Testreligion.com
In the big picture, is faith in God, revelation from God and prayer worth it?
Do we prevent somebody being hurt by superstition or faith by rejecting and challenging those things? Is it mistaken to support organised religion in membership or donations?
If people do good because they are human, not because God prompts them then is it right to risk giving God any credit when they alone own their good??
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
QUOTE OF THE WEEK:
Christianity gets its religious privilege by building on a man who is himself built on having the same anti-woman and pro-sex abuse outlook as his society had. It is built on lies that take advantage of a possible child rape or sex assault, Mary's. It is built on callous untruths and half-truths about a culture that bordered on treating innocent vulnerable girls as mere sex objects to breed children. The horror of childbirth in those days cannot be imagined. In poor areas more mothers died while having their babies than survived.
The gospels say that Jesus was followed by rumours of
being illegitimate.
Matthew says that Mary conceived before her wedding
and Joseph believed he was not the father. We don't know what the expression
being conceived by the Holy Spirit means. If Joseph molested her and her
virginity remained pregnancy would be possible. I think that the expression that
Jesus is being conceived by the Holy Spirit is a euphemism for Mary conceiving
by a human sperm without full sex.
When Joseph took her to wife he had to take her that
day to the chupa and then present the bedclothes stained with blood from her
hymen to the authorities as proof that it was a real marriage and she was a
virgin and he was capable of sex.
This is clearly another sexual assault.
Luke has Mary being asked if she would have the baby
for God and she consents after a short conversation. That is not consent. It was
too brief for that and how could she really think of all the consequences? It is
what child molesters do, make a child think she consents. She was only a child.
She was oppressed. She was possibly a sickly girl. She was poor. She was
malnourished. She is commonly thought to have been twelve but her twelve would
have been more like eight. Her body was not ready for a baby. And childbirth in
those days was as easily a cause of death as a cause of a baby coming.
Girls like her were made to wed when they were mere
children. To walk away from such a fake forced marriage when they mature would
be a duty but Jesus reinforced the right to marital rape by banning a girl from
divorcing her man. No wonder his blanket ban on divorce horrified his listeners.
In that context we ask what kind of man Jesus was. He
did not respect his own mother. He did did not admit her victimhood.
Patrick H Gormley