield power over the congregation, but rather serve the congregation. You said: “In most churches there is a hard line between those who decide policy, and everyone else, who get policies dictated to them. The women are on the dictatee side of the line.” However, since I asked you to provide a cite to back this claim up and you haven’t done so, I’m going to assume that you’ve abandoned the claim. Thus the fact that women can serve in the clergy is a moot point.
No, actually the government would not need to be 100% male for my claim to be true. Let me demonstrate. Suppose that as things stand now, two thirds of parenting duties are done by women and one third by men, which is reasonable considering how many children are raised by single mothers. Now Congress is currently 82% male. So putting all child-rearing in the government’s hands would mean an increase in the percentage of child-rearing by 49%. And since even in two-aprent households women do more childrearing, that makes the shift towards men when government takes over even larger. Nonetheless all that’s a tangent. The point is that Dawkins’ idea is a major attack on human rights of everyone: women, men, and children.
You should read the section again. His idea is to protect children. Protect them from the lunacy of religion until they are old enough to make their own decisions. He claims that to force religion upon people not mature enough to be objective is child abuse. He isn’t wrong.
Since the whole thread is still here, perhaps you can quote the part where you argued that churches don’t have administrations.
This should be good.
You know, I could get mad at your attempt to insult me by saying that I don’t know what I wrote, despite it having been quoted a few times. But instead I’ll just marvel at how pathetic an argument that is.
Projecting again, are we? I could quote this back at you word-for-word, with the added bonus that you haven’t accepted that there are exceptional cases, and I have, making this true if I say it to you and a load of shit if you say it to me.
Not that the ‘appoint from above’ position is exceptional…
“By means of the vestry”? I did a little looking, and it’s not the case that all vestries are elected - some are appointed by the church leadership. There is no indication that the church you’re citing is the former. So your cite here adds no support for your position whatever. Naturally enough.
Of course, the real comedy erupts when you realize that you’re extrapolating from the Episcopalians to all religion in general. If you look at other religions, like say the Catholics, you won’t see any of this election-by-the-populace business. You want a bishop? The pope clears it. Various other religions, including the mormons I referenced earlier, do appointments rather than elections. Of course you have yet to admit anyone does this, despite the fact that you’re having to ignore all of Catholocism to do so.
And for further comedy, we have to remember that the entire reason you’re making this fallacious argument by anecdote is because you’re trying to argue that the women are running the show, despite the fact that in virtually all churches the women couldn’t elect a woman to represent them even if they had a vote. I have no doubt that you will feign incomprehension in how this could limit female control of the situation, but I am confident that it will be clear to everyone else.
At worst I’m saying that women are exactly as stupid as all the other morons who buy into self-destructive shit due to things like religion or culture, certainly including everyone who pays tithing. In which case I wouldn’t be insulting women, I’d be insulting theists. Which I’ll happily do, if you like; I like insulting people. It’s fun. But I’m not insulting women as a group and I haven’t and won’t - that’s all your idea.
Of course, if you actually read what I’ve wrote (which you seemingly have difficulty doing), then you’ll have noticed that I wasn’t being particularly insulting to anybody at all. The notion that I’m insulting people at all is also all your idea.
You seem to have a problem with the fact I’m not insulting women. I can see why you would wish I was, because it would help distract from the piss-poor quality of your argument by anecdote/pretending-there-are-no-catholics. But, as usual, I don’t feel inclined to play along with your desperate need to create strawmen to argue against.
The FEW churches where the selection process is not controlled by the church body? Ha HA ha HA HA ha ha HA HA ha ha HA HA HA!!
From ITR’s arguments we have now concluded that the Episcopaleans compose most or all of the churches in the world. Argumentum Ad Absurdum, goodnight everybody!
No, you’re not backtracking from the claim, your position and argument are riddled with fallacies and nonsense in a laudably consistent manner.
Let’s do some more comedy, though: you propose that having a male-dominated leadership makes the goverment oppressive to women, by default, despite the fact that the government is elected, based only on the fact that it’s male dominated. Now look at religions. Male-dominated leadership which at best may be elected. Using your own “logic”, what can we inescapably conclude about whether religions are oppressive to women?
Ludicrously huge double standard? Certainly not! This is absolute consistency in groundless bullshittery. Laudable!
Dawkins makes no such claim. Your constant misrepresentations and fabrications regarding Dawkins (and his book which I’m convinced you haven’t read) do not do any credit to your evangelical cause and fail especially egregiously in the company of thsoe who actually HAVE read Dawkins and know he has has actually said.
And, just so you know, ad hominems against Dawkins are not arguments in favor of theism. Atheism isn’t a religion or a belief system. Dawkins isn’t like some kind of religious authority whom people look to for inspired truth. His moral character is irrelevant to the srgument, as is anything he might hypothetically say about the government. If Dawkins starts espousing the tenets of National Socialism tomorrow, that doesn’t mean that atheism has somehow been undermined as a position or an assumption about sky gods. If a serial killer doesn’t believe in unicorns, that’s not an argument that unicorns exist.
And who wants to speculate which has a higher proportion of women in it: the collected clergies of ITR’s few churches here, or Congress? Any takers?
Of course clergy wield power - obviously. They’re the dudes at the podium expressing their opinions.
You’re the one asserting that people give the Pope’s words no more credence than Jerry the Janitor. That is the outrageous claim: you back it up.
Wait, you can’t? Because it’s retarded? All right then.
For even more fun, there are three parties involved here: The populace, the clergy, and the Canon. Except whose interpretation of canon to people pay more attention to?
I love how you pick a number from a hat, do your “math”, and then when it still doesn’t give you the answer you want have to run back and hem and haw about how the numbers would actually be worse than the one you pulled from your ass in the first place, and then backtrack further to distance yourself from the entire arugment you just made and hem and haw about something you just thought up that’s based in nothing you said at all. Priceless!
New question: will Congress personally be raising all the babies it steals? No? It will be using government agencies populated by people it hires, probably including people who speicalize in child care?
Wanna take a stab at what percentage of people who specialize in child care are women? Feel free to pull the number from your ass if you like.
Restriction may not degrade a person’s happiness; it might even increase it. When I was ten years old I was far more happy than I am today, but I was also a lot more restricted. The restriction created a framework in which it was not possible for me to be too anxious, too concerned about status, or too concerned about a bunch of other things that might have eroded my deep sense of well-being.
Let’s imagine a married Muslim woman with five children. Her husband would not want her spending too much time out of the house, and she is required to follow strict standards of modesty. How do we know that she isn’t much happier than any of us? The fact that she can’t go to college?
I am highly skeptical that the restrictions you speak of were the cause of your comparative joy - rather I suspect that the restrictions and obligations you shoulder now are causing you increased stress. Examples might be needing to hold down a job, pay bills, keep things in repair, or worry about children or whatever. Also memories tend to get rosier with age, due to fading and yellowing from being left out in the sun too long.
We don’t know that she’s not much happier than us, but that’s not the point. The question is whether she’d be even happer without these restrictions.
By this logic, the happiest people on earth are in prison? They have more restrictions than the rest of us. So the happiest place on earth is prison - stuff it disney!
ETA: Yeah I know its a strawman, but its mine, I built it. And the argument I used to build it still doesn’t make sense, with or without my strawman.
I never argued that churches don’t have administrations, nor did I say that I had done so. Rather, since you’ve apparently forgotten, I’ll recap the relevant portion of the thread.
You said: “The clergy and the populace aren’t at the same level of society, either. And I not that you’re still explicitly missing the stated point of the analogy, probably because even so much as referencing it would be tantamount to admitting that you’re completely wrong. To repeat myself: ‘specifically you are equating voluntary attendance with authority.’”
In fact, long before you made that post, I had already dealt with the question of equating voluntary attendance with authority. You can read that in post 52, if you want to refresh your memory. The bottom line is that you are, once again, trying to distort what I’m saying while backtracking on what you said. As I already explained, that’s a bad tactic here because it’s easy to go back and reread previous portions of the thread.
What you actually wrote was “You’ve already departed from reality too far to be debated with on an even level. From here on out I’ll just point out the high points of the hallucination.” This specifically insulted me multiple times while making no mention of any of my arguments. So I’m right, and you’re wrong.
Yes, you are projecting your flaws onto me once again.
Here’s what you said: “I think the majority of churches do not work this way.” When you posted that without any cite, you were readily admitting that your own thoughts are your only cite.
So you’re claiming that I never accepted that there’s any church where the clergy aren’t elected. Actually I did acknowledge that in post 62. So you’re utterly and totally wrong once again. I’ll point out once more that there’s not much point is making untrue claims about what happened earlier in the thread, because earlier posts in the thread can be easily quoted or referenced
Actually there is an indication that at the church I’m citing the vestry is elected. I refer to where it says “the vestry is elected”. So once again you’re utterly wrong and I’m right.
Nice try, though.
Actually I did that accept that in post 62. Remember, when you say unture things about what I’ve said, I can simply refer to the posts that prove you wrong.
Well, thirty percent of seminarians are women, and I’ve already listed thirteen churches that ordain female clergy, whereas you’ve listed vastly fewer. (Although actually you’re wrong about that as well. The Catholic Church has female clergy, just not female priests.) I’d love to hear you explain how this fits with your claim that “virtually all churches” don’t allow a women to serve on the clergy, but frankly I don’t think that I’m going to. (Actually what you said is " in virtually all churches the women couldn’t elect a woman to represent them". Where the idea of “representation” came into this discussion, I have no idea, since clergy are not representatives. I guess you just brought it up because changing the subject is the only way that you can avoid facing the fact that you’ve been proven wrong over and over.)
Ah so you’re not saying that nearly all women are stupid. You’re merely saying that there’s a category of people that contains nearly all women but far fewer men contains only stupid people. Which is a long-winded way of saying the same thing. The bottom line being that when we consider the facts:
“A mountain of Gallup survey data attests to the idea that women are more religious than men, hold their beliefs more firmly, practice their faith more consistently, and work more vigorously for the congregation. In fact, gender-based differences in responses to religious questions are far more pronounced than those between any other demographic categories, such as age, education level, or geographic region. The tendency toward higher religiosity among women has manifested over seven decades of scientific polling, and church membership figures indicate that it probably existed for many decades prior to the advent of survey research in the mid-1930s.”
It immediately becomes obvious that saying that religious people are morons is identical to saying that women are generally morons.
Can you quote the place in this thread where I said that there are no Catholics, or the place where I said that Episcopaleans compose most or all of the worlds churches? What that, you say? No, you can’t quote me saying those things? Well then, you must have been misrepresenting what I said.
You’re very good at writing long posts in which you attack me with words like “moron”, “hallucinating”, “bullshit”, “ludicrous”, and so forth. On the other hand, you’re not very good at all at defending your claims with facts or cites, even though I’ve asked you many times to do so. Why don’t you, for a change, try writing a post where you leave out the fourth-grader vocabulary and instead try stating things that are actually true and backing them up with links to reliable sources, rather than to your own head?
It seems that we once again need a review of what’s happened previously in thread. You said that “only a few tiny crumbs of religion” allow women to serve as clergy. I responded by posting a list of thirteen denominations, most of them quite large, that allow women to serve as clergy. And now you, as we can see, have decided to change the subject, rather than admitting that you were wrong. So now that I’ve replaced your fiction with solid, verifiable facts, let me pose the question to you again. Do you stand by your previous claim that only “a few tiny crumbs of religion” allow female clergy while “virtually all” churches do not? If so, how do you justify it in lieu of the long list of large churches I’ve posted that do allow female clergy? Or are you just going to try changing the subject a second time?
Ah, so while I form my views about power relationships in church based on careful observation and in-depth understanding of how churches function, you just say that anyone who stands at the podium must have power. I never realized that school children, interns, and consultants wield so much power, but they all get to stand at podiums so by your logic they’re mightier commanders. Of course, if you formed your opinions about what happens in church from reality, you would know that (a) some churches don’t have podiums and (b) in those that do, it is definitely not the case that only clergy speak at the podium. However, presence at podiums doesn’t say anything about power. Power, using the dictionary definition, means “the possession of control or command over others”. Any member of a church body can walk out the door at any time, and the clergy cannot stop them, so therefore the clergy does not have power over the church body. The more important point, though, is in the decisions about what the church is going to do, how it will lay its priorities, how it will distribute its resources, and so forth. Those decisions come from the church body and the minister is expected to serve the church body by helping them to implement their decisions. If this point sounds familiar, it’s probably because I’ve already presented it several times and you’ve not been willing to respond to it.
Ah, so tell me, where exactly did I say that people give the the Pope’s word no more credence that Jerry the Janitor? What’s that, you’re not able to find any place where I did so? Well then it looks like you were misrepresenting me once again.
Nice try, but of course you’re misrepresenting me once again. The paragraph that you quoted was merely a hypothetical argument I was making to shoot down an erroneous mathematical statement that you made earlier. Anyone who doubts it can go back and reread #66, which is where that paragraph comes from.
Congress will not be implementing any such policy because only Richard Dawkins wants it, and Dawkins has pulled off the unique trick of rolling the nastiness of Ayn Rand, the stupidity of Jessica Simpson, and the dishonesty of George W. Bush into a single individual, so it’s small wonder that even his fellow atheists generally don’t want him writing legislation.
ITR seems to be largely retreating to nitpickish distraction and other more explictly fallacious strategies to distract from the main point. Volleying them back and forth is tiring, so I’ll let him claim “victory” in his own mind and get back to the relevent points.
When I say “virtually all churches”, I’m referring to buildings, with the perhaps not entirely obvious implication, head counts. It doesn’t matter how many differently-named subsects of liberal christianity you can cite, if they collectively add up to one or two percent of the total number of churches/religious people. I mean, I suppose the big long list might be impressive if you didn’t think about it, but what it really comes down to reality the sizes of each church matters in how large a factor it is in the final analysis. If you’re not interested in reality, of course, then equating the Community of Christ Episcopal church with all of catholocism or all of islam is hunky dory a-okay!
The idea came from the fact that this entire discussion is based on this assertion of yours:
As was noted then and remains true, this is delus- -er, completely divorced from reality unless you can show that the women have some control over the “shape” of the organization. That is, that their numbers represent actual power over the working, rules, etc of the organization.
Of course, you’re not so dim as to have overlooked that without the clergy acting as elected (and thus, influencable) representatives of their women ‘constituency’, the situation becomes one of the (male) kings and lords running ragged over the serfs, regardless of how many serfs there or how many of the serfs are women. So you’ve been rather desperately arguing from anecdote that clergies across christendom and heathendom are elected, and why the hell not, they’re largely populated with women too! Strange that you’re now reversing yourself on that and pretending that hasn’t been what you’ve been doing all along. It couldn’t be because changing the subject is the only way that you can avoid facing the fact that you’ve been proven wrong over and over…
You’re absolutely right. I’ll correct myself now.
“ITR has been trying to argue that a long list of tiny churches outwighs Catholocism because “Catholicsm” is a list with only one item on it.”
I think this is your argument. It’s a very good argument too. Or not.
Arguementatively speaking, I don’t have to. You’re the bright guy who made the claim that a high percentage of woman attendees proves that “organized religion must be a feminized organization”. Your claim, so the burden of proof is yours. All I have to do is show that you are doing a piss-poor job of supporting your claim. Given how easy it is to show fallacies in your logic, I don’t have to bring cites. I just need to blow your third-grader* arguments out of the water directly.
Apologies to any third graders who know that ten twigs are smaller than one tree.
If Jerry (or should I say Geraldine) isn’t exerting authority, shaping the church and whatnot, then your entire position collapses in flames.
Actually he is wrong, and so are you. Child abuse is a well-defined term and raising religious children is not child abuse. Also, religion is not lunacy. Dawkins’ definition of “protecting children” involved having armed goons rip children out of their parents arms and take them away to a place where they’ll only be exposed to things that the governments decides are right for them. Or, put another way, he wants to protect children in the same way that previous atheist leaders such as Stalin and Mao protected children. Of course, any sane person would agree that dragging children away from the parents by force and putting them in re-education camps is deeply harmful to children. But Dawkins is not sane.
Unfortunately for you, your accusation that I’m lying about reading the book is false. I have read the book and can therefore quote what it says.
“we should no more allow parents to teach there children to believe, for example, in the literal truth of the Bible or that planets rule their lives, than we should allow parents to knock their children’s teeth out or lock them in a dungeon.” (page 326 of the American hardcover edition.)
Of course Dawkins defenders try to claim that Dawkins didn’t really mean the words that he put in the book and point on that he’s quoting some other maniac here. But unfortunately for them, this quote comes right after several pages in which Dawkins explains his position that raising religious children is worse than raping children, and right before several pages in which Dawkins carefully explains that the he does believe that the government should forcibly intervene to stop religious parents from raising their own children. And if Dawkins believes that there are any drawbacks at all to giving governments this and other forms of absolute power over our private lives, he certainly does not mention them in this book. Believe me, I’ve read it.
There are no such thing as religious children. There are only children who have been brainwashed into believing in a particular religion. That is pretty much Dawkins’ point.
A term’s definition can change over time and not everyone uses the same definitions. Child Abuse.
Dawkins suggest we change the definition to include indoctrination of children into a particular religion.
Yes it is.
Yes, he is. It is you who we are having doubts about (actually, there isn’t any doubt).
Given the amount of times you’ve posted regarding what Dawkins says and means and been incorrect, I’m surprised you want to stick with this. Maybe you should clarify it by saying, 'I’ve read it, but I have no understanding of the words in it".
So, you are saying you have no problem with parents knocking their children’s teeth out? You have no problem with them teaching their children that the planets rule their lives? How about another book of fairy tales taught as truth?
Oh come now, there’s no doubt that he’s sailing D river Nile and likes trying to argue unsupportable positions, but that’s hardly sufficient to qualify as insane.
There is a difference between being insane and making insane, hallucinatory, etc arguments, after all.