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No Longer Quivering/Take Heart Project
Discuss Biblical and theological support for concept that Bible teaches equality between sexes.
KR Wordgazer
Re: No Longer Quivering/Take Heart Project
Post by KR Wordgazer » Wed Oct 20, 2010 3:42 pm
Thank you, Metacrock. As for the "we especially don't say it to Kristen" -- I don't agree that I should be singled out as getting more courtesy than anyone else here, but I appreciate the thought.
Zarove, here is a link to a Theological Dictionary of the Old Testament that supports my claim that the original Hebrew text does say "conception" or "pregnancy" as one of the two things that was going be multiplied. The other one was "sorrow."
http://books.google.com/books?id=TyJBBD ... se&f=false
I am not sure why, Metacrock, you consider this translation as stupid? It makes logical sense that a woman's body being able to be pregnant more frequently than her physical form can safely sustain or recover from, might be considered a curse-- existing even despite a general attitude that children themselves are a good thing.
As for the word "sophistry," surely you were aware of the negative connotation of this word. I took it according to its usually understood meaning. I am glad you didn't intend the character assault that it clearly implied, but the fact remains that a character assault was made, intentionally or otherwise. To apologize when you've insulted someone, intentionally or not, is the usual, and Christian, course of action.
Note regarding No Longer Quivering: It is true that it used to be a lot more strongly leaning towards atheism when I first started posting there; but it was never the intention of the blog owner for the site to be exclusively atheist or exclusively theist-- but rather, to be a place of common ground where all who were victims of abusive cults-- and particularly of those that single out women for special forms of oppression-- can meet and discuss things. I will admit that I have considerably affected the original attitudes towards Christians that existed among the atheists when I first began posting there.
Zarove, if you are interested you might review the essay over there entitled, "Why Don't You Just Move On?" I think it does a pretty good job of explaining why it doesn't always work that way.
http://nolongerquivering.com/2010/08/26 ... d-move-on/
Last edited by KR Wordgazer on Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:06 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Wag more.
Bark less.
Post by Metacrock » Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:02 pm
ZAROVE wrote: EVEN the definitions of Sophistry you presented do not say they are always intentionally deceptive arguments, and the word generally means that the argument is designed to sound reasonable but really isn't. It can conotate intentional deceit, but most often simply conotate the use of an argument to support a position even though said argument is not supported by proper evidence.
I'm not attacking you, your simply reading into my posts a hostility that's not present.
can you say "passive aggressive?" It's obvious you are attacking her. you are doing it a way designed to crush her ego for daring to disagree with some little misguided by gone standard of imperialism that you romantically attach yourself to.
Really I'm treating you no differently than I did Messiah Rain, who spells god in lower case each time he uses it even though this is bad grammar, and also claims Adam And Eve could not have really been responsible for their actions for they had not yet taken of the Tree of Knowledge.
O that's brilliant. you really know how to charm people there. So you saying you talk to her no differently than you do some nut case whom you obviously regard as a fool and that's supposed to make her feel un attacked? What? you think she's a total idiot?you think you can just say "i'm no attacking you" even though you made her feel like shit, that's supposed to shut her up is that it?
His argument fails because Adam and Eve need to be ignorant, possessed of little to no knowledge, before they eat the Fruit off of a tree known as "The Tree Of Knowledge". But the Tree if the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, not simply the Tree of Knowledge, and thus his argument was invalid.
ahaahah yet to fit your preconceived notion of doctrine they do but what does that have to do with what's really going on in the text? "they need to be..." man that cracks me up. You need them to be, that doesn't mean they are!
I did not call his argument sophistry, but it was the same sort of thing.
ahahahahahahah ROTFLOL "I didn't say you are an idiot just very much like an idiot."
He begins with a position, then seeks to argue for it and uses any argument that can be used to defend his position. People do this all the time, and the sort of thinking is Dangerous as it prevents true evaluation of the arguments.
O brother, who the hell do you think you are? you don't have right to assign that kind of value to people's argument. "Its' dangerous. if we let people way pretty soon they wont vote Republican anymore."
You simply accept something because you prefer It if you think along these lines. You personally did the same thing with El Shaddai, you preferred that it meant "The Breasted One", and you Interpret this to be Feminine because women have breasts and men don't.
you had no support for your view and your logic was atrocious. I totally outpointed you on scholarly support before someone wiped the board by hacking it.
your analysis about breasts is not sterling. I disproved it. you are dishonest in insisting that I never said what I did. You have never once addressed the fact of what I said. the strength giving image of mother's milk.
then you claim to be a Hebrew scholar.. I have Rabbinical evidence and you don't.
Your failure to comprehend the the strength giving metaphor of a woman's best speaks volumes.
The fact that men do, In fact, have Breasts and the actual word may have simply came form the word for upper chest (Assuming that's even right) never occurred to you.
That has nothing at all to do with the issue. the Rabbis did not see it that way that's not how they took. Men don't usually refer to their breast as breasts they call them paps. The reason there is a breast metaphor is the strength giving aspect of mother suckling her baby.
you never once addressed that argument. I made it time after time and you ignored every time. you are wrong. you are disproved. I have scholarly you don't'.
stop trying to assign motives to Kristen because you are extremely transparent.
You took a modern English idiomatic use of the word "Breast" and applied it Universally. You do this without thinking through the ramifications of the argument. It never occurred to you that "Breast" is not a feminine exclusive. You wanted this to be Feminine, so it was, and the argument made sense to you, and you likely still use it.
No you took a modern idiomatic use of the term breast and insisted that it be applied to an ancient world concept from a culture of which you do not read the language and did not do the research and you have been extremely dishonest about the whole issue.
The same thing is true here. You want to support Birth Control so you buy into any argument that allows you to, and treat it as if its somehow valid and that your "Taking a deeper look" at the Bible. In this case though the deeper look makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
stop assigning motives.
The Hebrew, and subsequent English translations, don't obviously mean that Eve will become pregnant more often as the result of the Curse, and if you study anatomy at all and contrast Human reproduction with that of other Animals you will see Humans actually reproduce at a significantly lower rate than most other Species.
That's not the issue. The fundies in the quivering movement understand the curse on Even in that way and they use that to justify making their wives have 10 kids. That's the issue she's dealing with. Weather or not supports birth control is neither here nor there. you are not disproving the morality of birth control by just tagging her as having that opinion.
If you reduce the number of Pregnancies women have naturally you will end up with a Species which doesn't produce enough offspring to ensure the survival of the species.
Now he's a demographer. that's not true man. From Hebrew scholar to demographer what a guy. what are you trying to do here? that's just ignorant.
In fact, even in today's world you see that the pattern where if most people use Birth Control they tend not to have a Population that is growing but contracting, and this is even with intentional discontinuation in order to have a specified number of Children, or people who forget in the heat of passion to take nay precautions.
you never read Malthus hu? that's silly. The only thing it would do is to destroy family names. So what? That's part of that old world charm you are into, value the name, primo generator. you just be the oldest sib. It would not destroy any population that's not true.
Humans can offset this by other technical means to be sure but, if Humanity did not have the Technology that is wielded today, the fact that the Average European population is at below 2.0 and stands more at 1.5 would spell disaster, perhaps doom, for Europe.
that's ridiculous. It is true that the third needs to reduce the population not the first world. The people who have the education and understanding to reduce are not the one's who need to do it. The way to accomplish that is through increased technology and economic security. The reason third world countries have so many kids is it takes a huge family to run an old style far. When the got industrialized the reduce the population.
that argument is racist anyway because it only matters if you think you have preserve blood lines. Who cares? If the French stop producing we would all be better off anyway. I would think you would go along with that.
Given that a woman can only become Pregnant once a month, and considering that women do not generally become pregnant while Pregnant, and the vast Majority of Births are single Child, its hard to imagine Eve being made less fertile if the Curse were lifted, and the Human race surviving.
If the husbands through there was a curse that mandated that the women be pregame all the time and have a huge family then the woman would be pregnant all the item and that not good for her.
bad bad bad analysis Zor. you can think better than this.
We also have the stark reality that no one in the Ancient World understood the Curse of Eve as being that she will have more Children than before. None. Its not in any Hebrew commentaries.
wrong. some did, read Bushnell.
Sure, I've not read them all, maybe I'm wrong, but I doubt you have any text from the Ancient world that said that,
why do you doubt that? Because she's so stupid she can't have it right? She does have it. She's read Bushnell. It was a woman who studied it, Bushnell was a woman.
in addition to pain in Childbirth, Eve will also become Pregnant more frequently. If this was indeed part of the Curse, why did no one mention it at all in Antiquity?
Or is this another instance of "The Patriarchy" suppressing the Truth?
they did. that's more of those verses that you missed in the Talmud. I don't know how a major Hebrew scholar such as yourself can miss so much. I'm sure you read the read the Talmud a couple of dozen times right? That's in the stuff you missed.
You claim that this is what the Text said in the Original Hebrew. No, its not. No one else read those word s into the Original Hebrew who happened to live when the language was actually spoken as a Living Language, no one understood that as part of Eve's Curse. If its so obvious in the Text, why did it take till now to discover it?
And you know this form the many years you spent living in the ancient world and speaking Hebrew right? You are such a major Hebrew scholar we should take your word for it hu?
Not only have I seen it in Bushnell but also in a couple of other books by scholarly authors. I don't think you have read the Talmud. I think you know Hebrew and I know you didn't live in the ancinet world.
Its simply a misreading of the text. The Curse was that she would have pain in Childbirth, but would still long for Children anyway so she'd be subjected to said Pain, not that she would become Pregnant more often.
The little arrogant one confidently asserts "it's just a misreading." It's your misreading. your opinion and you have no backing just like your groundless assertion on El Shaddi.
As to your personal experiences, I don't mean to sound Cruel but,
there's the passive aggressive bull shit again. yes you do mean it. You need to be cruel. you want to vent you want to be cruel because it makes you feel like a big shot. That's just why you do it and makes you feel like a man to do it to a woman. It makes you feel controlled to allow women equality. I went through that. you have to get over, but you are not mature enough to understand yourself.
It's a guy thing to feel controlled when you first grant equality to women because then you lose a privilege. you feel demoted as a man so yur manhood is based upon aggression because you were raised in the south. I know that, I'm not stupid I was raised in the south. I know how it is.
this is normal that southern men go through this when they first confront their own sexist nature.
I have been abused a lot in my life, I don't feel the need to endlessly rehash why that abuse was wrong or to simply attack that sort of abuse endlessly.[/quote]
Naw Barn you don't want to say That. see now this is the kind of thing we don't need. Look Mr. Sensitivity, however much you were abused. we all have our little pain in our lives, unless you have been a woman you have never been expected to accept your lot in life as second class, bottom rung, exist to serve others.
You don't know. You are not being sensitive you are trying to feel superior and get the value of manhood by lording it over a woman. You need to grow up. If you really have the grit to face your own personal demons then you need to accept the fact that these other people have a spicily draw back that we as men don't have, they were tried accept a place on the bottom, you did nto go through that you don't' know.
Its unhealthy and leads to exaggerated thinking which is equally as Dubious, perpetuating the cycle of abuse rather than eliminating it. A better way to handle the past is to simply let go of the abuse and to put things into proper perspective.
You don't do this by simply countering everything the abusers said.
Now you are a shrink?
guess what other attitudes are unhealthy? It's unhealthy to act like a little tyrant and crush people's egos becuase you need to feel special. You are basing your self worth on putting down women. don't' play games. I did that too. I know what that's about.
As for the "we especially don't say it to Kristen" -- I don't agree that I should be singled out as getting more courtesy than anyone else here, but I appreciate the thought.
you are the board mom. Well I didn't mean that in the sense of being more polite to you than to others but I don't think you have the capacity to accept insults and just blow them off like I do.
Yes we should all be equally cautious to each other.
Heh, heh. You're quite correct about that, Metacrock. I am not thick-skinned, and probably part of it is my gender, but part of it's just me.
As for my argument about the increase in pregnancies being part of the Curse-- I was confused about whether you agreed or not, but that is the point I was making. The Quiverfull proponents don't use this text to say women should be endlessly pregnant, because it's the Curse--- they use Psalm 127 instead. They are usually KJV-onlyists, too-- which means they ignore the fact that the KJV translates it as "I will greatly multiply. . . your conception" as part of the Curse. They do this in order to pretend that non-stop pregnancy for 10-15 years is an unqualified good.
(Of course, there are certain Quiverfull teachers who actually teach that the Curse is God's perfect will-- so that they may preach "he shall rule over you" as God's perfect will. But most of them don't go quite that far.)
ZAROVE
Post by ZAROVE » Wed Oct 20, 2010 4:40 pm
Meta- perhaps reread the El Shaddai thread. Your own sources proved me right. El Shaddai means "God of our Strength" or "God of Strength" or "God the Self Sufficient one' according to the scholars you quoted, none seemed to find it overly feminine.
The reason I didn't bother with continuing is because your own sources agreed with my conclusion.
Kristen-
The problem is logic. Even from a Biological perspective, your claim makes no real sense. Primates in general have a sluggish reproduction cycle next to equivalent weight Mammals, and Humans are no different in this regard. Most would say this is because of the complexity of the Brain, in addition to the Mass. Humans are actually a Large Animal. Not the Largest, but large. But they aren't too large to cut the Gestation down to 6 months, and indeed some Viable Foetus's exist at that early even in Humans, its just Rare.
However, human Gestation takes 9 months. If I had a woman and actually got her pregnant as soon as possible after she gave Birth, I'd still only be capable of at most 1 Child every 9 months barring Twins. This is a very, very slow sort of Reproduction, rendered slower by the fact that you have ONE Child per pregnancy on average. Worse, most women do not become Pregnant right away after giving Birth, even in antiquity. There is usually a year or so gap between them at least. Contrasted to Cats, who often have litters of between 4 and 8 Kittens, and can breed two litters per year, this is actually pretty small.
Following your Logic, the Pre-Cursed woman would become Pregnant Less Often. How much less? If you cut it in half, you get a woman capable of pregnancy once every two months, meaning that if your trying to have a lot of Children, as they did in the Ancient World, you end up with far fewer. That brood of 18 becomes 9, and about half will die before they have their own Children.
So what you end up with is a diminished capacity to rapidly fill an environment with Humans. This reduces survivability.
Its just not Viable from a Biological perspective that Women would be infertile more often given that they on average have only one child that takes nine months to Gestate.
The text itself is simply not supportive either. As I said, no one writes about it in the Ancient World, no one refers to Eves Curse as her having more Children. It doesn't matter that you can rationalise a scenario ion which this could be seen as a curse because a woman is having more Children than her body can bare, that's simply not what other people read in the text over the last 4500 years. That's also not the obvious rendering of the Text.
Here is the Authorised King James text.
Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.
You focus on the "Multiply thy sorrows and thy Conception" and interpret this to mean that both sorrow and conception are increased, so she must be going pregnant more often. But, read on, it elaborates. In sorrow shalt thou bring fourth Children, means it will be painful, and Thy Desire will be to Thy Husband, and he shall Rule over thee, THAT'S the increasing conception. Women will now long for, and feel incomplete without, a man. This is even True today. Men do better as singles than do women, women prefer Relationships and men, while still desirous of them, can do much better without them. While both men and women want a Relationship, women are driven by this desire much more than are men. That's why Romance Novels and Romantic Comedies are geared toward women, and generally are geared toward them.
Men Rule Women in a way Women can't Rule Men. Men can walk away easier than women can, and men can be in solitude easier than women can. Women are thus less self sufficient base don a desire, or emotional need, to be with a man.
Its less about increasing the actual Pregnancy, but increasing the means of it. Increasing the presence of a man in a woman's life.
There is also the fact that "Conception" in this context will refer to the entire stage of Pregnancy, meaning that a woman will be uncomfortable to say the least for the whole process.
Its less that the Frequency of her pregnancy will increase, and if it had been less the Human Species would be risking extinction, but rather simply that this whole process will now be unpleasant.
Oh and if you want to be a KJV Onlyist in this, why not also look at how the words were used in the 1600's? Is not like the KJV Bible was written in Modern English, and often the words, such as "Multiply thy Sorrows and Conception" would sound very different to the 17th century reader than to today's audience.
That said, please not I'm only discussing the Eve thing. No side trails. Theres a reason I didn't bother with the Onen comment later int he article. That reason being that the logic help up and was Valid. It can be disagreed with, but its not shallow or poorly thought out.
I just dislike the shoddy Logic.
Also, Meta, you told me not to assign motives to Kristen, don't you think that's a Bit Hypocritical from you given you assigned them to me? Also how do you explain that I am like most Southern Men when most people who meet me don't think I'm from the South at all and I've retained a rather prominent old Fashioned British attitude.
Speaking of which, if I want women to be inferior and cant stand women being given equality because it makes me feel controlled, why do I have such reverence for Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth? She's well past "Equal" and is instead my Sovereign. Heck, the first Queen Elizabeth is a Personal hero of mine as is Queen Victoria.
If I'm quiet willing to submit to the Authority of a Female on the Throne and am quiet willing to accept the removal of the Male preference, and was supportive of Sweden's decision to, then don't you think that this would render your own arguments about my sexism rather strange?
I would bow to a woman but cant stand equality to women even though a woman sits over me in a position of power?
Worse, I want the Queen given real, actual Power to Govern, and not to be just a Figurehead. One of my arguments is that she has far more experience in State Matters than the Politicians and seems genuinely better informed and impartial.
I don't think this is about me needing to put women down and make them inferior to me.
Oh and I'm actually the Second Born son, not the first, in my family, in which I was raised by a single mother when my Father died.
I also did spend time learning Hebrew, I don't just use reference books, and this really is just about precision in the Text, and I don't treat Kristen any differently than anyone else. You misconstrue what I meant earlier, but all I meant was, I treat everyone the same way.
Now, can you supply links or direct quotes to your Talmudic sources?
ZAROVE wrote: Also, Meta, you told me not to assign motives to Kristen, don't you think that's a Bit Hypocritical from you given you assigned them to me? Also how do you explain that I am like most Southern Men when most people who meet me don't think I'm from the South at all and I've retained a rather prominent old Fashioned British attitude.
No. as one guy to another, come on!
that's totally different. She's not an ordinary woman, she's not your equal. She's on a par with you. Of cousre you can reverse a queen. Can you accept as equal the average woman you see on the street?
Again, you have romanticized and vested the status monarch, you and thousands of years of human culture, with special attributes. You don't have to accept the queen as an equal and your obedience to her is not based upon her being an ordinary woman who merited a job that places in authority over you. She's a symbol, of the nation.
learn it some more. That doesn't give you the knowledge of the Talmud you have to actually go get it and read it.
I did that once and you know I did.
KR Wordgazer wrote: Heh, heh. You're quite correct about that, Metacrock. I am not thick-skinned, and probably part of it is my gender, but part of it's just me.
I was kind of fudging on that because I didn't read the article. But it is true that Bushnell quotes a Talmudic source that says that women will be pregant more as part of the curse. they a lot more stupid things than that too.
ZAROVE wrote: Oh and if you want to be a KJV Onlyist in this, why not also look at how the words were used in the 1600's? Is not like the KJV Bible was written in Modern English, and often the words, such as "Multiply thy Sorrows and Conception" would sound very different to the 17th century reader than to today's audience.
I know that it says multiply conception because I consulted a Hebrew student at Perkins who I know took Hebrew. That is what it says.
It's not a matter of logic but of language.
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