I agree. But the historical circumstances are a bit more complicated. The early Christian church as it existed in Jerusalem was very much conservative Hebrew in outlook. All of the traditional Hebrew laws were observed – and this was consistent with the culture.

Out in the wider Roman/Greek world – where Paul was preaching and founding Christian congregations – women had more independence. And this is reflected in Paul’s letters – women are prominently mentioned and one was even described as a “deacon”. Lydia, the first Greek converted by Paul, was a dealer in purple cloth and thus probably a fairly wealthy individual. Her congregation – the church at Philippi was always a big booster of Paul and his missions and they contributed money and support. Paul understood Greek culture and his theology reflects this.

The church in Jerusalem ended in 70 AD when the city was sacked by the Romans. In the early 2nd century the Jews were scattered out of Roman Palestine by order of the Emperor and the Christianity that survived consisted mainly of the Greek churches that Paul had founded (and the church at Rome.) So the disconnect between the role of women in the Hebrew world and Christianity as it evolved in the 2nd century can be explained mainly by the termination of “Jewish” Christianity by Rome.

Slaves were acceptable, now they’re not. Women were possessions of men, now they’re not. Homosexuals were to be killed, now … not. Many historians believe (as do I) that the story of Jesus’ birth was invented to convince Jews that Jesus was the Messiah by fulfilling Old Testament prophesy.

If Christianity wants to survive, it will continue to evolve. More “mega churches”, more prosperity gospel and more politically correct teachings to align with the ever evolving views of society. Or Christianity will die, just like every other religion throughout history.

Faith is worthless. People profess ideas that they may not even really believe, such as that the Bible is the literal word of God, so that they can continue to belong to a particular social group. Look how crazy some people react when their faith in Rush Limbaugh is attacked – maybe it’s because they can’t accept that part of something they have identified with is wrong. If God is gone, what fills the void? If you have an accident, and you can’t attribute it to demonic attack, you have to accept that you’re not ‘special,’ and some people can’t handle that.

Actually, here’s an interesting observation.

I’m an agnostic. I do believe God exists. (Yes, you can fight me on this, and I expect you to. But let’s leave it at that. It’s full of philosophical idiocy that I don’t want to resort to.)

I haven’t been dinged by the Atheists on this board, despite my belief in something that cannot be proven.

In contrast, members of Christianity have actively questioned my point of view. I count at least 3.

All on this board alone.

There must certainly be something I didn’t do. What could it be? ….ah, it’s the fact that I don’t come into threads, thinking “my cadre is 100% right, and God is on our side. Anyone who disagrees is 100% wrong”.

The beef about cherry picking is that Christianity accuses non-believers of doing so, all the while doing the same things themselves.

The accusation of cherry-picking comes from the fact that, when asked a question, a Christian would instead use a quote from the Bible as an answer – and actually get away with it, despite not actually answering anything (See: “I know the bible is true, the Bible tells me so”). Non-believers usually can’t get away with circular arguments like that.

I agree, Jesus and God should leave THE WELL ALONE. Sometimes I wish I never learnt of them – because the end result is me asking questions that their servants will NEVER answer, and the growing realization that I’d have to LIE to myself in order to believe a single shred of the Book.

Just because many, many people believe in something out of faith – doesn’t make it ethical, moral, or (most importantly) correct in the eyes of God.

There are humans in the world who believe, with great faith, that WAR, FIGHTING and CONFLICT are still the only ways to settle things politically. Faith is indeed stronger than reason these days – which is why, I’m sorry, this world isn’t perfect, and God gave us a raw deal.

Paul M Says: How many people died martyr to their faith? Compare that with how many died for the principle of thermodynamic equalibrium or calculus.

Faith is stronger than reason – that is why God wants us to believe.

It is not clear to me that martyrdom is really a measure of the validity of religion generally or of a particular religion. For one thing, the individuals who kill a martyr usually belong to another religion and would equally be called martyrs if the roles were reversed, which is often a possibility.

In order to have a martyr it is necessary to have a government which claims the right of ordering its citizens to believe some particular set of tenets and of punishing with death a refusal to believe those tenets. Or possibly a government which allows one set of citizens to treat other citizens in such a manner. Either way, this is a form of tyranny. We have many stories of citizens standing up to tyranny and it seems to me that martyrs should be numbered among them. And another point of similarity: some political rebels become tyrants themselves when they manage to come into power.

It is just silly to compare dying for faith with the idea of dying for thermodynamics or calculus. Not even physicists or mathematicians use these as the foundation of their philosophies of life. But since you did make such a comparison, it is worth noting that there was a close call along those lines. I do not want to reopen the recent discussion of Galileo so I will be very careful about how I say this. Galileo was not a martyr in the sense of being killed. And he did not intend anything of the sort. But it must be acknowledged that, as a result of putting forth a new, empirical approach to determining the truth about the physical universe, he did suffer at the hands of an established authority. We might put John Scopes in a similar category.

I think that the churches (Catholic and Protestant) backed off from attempting to suppress scientific knowledge on the basis of Biblical passages for a reason, to wit: Reason. People believe their eyes before they believe religion. Columbus, Magellan, Da Gama, et al. unequivocally demonstrated that the world is a sphere. The genie would not go back in the bottle. It would have been silly indeed to say to one of these “You are a heretic because, by going to [a place that was not previously known to exist] and coming back alive, you showed that the Bible [or Aristotle or whatever] has a flaw.” The Galileo incident was a stumble. But that cat was out of the bag, too: telescopes were already pointed at the moons of Jupiter and anyone could see the truth for himself.

Faith is not stronger than reason; it retreats wherever knowledge and reason advance. It is really good at formalizing wishful thinking wherever there is a gap in actual knowledge or something that cannot be known, i.e., where reason cannot challenge it directly. We all know how strong wishful thinking can be.