So, if a god created everything and especially life...

[Deep13]

shouldn't that deity be feminine, not the masculine deities of Abrahamic religions and Hinduism?

[rhiannon55]

1. I think so.

[NMMNG]

2. You'd think that

But women are only vessels for life. They don't actually create it. It takes men for anything truly important like creating, building, impregnating, etc.

[Deep13]

4. See, the androcentric thinking made them ignore plain reality.

The man is involved for a few minutes contributing what appears to be a negligible amount of material. Then the woman spends nine months growing the fetus eventually delivering a complete person, however immature. We know now that half of the genetic material is from the father. By your explanation--which I think is a fair assessment of ancient assumptions--he contributed all of it, despite the fact that children resemble their mothers as much as their fathers.

The think the use of the term "seed" is telling. The analogy being the planting of an actual seed into the otherwise infertile Earth. Of course, the reality is closer to the man being the bee that does the pollination.

[darkstar3]

3. Ah, but you forget that women have no power.

It is against the common narrative for a woman to have power, and since some form of incredible power would be required to create something alone and without the presence of an oppositely-gendered being, God defaults to male.

And there we see the "logic" of the male creator deity.

[entropic]

5. why?

neither women nor men "create" life.

[Deep13]

8. They both do together, although the female clearly has almost all of it.

Strictly speaking neither create life since the constituent parts of a zygote where living material prior to conception. Life began nearly 4 billion years ago and has been a continuous precess ever since. But the parents collectively and mostly the female do create a new person/animal.

[entropic]

22. really, neither do.

sperm and egg are already alive by any biochemical standard. They just can't sustain that life on their own.

[Deep13]

24. I think I just said that.

I'm talking about making a new animal, not just life generically.

[Kurmudgeon]

6. Perhaps God is above gender, and certainly has no need of it.

The fact that God is often referred to in the masculine is probably a trick of language and nothing more.

[darkstar3]

7. Close, but no.

Patriarchy, not a trick of language, was responsible. But who was it that told you that God was gender neutral? It certainly wasn't the Bible...

[Kurmudgeon]

29. It's my own observation, I don't follow patriarchy.

This is a good general description.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender_of_God

However, my own attitude is God has no need to reproduce, so has no need of gender.
Some of this is shown in Matthew 22:29 "Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven."
"He" is above that. It's just a trick of the English language, as well as many other languages when gender is unknown or indeterminate that it defaults to the male terms of description.
In fact, that is one of the ways to tell a "fictional" god created by man like in the myths.
The large groups of gods described in myths and legends have male and female as well as other human and even animal attributes, showing where they were created in our image and imagination, not vice versa.
I'm sure at some point someone will run in saying it's all the same, but it's not.
God is The Creator and can honestly be called that as well.

[Humanist_Activist]

44. You would be technically correct except that Yahweh(YHWH) used to be a part of a pantheon...

which eventually was reduced to a combination of him and another male god El. Hence the birth of Judaic Monotheism. However, he was obviously male, he had a female consort, Asherah, and was described as a War God, with masculine terms used to describe him throughout the Bible.

How is he any different than any other god from any other pantheon?

[Thats my opinion]

46. Right on

We just can't any longer think of God as a big replica of a person. That is the symbolic representation common when folks thought of God as a big daddy---or Mommy in the sky. Theology has gone far beyond that. Save us from seeing the natural world in the same way as did those who believed the sun revolved around a flat earth. Both theology and science are in a continual state of evolution.

[darkstar3]

49. A few problems there.

1. "Begotten, not made." The Nicene Creed, based in small part on John 3:16, clearly states that God begat Jesus, or reproduced.
2. It's not a trick of a gender-specific language, because it would have made just as much sense for "her" to be used as it did for "he". The reason "he" is the default is not linguistic, but social, and rooted in the patriarchy that existed at the time of the writings.
3. I can't understand how, without a single hint of irony or satire, you can claim that all past gods were created by humankind in our image, but your chosen god clearly created us in his image. How could you possibly tell the difference?

[PassingFair]

51. "Trick of the language", really?

Didn't he claim to be "about his FATHER'S business?

Don't you worship the FATHER, SON and HOLY GHOST?

Doesn't the "LORD'S" prayer start with
"Our FATHER"?

Yes, I WONDER why it smacks of patriarchy......

Must be SUBTLE TRICKS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

:rofl:

[Deep13]

9. No, the context is clearly masculine.

God the Father. God the disciplinarian. God the warrior. God the provider. Created Adam as the first person and then Eve who is defined by her relation to Adam.

The fact that he is a sky god in the Abrahamic myths is also strongly correlated with the masculine. Before Judaism, Yahweh shared the pantheon with a feminine Earth goddess, but eventually she was abandoned and only the masculine sky god remained.

[Kurmudgeon]

30. The context is a product of the time it was written and by who the writers are.

[Deep13]

33. Right. Nothing divine or eternal about it.

It was all an iron age human fabrication.

[Kurmudgeon]

36. You must find it real easy to lie to yourself. Your accusations of fabrication is just a knee jerk.

[Deep13]

37. This coming from someone who thinks people are born guilty...

...and that killing an innocent man makes us less guilty.

Are you really suggesting that humans did not write the Bible?

[cleanhippie]

53. I think it is obvious that no one finds it easier than you do.

[Thats my opinion]

47. in the later Genesis story (Gen 1:1-2:4) God is neither nt

[Humanist_Activist]

52. True, of course it was gods not a single god in that story...

Not all of them male, obviously, the Pantheon had a few female deities.

[PassingFair]

50. Yes. Because most humans long for Daddy's approval.

And Daddy's protection.

Because they already KNOW that Mommy loves them.
Girls are taught to nurture and see their needs
as secondary. Women carry children for 9 months
and then deliver them in great pain and suffering.
Most children are sure of their mother's love.

Daddies, sometimes not so much.

I say this as an atheist who grew up with
FULL APPROVAL and LOVE from an atheist
father who had no problem telling me that he
loved me. Few people are as lucky as me in
the Daddy Lottery.

Lots of people have "Daddy" issues.


"Sky Daddy" is wish fulfillment.

[cleanhippie]

27. Oh, it's a trick alright.

[sakabatou]

10. If God was female

Why so many misogynistic stories/laws?

[Deep13]

11. I'm questioning why they wrote god as male...

..and then used it to justify misogyny. Although, I seem to recall that Tudor England was still a deeply sexist society despite the reigns of Mary and Elizabeth. Don't know that the gender of the ruler is determinative. Although in those cases, the queens were still supposedly subordinate to a masculine god.

[Speck Tater]

12. The concept of gender of a god is ridiculous. Do Christians really think their god has a penis? nt

[Deep13]

13. You're confusing gender with sex.

Sex is the physical fact of being male or female. Gender are characteristics that go along with each sex. People usually assume that certain behaviors are masculine or feminine, but in fact gender must constantly be constituted by the individual through conforming social behavior.

BTW, literalists may think that because Exodus all but describes Yahweh as an old man with a beard.

[laconicsax]

14. As an aside...Exodus also describes God as a volcano.

[Deep13]

15. So God's either a man or a magma vent.

Got it.

[laconicsax]

17. An omnipotent being could be both and neither simultaneously. n/t

[Deep13]

25. So a hermaphrodite.

Like an earthworm. If gods were possible, I guess that would be possible too.

[laconicsax]

28. A hermaphrodite AND asexual.

Omnipotence is the gateway to paradox. The old 'rock so heavy he can't lift it' misses the point entirely. An omnipotent being can make a rock so heavy that he can't lift it, and lift it. It can and can't make the rock and can can't lift it.

[Deep13]

34. Yeah, one precludes the other. nt

[laconicsax]

38. Hence the paradox and contradiction.

[Deep13]

26. No, being both excludes being neither.

Otherwise we have to redefine "be."

[Kurmudgeon]

31. How about none of the above?

[Deep13]

35. That's actually how I see it. nt

[Speck Tater]

16. So are you claiming that a gay man has female gender?

:sarcasm:

On Edit: added sarcasm smiley because apparently some people thought my absurd caricature was to be taken seriously when in fact I was merely carrying the previous poster's logic to a reducio ad absurdum.

[laconicsax]

18. That's only somewhat bigoted.

You might want to evaluate your prejudices.

[Speck Tater]

20. I guess I needed a sarcasm smiley. I was pointing out what I thought was wrong

by carrying it to a ridiculous extreme. Sorry if the sarcasm was missed. I'll go back and edit the smiley into the post.

[Deep13]

23. Here. I'm relying on Judith Butler for this.

http://www.jstor.org/pss/3207893

[Deep13]

21. A gay man has a gay man's gender.

My definition comes from the great feminist writer Judith Butler who argues that gender is a self perpetuating social construct that must be constantly recreated by gender specific behavior. In this society, the cultural hegemony is defined as masculine and heterosexual and that feminine and homosexual are defined as "others" set in opposition to the white patriarchy. She explains in much better than I can and in much more detail.

[snagglepuss]

19. Odd that you ask this as I just finished reading about how early Christian Gnostics

believed the Holy Ghost was female.



snip

Here are some possible conclusions which are equally reasonable, though entirely contrary to modern dogma about Christ and Christianity. Christ's spirituality differed radically from our modern understanding. His teaching was dynamic and zen-like focusing on the experience of inner purification and transformation, the elevation of the seeker's awareness into the state (not concept or dogma) of self-realisation. He sought to overthrow the immoral culture of the Romans and to deliver to the dogmatic, letter-bound Jews the mystic fulfilment promised to them in the Mosaic covenant.

Central to his teaching was the understanding that the feminine aspect of God, God the Mother, was the means by which self-realisation and spiritual evolution to god-awareness occurred. Christ venerated the Divine Mother as the Holy Spirit. It is this power, described in the East as residing in the human being as the Kundalini, that is the last vestige of the Goddess-tradition in the Christian West.

Mary was in her own right a divine being. She was venerated as such by Christ and some of the suppressed scriptures describe her as the Holy Spirit incarnate.

Why did the Churches suppress these true christian traditions? Partly because they are patriarchal institutions based on the questionable dogma of Paul who perceived women (and therefore the feminine principle) as inferior entities. Partly also because spirituality which focused on the Divine Feminine would also focus on the redemptive power of God the Mother and on Her role as the grantor and matriarch of mystical experience. This kind of understanding, like all mystics and mysticism, defies organisation, dogmatic hierarchies and institutions preferring the role of individual experience, revelation and progressive growth toward divine awareness.

The Holy Ghost, then, threatened to neutralise the fear-oriented dogma which the Churches have used, in the name of Christ and Spiritual Truth, to maintain their secular power and wealth.


http://www.sol.com.au/kor/

[Thats my opinion]

48. Well researched

We have much to learn from the Gnostic texts. The patriarchy of the early church tried to ignore them.

[ZombieHorde]

32. You're trying to apply logic to myths. That is like trying to apply logic to a Looney Tunes

cartoon.

[Name removed]

39. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Deep13]

40. Wrong, wrong and wrong.

I posed the question for academic consideration. What about the society and thinking of the time made people case god as masculine despite the fact that the production of life is primarily a female function?

Not sure why you are confused or what is unclear about my post. I am especially unclear why you think pointing out basic reproductive biologigy is a sexist attack on men.

[NMMNG]

43. This is shocking

Almost like a socialshockwave, even.

[WhollyHeretic]

45. +1

First thing I thought when I read it.

[ChadwickHenryWard]

41. How could god ever have a sex?

Sexual reproduction is a mere 1 billion years old, 14 billion years younger than the universe. Only a tiny fraction of life has either a male or female sex, while the vast majority of life is hermaphroditic. All non-living things, by far the vast majority of things in the universe, are completely neuter. Sex is a trait exhibited by an unfathomably tiny sliver of the universe. Humans think it is important because they have it. Ascribing it to god, a supposedly infinite, transcendent being, is simply narcissistic projection.

[Humanist_Activist]

54. Its easy when you consider that the god they are most likely talking it is about 3200 years old...

or so. The concept probably originated around 1200 B.C.E. and most likely much later.

[Vehl]

42. The last time I checked, Hinduism has multiple female deities

shouldn't that deity be feminine, not the masculine deities of Abrahamic religions and Hinduism?

I do not know why you included Hinduism along with the Abrahamic religions in this topic.Surely you do know that there are Goddesses as well as Gods(as well as Atheists) in Hinduism?

In fact the Largest and one of the most popular Hindu temple in India is that of Meenakshi, a green skinned goddess


The Largest temple in India, is that of a Goddess
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x257572

Btw, we Hindus just celebrated Navaratri, Arguably the biggest Hindu festival, in honor of the goddess.

Navaratri, the Festival of the Goddess
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=214x305425

Shaktism (Sanskrit: Śāktaṃ, शाक्तं; lit., 'doctrine of power' or 'doctrine of the Goddess') is a denomination of Hinduism that focuses worship upon Adi parashakti or Shakti or Devi or Parvati – the Hindu Divine Mother – as the absolute, ultimate Godhead. It is, along with Shaivism and Vaisnavism, one of the three primary schools of devotional Hinduism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shaktism


:)