Hi, I am Hully's DS. Hully said I could ask you a question!

santa - carrying on after someone has apologised, what do you call that?

LRD thank you. However as I explained, I type as I think and that is certainly not meant to come across as authoritive at all. I am shocked if it is read that way because if you met me, I am not like that at all.

Yes I have rushed this thread and I have not thought out my responses or googled because I have been lazy and distracted. That was slobbish of me and I apologise (again) but I don't think that others gleefully prancing round insinuating that I am thick with a huge ego helps does it?

righto when i'm accused of bullying i'll just let it pass will i?

Milly the catholics have reinterpreted brothers and sisters to mean close family relations.

Hully, yes.
Also I am aware that paganism has survived but I stand by my assertion that the missionaries tried by sometimes violent means to convert everyone and they probably did more damage to pagan religions in that way.

Religion is being slagged off as being patriarchal and having a male God and a male son, but my point was that not all religion worshipped men, therefore the statement made earlier that ALL religion (their caps not mine) is man-made is not true. Religion is created by people of all sexes to fulfil a need.

saying someone has an ego is bullying?

Thanks nickel. That makes sense.

SirCliff - I am Christian. As has been pointed out to you.

I don't think people with faith can't be intellectual.

I have to say, what puts my back up a bit is most people when they make a mistake or say something all authoritative that turns out to be wrong, do have the grace to admit it, and don't pretend it was all a typo or something. If you're feeling a bit embarrassed I'm sorry, and I understand that. No-one likes to make a fool of themselves and I've done it loads of times myself.

But I do find the arguments about religion empowering women worth discussing, and it'd be nice if we could do that properly.

Hully, I have tried to apologise.

I don't think I am thick but am being made to feel so.
I have stated quite clearly that I am no expert but I've been told I have an ego.
If that is not bullying then shoot me now.

Fuck what I said. It obviously means shit.

Oh right, I posted that before I read LRD's post. Thanks for that. That is not what my post said and you know it.

I was apologising for coming across as an arse.
Can we agree to start again?

no i wouldn't say they were more successful at it sircliff after all lots of the world still has pagan or tribal religions because they failed to convert it all whereas the old religions here were successfully wiped out.

i don't get why you won't reflect rather than dig yourself deeper and deeper into wrongness through pride and weird ego shit. up to you though.

Is there not an issue over the translation of one word that protestants have translated as brother (of Jesus) and Catholics have translated as close family member?

can i re state that the hindu culture example you give of goddess worship and this somehow proving that religions aren't sexist but empowering also involves believing that women are a lower incarnation of men who are not able to reach high spiritual states or achieve moksha due to their inherent inferiority.

so i'm not sure what worshipping goddesses is supposed to prove?

LRD - not sure about most of it - but there's a word that means "brothers and sisters" rather than "brothers" that happens a few times - it sounds similar to the words you said.
I'm quoting someone on a Religion thread, who did cite examples, but it's all a bit hazy now, i'm afraid.
a lot of the new translations take some of this into account - especially in the stuff Paul writes about.

santa - yes but the west went about it with much more rigour and shall we say determination? Or enforcement? Either way, thanks to those zealous missionaires what was left of the pagan religions was almost wiped out.

Look, if I came across as an arse I am sorry. I tend to post as I think, but I do not say that I am an authority on this and I did say as much earlier on, perhaps you missed that? But I do get funny about people with a religious leaning being torn to shreds because apparently they mustn't have any intellect.

What is this discrimination then?

I have no problem making a discrimination between someone who's talking sense, and someone who's talking rubbish and won't admit it. One is interesting annd the other's a waste of time.

I really take exception to that dig about the feminist section, actually. It is impossible to have a reasoned debate about discrete theoretical topics like this one when people insist on bringing their personal lives into it, and reading slights into every post they disagree with. I don't know about anyone else, but I feel really disinclined to even read the kind of posts that start "As a mother..." etc etc, when we are discussing world politics and history.

Can we agree not to do that, stick to facts where possible, and just accept that a debate will involve disagreement and not actually mean a personal attack on you, your family and all you hold dear? (general 'you' there) Because this is exactly why these threads go pear shaped.

lrd is a christian as far as i'm aware so think again - another massive innacuracy. you are being very insulting to me, to feminists, to lrd yet claiming to be insulted - most bizarre.

I was polite to you, I think, until you started making rude comments.

Hully's post is quite different from yours.

You seem to be saying that the Roman empire in the West (?!) sent missionaries to people who worshipped the Virgin Mary (??!) who were living to the East of the Roman Empire (???!!), and ... what? What is the point about the goddess worship? Are you suggesting people worshipped goddesses because they associated women with fertility, or are we back on the original point about religion empowering women? It's the latter I'm not really following, TBH.