“Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods,
explain now religion tears women down?” – Questioner
My response, You mean goddesses and yes, I am quite informed in general on religion in general. Sedentism or sedentariness and the creation of goddesses after 12,000 years ago, then gods after 7,000 years ago. As sedentary people had agriculture and the idea of gods likely spread thereafter as well as the obvious religious transfer and blending during this period began to depend more heavily upon domesticated plants and animals thus gods as well believe to add in such new survival tactics. These new sedentary ways somewhat improved the assurance of ready food when times were good but just as often this life added new limits unfamiliar to people that lived before because before when times when got bad in an area they simply moved on but not for land fixed the trials and troubles could not be escaped.
Therefore, these early sedentary peoples presumably believed that the only way they had to control their situation was worshiping some great spirit (i.e. seemingly goddesses then gods) that could assist them from their being land locked to one place or space, thus heightened resource vulnerability. Thus, resource vulnerability (adds fear motivation in the gods creation), so the sedentary people more than their hunter gathers counter parts would tend to feel more trapped to the whims of the spirits and ancestors to guide them and one can see that if one did rituals and times went good they would presumably believe it was this being worshiped that they believed played a part in the good fortune.
Such as how belief in say a thunderstorm god/goddess which is thought to bring rains for thinks like grains for bread and grasses for livestock, thus the fear of survival probably motivated the conception of gods which were likely born from the animistic idea of spirits (gods are a kind of super spirit), a totemistic belief in guardian spirits (gods are often quite similar to believed guardian spirits and more strongly personified the shamanistic guardian spirits to gods keeping intact the belief a special religious person believed to have access to, and influence in, the believed otherworld of benevolent and malevolent spirits now accompanied with specific deities. While some pagans may have been monotheistic or henotheistic (worship of a single goddess/god yet not denying a possible existence of other deities) most pagan religions express elements that are or could be preserved as in boding a seeming worldview that is pantheistic, polytheistic, shamanistic, totemistic and/or animistic.
These early paganistic believers being fairly new polytheistic believers where most likely utilizing trances, singing and dances as accompanying ritual practices thought honor and appease these guardian spirit gods. To me, primal early superstition starts around 1 million years ago with. Then the development of religion increased around 600,000 years ago with proto superstition and then even to a greater extent around 300,000 years ago with progressed superstition. Around 100,000 years ago, is the primal stage of early religion, the proto stage of religion is around 75,000 years ago, or less, the progressed stage of early religion is around 50,000 years ago and finally after 13,500 years ago, begins with the evolution of organized religion.
The set of stages for the development of organized religion is subdivided into the following: the primal stage of early organized religion is 13,000 years ago, the proto stage of organized religion is around 10,000 years ago, and finally the progressed stage of organized religion is around 7,000 years ago with the forming of mythology and its connected set of Dogmatic-Propaganda-Closure belief strains of sacralized superstitionism. In the stage of organized religion, one important aspect that is often overlooked because of male only thinking or by some over emphasized because of extreme feminism is gender.
There are some obvious gender associations in artifacts and possible gender involved religious beliefs but thoughtful feminist archaeologists do not pounce on every representation of a woman and pronounce that it is a goddess. Around 5,000 years ago elements seem to be grouping together with its connected set of Dogmatic-Propaganda-Closure belief strains of sacralized superstitionism that took different forms of behavior in different areas of the world.
[Antireligionist] My blogs that address Religion: Archaeology, Anthropology, Philosophy and History
“So then explain now religion in. General tears women down. I agree 100% that the most prominent religions in the US are anti-women. I also believe that you’re a good guy who genuinely wants to help people… personally, my mentality is LIVE AND LET LIVE. people are all different with different needs. Sometimes, people need to feel that someone is watching out for them. That doesn’t make them weak, it just means that need different things. Do I necessarily believe this? No. BUT… our number one responsibility on this planet is to be decent human beings. I think I’ve met plenty of good athiests, Mormons, baptists, satanists, etc… all those belief systems encourage them to be good people in a way they can relate to… when you’re telling people “I’m right and your wrong.” Aren’t you essentially doing what you accuse religious zealots of?” – Questioner
My response, Ok. how about Rape, Sexism, and Religion? The concept of rape, both as an abduction and in the sexual sense (not always distinguishable), makes its first historical appearance in early religious texts. The rape of women or youths is a common theme in Greek mythology. Among the rapes or abductions committed by Zeus, the supreme deity of the Greek pantheon, are Europa and Ganymede. In Roman law, raptus (or raptio) meant primarily kidnapping or abduction; sexual violation was a secondary issue. The “abduction” of an unmarried girl from her father’s household in some circumstances was a matter of the couple eloping without her father’s permission to marry. Rape in the English sense of “forced sex” was more often expressed as stuprum, a sex crime committed through violence or coercion (cum vi or per vim). Raptus ad stuprum, “abduction for the purpose of committing a sex crime,” emerged as a legal distinction in the late Roman Republic. The Lex Julia de vi publica, recorded in the early 3rd century AD but dating probably from the dictatorship of Julius Caesar, defined rape as forced sex against “boy, woman, or anyone”. Although Roman law in the historical period recognized rape as a crime, the rape of women is a pervasive theme in the myths and legends of early Rome. Attitudes toward rape changed when the Roman Empire became Christianized. St. Augustine interpreted Lucretia’s suicide as a possible admission that she had secretly encouraged the rapist, and Christian apologists regarded her as having committed the sin of involuntary sexual pleasure. Augustine’s interpretation of the rape of Lucretia (in The City of God Against the Pagans 1.19) has generated a substantial body of criticism, starting with a satire by Machiavelli. Historian of early Christianity Peter Brown characterized this section of Augustine’s work as his most vituperative attack on Roman ideals of virtue. Augustine redefines sexual integrity (pudicitia) as a purely spiritual quality that physical defilement cannot taint; the Romans had viewed rape and other forms of stuprum (“sex crime”) within a political context as crimes against the citizen’s body and liberty. The first Christian emperor Constantine redefined rape as a public offense rather than as a private wrong.Since under Roman law raptus could also mean cases of abduction or elopement without the head of household’s permission, Constantine ordered that if the female had consented, she should be punished along with the male “abductor” by being burnt alive. If she had not consented, she was still considered an accomplice, “on the grounds that she could have saved herself by screaming for help.” As a participant to the rape, she was punished under law by being disinherited, regardless of the wishes of her family. Even if she and her family consented to a marriage as the result of an elopement, the marriage was legally void. Ref
Women have historically been considered second-class citizens who were not thought to deserve the same rights as their male counterparts. Rape laws existed to protect virginal daughters from rape, often through their fathers. In these cases, a rape done to a woman was seen as an attack on the estate of her father because she was his property and a woman’s virginity being taken before marriage lessened her value; if the woman was married, the rape was an attack on the husband because it violated his property. The rapist was either subject to payment (see wreath money) or severe punishment. The father could rape or keep the rapist’s wife or make the rapist marry his daughter. A man could not be charged with raping his wife since she was his property. Author Winnie Tomm stated, “By contrast, rape of a single woman without strong ties to a father or husband caused no great concern.” In the United States, during slavery, the law focused primarily on rape as it pertained to black men raping white women. The penalty for such a crime in many jurisdictions was death or castration. The rape of a black woman, by any man, was considered legal. As early as the 19th century, American women were criticized if they “stray[ed] out of a [dependent] position…fought off [an] attacker…[or] behaved in too self reliant a manner…” in which case “the term rape no longer applied…”. Similar to rape myths and double standards applied to women today, description of rape in the 1800s depicted women who needed to behave or else face the inevitable consequences.
In the United States, prior to the 1930s rape was considered a sex crime that was always committed by men and always done to women. From 1935–1965, a shift from labeling rapists as criminals to believing them to be mentally ill “sexual psychopaths” began making its way into popular opinion. Men caught for committing rape were no longer sentenced to prison but admitted to mental health hospitals where they would be given medication for their illness. Because only “insane” men were the ones committing acts of rape, no one considered the everyday person to be capable of such violence. Transitions in women’s roles in society were also shifting, causing alarm and blame towards rape victims. Because women were becoming more involved in the public (i.e. searching for jobs rather than being a housewife) many people believed that these women were “loose” and looking for trouble. Giving up the gender roles of mother and wife was seen as defiant against traditional values while immersing themselves within society created the excuse that women would “not [be] entitled to protection under the traditional guidelines for male-female relationships”.
So to me religious culture is very involved in “Rape culture,” a sociological concept used to describe a setting in which rape is pervasive and normalized due to societal attitudes about gender and sexuality. Behaviors commonly associated with rape culture include victim blaming, slut shaming, sexual objectification, trivializing rape, denial of widespread rape, refusing to acknowledge the harm caused by some forms of sexual violence, or some combination of these. Ref Until 2012, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) still considered rape a crime solely committed by men against women. In 2012, they changed their definition from “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will” to “The penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.” The previous definition, which had remained unchanged since 1927, was considered outdated and narrow. The updated definition includes recognizing any gender of victim and perpetrator and that rape with an object can be as traumatic as penile/vaginal rape.
The bureau further describes instances when the victim is unable to give consent because of mental or physical incapacity. It recognizes that a victim can be incapacitated by drugs and alcohol and unable to consent. The definition does not change federal or state criminal codes or impact charging and prosecution on the federal, state or local level; it rather means that rape will be more accurately reported nationwide. Health organizations and agencies have also expanded rape beyond traditional definitions. The World Health Organization(WHO) defines rape as a form of sexual assault, while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) includes rape in their definition of sexual assault; they term rape a form of sexual violence.
The CDC lists other acts of coercive, non-consensual sexual activity that may or may not include rape, including drug-facilitated sexual assault, acts in which a victim is made to penetrate a perpetrator or someone else, intoxication where the victim is unable to consent (due to incapacitation or being unconscious), non-physically forced penetration which occurs after a person is pressured verbally (by intimidation or misuse of authority to force to consent), or completed or attempted forced penetration of a victim via unwanted physical force (including using a weapon or threatening to use a weapon). Some countries or jurisdictions differentiate between rape and sexual assault by defining rape as involving penile penetration of the vagina, or solely penetration involving the penis, while other types of non-consensual sexual activity are called sexual assault.
Scotland, for example, emphasizes penile penetration, requiring that the sexual assault must have been committed by use of a penis to qualify as rape. The 1998 International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda defines rape as “a physical invasion of a sexual nature committed on a person under circumstances which are coercive”. In other cases, the term rape has been phased out of legal use in favor of terms such as sexual assault or criminal sexual conduct. Some laws have eliminated the term rape altogether. Some research purposes, incidence of rapes are classified into a number of categories. These can be gender, age, ethnicity, geographical location, culture or historical periods. Other categories of rape describe the relationship of the perpetrator to the victim and the context of the sexual assault.
Rape is categorized as date rape, gang rape, marital rape, incestual rape, child sexual abuse, prison rape, acquaintance rape, war rape and statutory rape. Victims of rape or sexual assault come from a wide range of sexual orientations, genders, ages, and degrees of impairment or disability. Perpetrators sometimes use objects for penetration, force the victim to penetrate the perpetrator, force the victim to perform oral sex or assault the victim with anal penetration. Those experiencing non-consensual, forced sexual experiences and sexual assault include women, heterosexual men, homosexual men, boys, adolescent males, spouses, girlfriends, boyfriends, prepubescent girls and boys, adolescent girls, children, the elderly, and even infants.
Forced sexual activity can be committed over a long period of time with little to no physical injury. In an early study of U.S. 1,632 students from 79 different schools, boys and girls were surveyed and asked if they had, at some time, been asked to engage in unwelcome sexual behavior. 85% of the girls and 76% of the boys said that this had occurred. The boys and girls indicated that the behavior they experienced included pinching, grabbing, touching in a sexual manner. One fourth of the girls had been forced to kiss someone and 10% of both the girls and the boys reported having been forced against their wills to do something sexual other than kissing. Students reported that 80% of the unwelcome sexual behavior had come from other students, and 20% had come from teachers, coaches, or other adults. Out of the total of child abuse rates, slightly more than 75% were neglected, 18% were assaulted and slightly more than nine percent were sexually abused. Ref
There is a heavy influence of sexism in the Major World Religions
From the ancient past, evidence shows that sexism was near nonexistent and females were highly valued. Currently in the world with the male dominant thinking, male centric religions, and the many cultures of societies marginalizing women and promoting of sexism, which all seem to devalue, give a lesser status, or limit the value of women. Moreover, it should be understood that before there were any male god myths, there were only or mainly female goddesses and animals or aspects of nature, which were held as spirits or something like deities. Many present day thinkers may find it difficult to comprehend that women could have been valued, be equal to some extent, or even hold a position of power, especially political power in early historic or prehistoric times. However from some of the earliest writing we see that as far back as at least around 6,000 years ago women were documented as leaders and other positions of political authority that went on for thousands of years starting with Legendary Queen of Ethiopia.
Likewise, according to a scientific study, there is further confirmation which shows that sexual equality is nothing new, even if it is something long forgotten. In contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, evidence shows that men and women tend to have equal influence on important decision-making. Such findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, which suggests that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Getting back to the timeline, by at least by 12,000 years ago, female goddesses and not male gods were created; however, the female goddesses may have been created as early as 40,000 years ago or earlier. Furthermore, I surmise around 12,000 years ago the possible beginnings of the hints of sexism and latter patriarchy began. Before 12,000 years ago, women seemed to have a special power of giving life but then things started to change, women started to lose this perceived special or magical status. However, as time went on women were starting to be seen as an object, since animals were being domesticated and humans started understand birthing.
Nevertheless, do not get me wrong, this was not a dramatic shift; it was a slow process of sexism gaining power that took thousands of years to reach full fruition as we think of it today. One of the oldest written religion is of the Sumerians who’s creator being was a Female and not a Male. The Sumerian religion is around 6,000 years old but it could be much older 7,000 to 8,000 years old. In human history, when did the religious subjugation of goddess and by extension all women occur? Well, this can also be conserved to happen around 6,000 years ago also. Although, it can be hypothesized that male gods hit the scene in full force around about 5,000 years ago, when women started to lose more, and eventually all value. The introduction of Proto-Indo-Europeans marked the patriarchalization of agrarian culture. The earliest extant written sources demonstrate that these invading patriarchal peoples accommodated their divinities to those of the indigenous goddess-worshiping cultures, and they did not immediately belittle the importance of the great mother.
Instead, the literature from the 5,000 years ago, recorded after the invasions, demonstrates the fusion of the goddess worshiping with the god worshiping culture. In Turkey, archaeologists found 4,000-year-old tablets that cite women’s rights. However, more progress sexism continued to develop after 4,000 years ago. Even today, women hardly have any value or even regained a fully equal status.. The devaluing, disrespecting, and degrading of women came before societies developed the more fixed class/sex structures as we think of today. Around 2,000 years ago, the manmade god concept which had taken time to develop finally started to be finalized completely as the only or the main gender of believed gods.
It can be said that one of the male god concept’s goal was or seems to be for male control and domination of female sexuality and their reproductive potential. Once the male god concept is fully established and by extension men with the promotion of patriarchy, it was relatively easy to maintain and enforce through holy books and laws written by men, which established women’s lower status that deny women of education, their rights to their bodies, and exclude them from decision-making. Eventually, male dominance and its sexism were establish in nearly every known religion as well as every human society and has lasted now for a few millennia. All religions have or are prone and promote sexism, some more than others but it is a shame they all share.
“No offense but posting a million links doesn’t make me see things from your point of view. TALK with me. Show me why your point is better/right. Make me see things from your point of view. I don’t need examples of religions that DO objectify women. We all know they exist. Show me some proof that EVERY SINGLE religion is essentially evil. Like you claim.” – Questioner
My response, Well, sexism in the Major World Religions with roughly the beginning of sexism and how it is evident in all the Major World Religions. From the ancient past, evidence shows that sexism was near nonexistent and females were highly valued. Currently in the world with the male dominant thinking, male centric religions, and the many cultures of societies marginalizing women and promoting of sexism, which all seem to devalue, give a lesser status, or limit the value of women. Moreover, it should be understood that before there were any male god myths, there were only or mainly female goddesses and animals or aspects of nature, which were held as spirits or something like deities. Many present day thinkers may find it difficult to comprehend that women could have been valued, be equal to some extent, or even hold a position of power, especially political power in early historic or prehistoric times. However from some of the earliest writing we see that as far back as at least around 6,000 years ago women were documented as leaders and other positions of political authority that went on for thousands of years starting with Legendary Queen of Ethiopia.
Likewise, according to a scientific study, there is further confirmation which shows that sexual equality is nothing new, even if it is something long forgotten. In contemporary hunter-gatherer tribes, evidence shows that men and women tend to have equal influence on important decision-making. Such findings challenge the idea that sexual equality is a recent invention, which suggests that it has been the norm for humans for most of our evolutionary history. Getting back to the timeline, by at least by 12,000 years ago, female goddesses and not male gods were created; however, the female goddesses may have been created as early as 40,000 years ago or earlier. Furthermore, I surmise around 12,000 years ago the possible beginnings of the hints of sexism and latter patriarchy began. Before 12,000 years ago, women seemed to have a special power of giving life but then things started to change, women started to lose this perceived special or magical status. However, as time went on women were starting to be seen as an object, since animals were being domesticated and humans started understand birthing.
Nevertheless, do not get me wrong, this was not a dramatic shift; it was a slow process of sexism gaining power that took thousands of years to reach full fruition as we think of it today. One of the oldest written religion is of the Sumerians who’s creator being was a Female and not a Male. The Sumerian religion is around 6,000 years old but it could be much older 7,000 to 8,000 years old. In human history, when did the religious subjugation of goddess and by extension all women occur? Well, this can also be conserved to happen around 6,000 years ago also. Although, it can be hypothesized that male gods hit the scene in full force around about 5,000 years ago, when women started to lose more, and eventually all value. The introduction of Proto-Indo-Europeans marked the patriarchalization of agrarian culture.
The earliest extant written sources demonstrate that these invading patriarchal peoples accommodated their divinities to those of the indigenous goddess-worshiping cultures, and they did not immediately belittle the importance of the great mother. Instead, the literature from the 5,000 years ago, recorded after the invasions, demonstrates the fusion of the goddess worshiping with the god worshiping culture. In Turkey, archeologists found 4,000-year-old tablets that cite women’s rights.
However, more progress sexism continued to develop after 4,000 years ago. Even today, women hardly have any value or even regained a fully equal status.. The devaluing, disrespecting, and degrading of women came before societies developed the more fixed class/sex structures as we think of today. Around 2,000 years ago, the manmade god concept which had taken time to develop finally started to be finalized completely as the only or the main gender of believed gods. It can be said that one of the male god concept’s goal was or seems to be for male control and domination of female sexuality and their reproductive potential.
Once the male god concept is fully established and by extension men with the promotion of patriarchy, it was relatively easy to maintain and enforce through holy books and laws written by men, which established women’s lower status that deny women of education, their rights to their bodies, and exclude them from decision-making. Eventually, male dominance and its sexism were establish in nearly every known religion as well as every human society and has lasted now for a few millennia. All religions have or are prone and promote sexism, some more than others but it is a shame they all share. Although though there is much more that can be said, I will only offer a few things as evidence of sexism in each of the current major world religions:
Sexism in Judaism (Old Testament):
Exodus 21:7 God not only sanctions selling ones daughter into slavery, but he also gives out laws on how it should be done.
Leviticus 27:3-7 God places a dollar value on human life; with women worth less than men.
Deuteronomy 22:23-24 women who are raped and fail to “cry out” likely enjoyed the attack thus should be killed.
Sexism in Christianity (New Testament):
1 Corinthians 11:7 – 9 “For a man is the image and glory of God: but the woman is the glory of the man. For the man is not of the woman; but the woman of the man.
Romans 7:2 “For the woman who hath a husband is bound by the law to her husband as long as he lives.
Titus 2:4-9 “Train the young women to be submissive to their husbands.
Qur’an (4:11) – (Inheritance) The male shall have the equal of the portion of two females (see also verse 4:176).
Qur’an (4:24) and Qur’an (33:50) – A man is permitted to take women as sex slaves outside of marriage.
Qur’an (4:34) – Men are in charge of women and good women are the obedient, because Allah hath made the one of them to excel the other.
Manusmriti 5.148. In childhood a female must be subject to her father, in youth to her husband, when her lord is dead to her sons; a woman must never be independent.
Manusmrti (9:2-4) – Men must make their women dependent day and night, and keep under their own control those who are attached to sensory objects. A woman is not fit for independence.
Rig Veda (8:33:17) – The mind of woman cannot be disciplined; she has very little intelligence.
Historical Buddha said the female’s defects greed, hate, delusion, and other defilements are greater than the male’s.
Historical Buddha who refused to ordain women as nuns. He said that allowing women into the sangha would cause his teachings to survive only half as long.
A popular belief in Buddhist countries is that negative karma results in a man being reborn as a woman and in Sukhavati-vyuha Sutra (Pure Land Buddhism) women must be reborn as men before they can enter Nirvana. Theravadan Buddhists claim a woman could never become a Buddha. The Ecclesiastical
Buddhist Council of Thailand, announced publicly that any monk who supports the ordination of women will be subject to severe punishment.
The Kanamara Matsuri (“Festival of the Phallus”) is a Shinto celebration centred on a local penis-venerating shrine in Kawasaki, Japan. The legend being that a sharp-toothed demon (vagina dentata) hid inside the vagina of a young woman and castrated two young men on their wedding nights. As a result, the young woman sought help from a blacksmith, who fashioned an iron phallus to break the demon’s teeth, which led to the enshrinement of penis-venerating.
A spiritual practice specific to women involves a relationship to sight because they are always blind or visually impaired. Male sight, specifically women out of the public eye, occupies a privileged position in everything from ancient myths to the modern wedding ritual and continually exerts an oppressive influence on the lives of women, monitoring and impeding their public movements.
“Feminine Pollution” involves the idea in Shinto ritual, which has been used in the past to justify discrimination against women. Therefore, women have historically been pushed out of the public eye and out of public religious spaces because of their supposed impurity and to this day women are haunted by the belief in their inherent pollution.
The Gurus’ teaching on the role of women is stated as, “we are conceived and born from women. Woman is our life-long friend and keeps the race going. Why should we despise her, the one who gives birth to great men?” – Guru Granth Sahib Ji (the third Guru). Well, that still is saying its men that are great because of whom they are and women great only because they can produce great men still sounds like sexism to me.
Only Men as Guru only Men as the five Panj Pyare yes try to tell me of how Sikhism is completely equal to women…
Shiha Kaur a self-clamed feminist Sikh states,“ ancient cultural traditions sometimes take precedence over the principles of in Sikhism. Maharaja Ranjeet Singh, one of the most famous Sikh Kings in Moghul India often considered a model Sikh, had seven wives. Not only does polygamy go against Sikh beliefs but also half of his wives committed sati (widowed woman commits suicide by fire) when he died in 1839. In India today, school attendance of Sikh girls is lower than that of Sikh boys. The Asian Network has reported in the rise of Asian couples travelling to India to abort female fetuses and no sweets are shared among Sikh relatives to celebrate the birth of a girl, as usually happens when a boy is born.”
Jainism does not teach that women can gain ultimate spiritual liberation, though a woman could strive to become a man in her next life so she could then reach enlightenment.
Jains believe, for example, that even microbes in the air and water are sacred life and any action that impacts other living things – such as driving or using electricity – can add to bad karma. Therefore, to Jains the bleeding which occurs in menstruation is thought to kill micro-organisms in the body, making the female body less nonviolent than the male body and the female body more prone to bad karma.
Digambara texts say that women’s genitals and breasts are sources of impurity and have many micro-organisms living in them. Digambara Jain theologians have written that due to bodily secretions, women suffer from itching which gives them uncontrollable sexual urges. They believe that women cannot take higher vows of ascetic renunciation, because naked women would have two deep emotions: shame of being naked and fear of sexual assault which they might face.
Confucius about women is “Shaoren and girls are difficult to handle. If you get familiar with them they cease to be humble. If you keep them away, they get resentful.” (Analects 17:25) This sure sounds insulting to women.
A well-known sexist Confucianism commandments is “Since the age of seven, men and women should not share a room or food” and “When young, a woman should obey the father, when married, the husband, when old, the son” are creations of later generation of Confucian scholars who developed a greater sexist tendency since the Tang dynasty era (618-907 C.E.).
According to the Confucian structure of society, women at every level were to occupy a position lower than men. Most Confucians accepted the subservience of women to men as natural and proper.
Highest leadership of the religion where only men Central figures: Bahá’u’lláh The Báb `Abdu’l-Bahá aso all men.
Women are excluded from serving on the religion’s highest governing body, the Universal House of Justice, which is confined to men only is sexist and does constitute evidence of the Bahá’í Faith support of superiority of men over women.
In 1997, a Canadian fantasy writer was disenrolled, primarily for his outspokenness on email forums for women’s full inclusion in Baha’i administration. Furthermore, in the Baha’i Faith there are particular cases of assignment of different roles to women and men at the level of individual life, family, and society.
“Thank you! That is EXACTLY what I was looking for.” – Questioner
My response, I got facts upon facts. I am a feminist atheist. Did you know that there are Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s? Feminist atheism: well, you may be surprised but the first known feminist Ernestine Roseis was also an atheist and in a general way feminist atheism is a momentum within feminism that advocates atheism, opposing religion and its manly make gods as a main source of female oppression and inequality, believing that the majority of the religions are sexist and oppressive to women. Atheist feminists object to the fact that women are not eligible to be equal members as well. The first known feminist who was also an atheist was Ernestine Rose, born in Poland on January 13, 1810. Her open confession of disbelief in Judaism when she was a teenager brought her into conflict with her father (who was a rabbi) and an unpleasant relationship developed. In order to force her into the obligations of the Jewish faith, her father, without her consent, betrothed her to a friend and fellow Jew when she was sixteen. Instead of arguing her case in a Jewish court (since her father was the local rabbi who ruled on such matters), she went to a secular court, pleaded her own case, and won.
In 1829 she went to England, and in 1835 she was one of the founders of the British atheist organization Association of All Classes of All Nations, which “called for human rights for all people, regardless of sex, class, color, or national origin”. She lectured in England and America (moving to America in May 1836) and was described by Samuel P. Putnam 3 as “one of the best lecturers of her time”. He wrote that “no orthodox [meaning religious] man could meet her in debate”. In the winter of 1836, Judge Thomas Hertell, a radical and freethinker, submitted a married women’s property act in the legislature of the state of New York to investigate ways of improving the civil and property rights of married women, and to permit them to hold real estate in their own name, which they were not then permitted to do in New York. Upon hearing of the resolution, Ernestine Rose drew up a petition and began the soliciting of names to support the resolution in the state legislature, sending the petition to the legislature in 1838.
This was the first petition drive done by a woman in New York. Ernestine continued to increase both the number of the petitions and the names until such rights were finally won in 1848, with the passing of the Married Women’s Property Act. Others who participated in the work for the bill included Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and Frances Wright, who were all anti-religious. Later when Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton analyzed the influences which led to the Seneca Falls Convention on women’s rights in 1848, they identified three causes, the first two being the radical ideas of Frances Wright and Ernestine Rose on religion and democracy, and the initial reforms in women’s property law in the 1830s and 1840s. Ernestine later joined a group of freethinkers who had organized a Society for Moral Philanthropists, at which she often lectured. In 1837, she took part in a debate that continued for thirteen weeks, where her topics included the advocacy of abolition of slavery, women’s rights, equal opportunities for education, and civil rights. In 1845 she was in attendance at the first national convention of infidels [meaning atheists].
Ernestine Rose also introduced “the agitation on the subject of women’s suffrage” in Michigan in 1846. In a lecture in Worcester, Massachusetts in 1851, she opposed calling upon the Bible to underwrite the rights of women, claiming that human rights and freedom of women were predicated upon “the laws of humanity” and that women, therefore, did not require the written authority of either Paul or Moses, because “those laws and our claim are prior” to both. She attended the Women’s Rights Convention in the Tabernacle, New York City, on September 10, 1853, and spoke at the Hartford Bible Convention in 1854. It was in March of that year, also, that she took off with Susan B. Anthony on a speaking tour to Washington, D.C. Susan B. Anthony arranged the meetings and Ernestine Rose did all of the speaking; after this successful tour, Susan B. Anthony embarked on her own first lecture tour. The most prominent other people to publicly advocate for feminism as well as atheism in the 1800s were Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Matilda Joslyn Gage.
In 1885 Elizabeth wrote an essay entitled “Has Christianity Benefited Woman?” arguing that it had in fact hurt women’s rights, and stating, “All religions thus far have taught the headship and superiority of man, [and] the inferiority and subordination of woman. Whatever new dignity, honor, and self-respect the changing theologies may have brought to man, they have all alike brought to woman but another form of humiliation”. In 1893 Matilda Joslyn Gage wrote the book for which she is best known, “Woman, Church, and State,” which was one of the first books to draw the conclusion that Christianity is a primary impediment to the progress of women, as well as civilization. In 1895 Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote The Woman’s Bible, revised and continued with another book of the same name in 1898, in which she criticized religion and stated “the Bible in its teachings degrades women from Genesis to Revelation.” She died in 1902. Later, in October 1854, Ernestine Rose was elected president of the National Women’s Rights Convention at Philadelphia, overcoming the objection that she was unsuitable because of her atheism.
Susan B. Anthony supported her in this fight, declaring that every religion—and none—should have an equal right on the platform. In 1856 she spoke at the Seventh National Woman’s [Rights] Convention saying in part, “And when your minister asks you for money for missionary purposes, tell him there are higher, and holier, and nobler missions to be performed at home. When he asks for colleges to educate ministers, tell him you must educate woman, that she may do away with the necessity of ministers, so that they may be able to go to some useful employment.” She appeared again in Albany, New York, for the State Women’s Rights Convention in early February 1861, the last one to be held until the end of the Civil War. On May 14, 1863, she shared the podium with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucy Stone, and Antoinette Blackwell when the first Women’s National Loyal League met to call for equal rights for women, and to support the government in the Civil War “in so far as it makes a war for freedom”. She was in attendance at the American Equal Rights Association meeting in which there was a schism and on May 15, 1869, she joined with Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, and Lucy Stone to form a new organization, the National Woman Suffrage Association, which fought for both male and female suffrage, taking a position on the executive committee. She died at Brighton, England, on August 4, 1892, at age eighty-two.
More current feminist atheists?
Atheist feminist Anne Nicol Gaylor cofounded the Freedom From Religion Foundation in 1976 with her daughter, Annie Laurie Gaylor, and was also editor of Freethought Today from 1984 to 2009, when she became executive editor.[10] Aside from promoting atheism in general, her atheist feminist activities include writing the book Woe To The Women: The Bible Tells Me So, first published in 1981, which is now in its 4th printing. This book exposes and discusses sexism in the Bible. Furthermore, her 1997 book, Women Without Superstition: “No Gods, No Masters”, was the first collection of the writings of historic and contemporary female freethinkers. She has also written several articles on religion’s harm to women. No gods, no masters comes from a pamphlet handed out by the Industrial Workers of the World during the 1912 Lawrence Textile Strike. The phrase is derived from the French slogan “Ni dieu ni maître!” (literally ‘Neither God nor master’) coined by the socialist Auguste Blanqui in 1880. First feminist usage was in 1914, Margaret Sanger launched The Woman Rebel, an eight-page monthly newsletter which promoted contraception using the slogan “No Gods, No Masters”. Margaret Sanger insisted that every woman was the mistress of her own body.
”Women without superstition: No gods – No Masters!” by Annie Laurie Gaylor is a collection of writings by women freethinkers during the 19th and 20th century. Contemporary usage sees the slogan continuing mainly in use in anarchist politics but some unaware atheists may say it not wishing to express a support for anarchism or feminism for that matter. An anthology of anarchist writing was collected under the title “No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of my anarcho-humanism or Anarchist Humanism: Anarcho-Humanism, to me is atheistic humanism with an unconditional social awareness expressed as Anarcho (anarchism): “No Gods – No Masters” and Humanism: “No Harm – Do Good.”
My “Anarcho-Humanist” Non-aggression axiom is self-ownership and respect for other people who are fellow “dignity beings” who also have self-ownership rights just like me and are equal in human worth. As well as Anti-Violence, Anti-Spanking, Anti-Circumcision, Anti-Bullying, Pro-Ethics, Pro-Body Sovereignty, Pro-Empathy and Equality. Let positive change begin with me, for I realize I am responsible for there is no god to save us or protect us. Anti-sexual Violence, Anti-Spanking, Anti-Circumcision, Anti-Bullying, Anti-Violence, Anti-child maltreatment, Anti-animal cruelty, Anti-Domestic Violence, and Anti-Verbal Violence (Threats, Character Assassination, Intimidation), Pro-Ethics, Pro-Body Sovereignty, Pro-Empathy and Equality. For those who think attacking religion is some kind of Character Assassination because its people that are religious. You are confused because character assassination is attacking people with abusive name calling not confronting religion dishonesty.
Character Assassination is not being justifiably mentally aggressive as in one challenging, holy figures, gods, religions, myths, superstitions, beliefs, or deluded or misinformed ideas. Character Assassination is not meaning strong stances, aggressive challenge in rational arguments, or pitilessly exposing injustice, harm or oppression. It is our passion and an honored chosen duty to promote Non-Aggression and speak the truth of atheism and ethical behavior so people don’t stay misinform abused or oppressed. I value anti-violence (I am not a pacifist at all, I am actually a fighter by nature) unless the aggression or violence is for direct self-defense or other-defense. Check out: Atheists for Non-Aggression
Here is a few other atheist feminists include Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Mandisa L. Thomas, Ophelia Benson, Amanda Marcotte, Greta Christina, Dr. Karen Gorder Garst, Libby Anne, Jenn Ramirez, Lavada Luening, Heina Dadabhoy, Rachel M Johnson, Jen McCreight, Sikivu Hutchinson, Amanda Knief, Linda LaScola, Jennifer Bardi, Valerie Tarico, Rebecca Vipond Brink, Sikivu Hutchinson, Trav Mamone, M.G. Lord, Ruth Ann Jenkins, Callie Wright, Beth Presswood, Matt Dillahunty, Aron Ra, Lilandra Ra, Bridgett “Bria” Crutchfield, Daniel Fincke, James Gray, Crystal Marie, Billie Burnham, Steve Shives, Steve Hill, Haley Renae, Spoony R Quine, Elena Allen, Marissa Torres Langseth, Rich N Allison, and Taslima Nasrin.
Facebook: The Feminist Atheist
Rape, Sexism and Religion?
The Bible and Rape
1) Murder, rape, and pillage at Jabesh-gilead (Judges 21:10-24 NLT)
So they sent twelve thousand warriors to Jabesh-gilead with orders to kill everyone there, including women and children. “This is what you are to do,” they said. “Completely destroy all the males and every woman who is not a virgin.” Among the residents of Jabesh-gilead they found four hundred young virgins who had never slept with a man, and they brought them to the camp at Shiloh in the land of Canaan.
The Israelite assembly sent a peace delegation to the little remnant of Benjamin who were living at the rock of Rimmon. Then the men of Benjamin returned to their homes, and the four hundred women of Jabesh-gilead who were spared were given to them as wives. But there were not enough women for all of them. The people felt sorry for Benjamin because the LORD had left this gap in the tribes of Israel. So the Israelite leaders asked, “How can we find wives for the few who remain, since all the women of the tribe of Benjamin are dead? There must be heirs for the survivors so that an entire tribe of Israel will not be lost forever. But we cannot give them our own daughters in marriage because we have sworn with a solemn oath that anyone who does this will fall under God’s curse.”
Then they thought of the annual festival of the LORD held in Shiloh, between Lebonah and Bethel, along the east side of the road that goes from Bethel to Shechem. They told the men of Benjamin who still needed wives, “Go and hide in the vineyards. When the women of Shiloh come out for their dances, rush out from the vineyards, and each of you can take one of them home to be your wife! And when their fathers and brothers come to us in protest, we will tell them, ‘Please be understanding. Let them have your daughters, for we didn’t find enough wives for them when we dest60royed Jabesh-gilead. And you are not guilty of breaking the vow since you did not give your daughters in marriage to them.’” So the men of Benjamin did as they were told. They kidnapped the women who took part in the celebration and carried them off to the land of their own inheritance. Then they rebuilt their towns and lived in them. So the assembly of Israel departed by tribes and families, and they returned to their own homes.
Obviously these women were repeatedly raped. These sick bastards killed and raped an entire town and then wanted more virgins, so they hid beside the road to kidnap and rape some more. How can anyone see this as anything but evil?
2) Murder, rape and pillage of the Midianites (Numbers 31:7-18 NLT)
They attacked Midian just as the LORD had commanded Moses, and they killed all the men. All five of the Midianite kings – Evi, Rekem, Zur, Hur, and Reba – died in the battle. They also killed Balaam son of Beor with the sword. Then the Israelite army captured the Midianite women and children and seized their cattle and flocks and all their wealth as plunder. They burned all the towns and villages where the Midianites had lived. After they had gathered the plunder and captives, both people and animals, they brought them all to Moses and Eleazar the priest, and to the whole community of Israel, which was camped on the plains of Moab beside the Jordan River, across from Jericho.
Moses, Eleazar the priest, and all the leaders of the people went to meet them outside the camp. But Moses was furious with all the military commanders who had returned from the battle. “Why have you let all the women live?” he demanded. “These are the very ones who followed Balaam’s advice and caused the people of Israel to rebel against the LORD at Mount Peor. They are the ones who caused the plague to strike the LORD’s people. Now kill all the boys and all the women who have slept with a man. Only the young girls who are virgins may live; you may keep them for yourselves.
Clearly Moses and God approves of rape of virgins.
3) More Murder Rape and Pillage (Deuteronomy 20:10-14)
As you approach a town to attack it, first offer its people terms for peace. If they accept your terms and open the gates to you, then all the people inside will serve you in forced labor. But if they refuse to make peace and prepare to fight, you must attack the town. When the LORD your God hands it over to you, kill every man in the town. But you may keep for yourselves all the women, children, livestock, and other plunder. You may enjoy the spoils of your enemies that the LORD your God has given you.
What kind of God approves of murder, rape, and slavery?
4) Laws of Rape (Deuteronomy 22:28-29 NAB)
If a man is caught in the act of raping a young woman who is not engaged, he must pay fifty pieces of silver to her father. Then he must marry the young woman because he violated her, and he will never be allowed to divorce her.
What kind of lunatic would make a rape victim marry her attacker? Answer: God.
5) Death to the Rape Victim (Deuteronomy 22:23-24 NAB)
If within the city a man comes upon a maiden who is betrothed, and has relations with her, you shall bring them both out of the gate of the city and there stone them to death: the girl because she did not cry out for help though she was in the city, and the man because he violated his neighbors wife.
It is clear that God doesn’t give a damn about the rape victim. He is only concerned about the violation of another mans “property”.
6) David’s Punishment – Polygamy, Rape, Baby Killing, and God’s “Forgiveness” (2 Samuel 12:11-14 NAB)
Thus says the Lord: ‘I will bring evil upon you out of your own house. I will take your wives [plural] while you live to see it, and will give them to your neighbor. He shall lie with your wives in broad daylight. You have done this deed in secret, but I will bring it about in the presence of all Israel, and with the sun looking down.’
Then David said to Nathan, “I have sinned against the Lord.” Nathan answered David: “The Lord on his part has forgiven your sin: you shall not die. But since you have utterly spurned the Lord by this deed, the child born to you must surely die.” [The child dies seven days later.]
This has got to be one of the sickest quotes of the Bible. God himself brings the completely innocent rape victims to the rapist. What kind of pathetic loser would do something so evil? And then he kills a child! This is sick, really sick!
7) Rape of Female Captives (Deuteronomy 21:10-14 NAB)
“When you go out to war against your enemies and the LORD, your God, delivers them into your hand, so that you take captives, if you see a comely woman among the captives and become so enamored of her that you wish to have her as wife, you may take her home to your house. But before she may live there, she must shave her head and pare her nails and lay aside her captive’s garb. After she has mourned her father and mother for a full month, you may have relations with her, and you shall be her husband and she shall be your wife. However, if later on you lose your liking for her, you shall give her her freedom, if she wishes it; but you shall not sell her or enslave her, since she was married to you under compulsion.”
Once again God approves of forcible rape.
8) Rape and the Spoils of War (Judges 5:30 NAB)
They must be dividing the spoils they took: there must be a damsel or two for each man, Spoils of dyed cloth as Sisera’s spoil, an ornate shawl or two for me in the spoil. (Judges 5:30 NAB)
9) Sex Slaves (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
When a man sells his daughter as a slave, she will not be freed at the end of six years as the men are. If she does not please the man who bought her, he may allow her to be bought back again. But he is not allowed to sell her to foreigners, since he is the one who broke the contract with her. And if the slave girl’s owner arranges for her to marry his son, he may no longer treat her as a slave girl, but he must treat her as his daughter. If he himself marries her and then takes another wife, he may not reduce her food or clothing or fail to sleep with her as his wife. If he fails in any of these three ways, she may leave as a free woman without making any payment. (Exodus 21:7-11 NLT)
10) God Assists Rape and Plunder (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)
Lo, a day shall come for the Lord when the spoils shall be divided in your midst. And I will gather all the nations against Jerusalem for battle: the city shall be taken, houses plundered, women ravished; half of the city shall go into exile, but the rest of the people shall not be removed from the city. (Zechariah 14:1-2 NAB)
Islam and Rape
It is against Islam to rape Muslim women, but Muhammad actually encouraged the rape of others captured in battle. This hadith provides the context for the Qur’anic verse (4:24):
The Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) sent a military expedition to Awtas on the occasion of the battle of Hunain. They met their enemy and fought with them. They defeated them and took them captives. Some of the Companions of the Apostle of Allah (may peace be upon him) were reluctant to have intercourse with the female captives in the presence of their husbands who were unbelievers. So Allah, the Exalted, sent down the Qur’anic verse: (Sura 4:24) “And all married women (are forbidden) unto you save those (captives) whom your right hands possess.” (Abu Dawud 2150, also Muslim 3433)
Actually, as the hadith indicates, it wasn’t Muhammad, but “Allah the Exalted” who told the men to rape the women in front of their husbands – which is all the more reason to think of Islam differently from other religions.
Note also that the husbands of these unfortunate victims were obviously alive after battle. This is important because it flatly contradicts those apologists who like to argue that the women Muhammad enslaved were widowed and thus unable to fend for themselves. (Even if the apologists were right, what sort of a moral code is it that forces a widow to choose between being raped and starving?)
There are several other episodes in which Muhammad is offered the clear opportunity to disavow raping women – yet he instead offers advice on how to proceed. In one case, his men were reluctant to devalue their new slaves for later resale by getting them pregnant. Muhammad was asked about coitus interruptus in particular:
“O Allah’s Apostle! We get female captives as our share of booty, and we are interested in their prices, what is your opinion about coitus interruptus?” The Prophet said, “Do you really do that? It is better for you not to do it. No soul that which Allah has destined to exist, but will surely come into existence.” (Bukhari34:432)
As indicated, the prophet of Islam did not mind his men raping the women, provided they ejaculated within the bodies of their victims.
As one might imagine, Muhammad’s obvious approval of raping women captured in battle and his own personal participation as recorded in many places is of intense inconvenience to the Muslim apologists of our time. For this reason, some of them attempt to explain away these many episodes and Qur’anic references to sex with captives by pretending that these are cases in which women have fled bad marriages and sought refuge with the Muslims. Some apologists even refer to them as “wives,” even though the Qur’an makes a clear distinction between “those whom thy right hand possesses” and true wives (see Sura 33:50).
Beyond the desperation of the 21st century apologist however, there is absolutely nothing in the historical text that supports this rosy revision of Muslim history. The women of the Banu Mustaliq were sold into slavery following their rape:
“We went out with Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him) on the expedition to the Bi’l-Mustaliq and took captive some excellent Arab women; and we desired them, for we were suffering from the absence of our wives, (but at the same time) we also desired ransom for them. So we decided to have sexual intercourse with them but by observing ‘azl (Withdrawing the male sexual organ before emission of semen to avoid-conception). But we said: We are doing an act whereas Allah’s Messenger is amongst us; why not ask him? So we asked Allah’s Messenger (may peace be upon him), and he said: It does not matter“(Sahih Muslim 3371)
In fact, female slaves were traded like any other simple commodity by Muhammad and his band of devoted followers:
“Then the apostle sent Sa-d b. Zayd al-Ansari, brother of Abdu’l-Ashal with some of the captive women of Banu Qurayza to Najd and he sold them for horses and weapons.” (Ibn Ishaq/Hisham/Hisham 693)
Is it Islamic to sell one’s wife for horses? Clearly these were not wives!
More importantly, by definition a “captured” woman is not one who is fleeing her husband. She is fleeing her captor (ie. the Muslim slave raider). This hadith describes a typical raid, in which the women and children are captured as they are attempting to flee the attacking Muslims:
“…and then we attacked from all sides and reached their watering-place where a battle was fought. Some of the enemies were killed and some were taken prisoners. I saw a group of persons that consisted of women and children [escaping in the distance]. I was afraid lest they should reach the mountain before me, so I shot an arrow between them and the mountain. When they saw the arrow, they stopped. So I brought them, driving them along” (Sahih Muslim 4345)
The Muslim narrator sees the women trying to escape (following the massacre of their men) and cuts off their route by shooting an arrow into their path. These aren’t women trying to seek refuge with the Muslims. They are trying to avoid capture by the Muslims.
The same hadith goes on to recount that Muhammad personally demanded one of the captured women for his own use:
I drove them along until I brought them to Abu Bakr who bestowed that girl upon me as a prize. So we arrived in Medina. I had not yet disrobed her when the Messenger of Allah (may peace be upon him) met me in the street and said: “Give me that girl.”(Sahih Muslim 4345)
The prophet of Islam and his companions used war to collect women for personal sexual use and for trading. Unless she was arbitrarily declared as someone’s wife, the woman became a sex slave. In no case was her fate tied to anything that she had personally done, nor was she given a choice about her future.
Sexism, Prejudice, and Killing in Vedic Culture (Hinduism)
How Religion Might Influence Rape Culture
Yes, you need to know about Animism to understand Religion
Promoting Religion as Real is Harmful?
Sometimes, when you look at things, things which seem hidden at first, only come clearer into view later upon reselection or additional information. So, in one’s earnest search for truth one’s support is expressed not as a onetime event and more akin to a life’s journey to know what is true. I am very anti-religious, opposing anything even like religion, including atheist church. but that’s just me. Others have the right to do atheism their way. I am Not just an Atheist, I am a proud antireligionist. I can sum up what I do not like about religion in one idea; as a group, religions are “Conspiracy Theories of Reality.” These reality conspiracies are usually filled with Pseudo-science and Pseudo-history, often along with Pseudo-morality and other harmful aspects and not just ancient mythology to be marveled or laughed at. I regard all this as ridiculous. Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity To me, promoting religion as real is too often promote a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from who they are shaming them for being human. In addition, religion is a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from real history, real science or real morality to pseudohistory, pseudoscience and pseudomorality. Moreover, religion is a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from rational thought, critical thinking, or logic. Likewise, religion is a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from justice, universal ethics, equality, and liberty. Yes, religion is a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from loved ones, and religion is a toxic mental substance that can divide a person from humanity. Therefore, to me, promoting religion as real is too often promote a toxic mental substance that should be rejected as not only false but harmful as well even if you believe it has some redeeming quality. To me, promoting religion as real is mentally harmful to a flourishing humanity. Religion may have once seemed great when all you had or needed was to believe. Science now seems great when we have facts and need to actually know.
A Rational Mind Values Humanity and Rejects Religion and Gods
A truly rational mind sees the need for humanity, as they too live in the world and see themselves as they actually are an alone body in the world seeking comfort and safety. Thus, see the value of everyone around then as they too are the same and therefore rationally as well a humanistically we should work for this humanity we are part of and can either dwell in or help its flourishing as we are all in the hands of each other. You are Free to think as you like but REALITY is unchanged. While you personally may react, or think differently about our shared reality (the natural world devoid of magic anything), We can play with how we use it but there is still only one communal reality (a natural non-supernatural one), which we all share like it or not and you can’t justifiably claim there is a different reality. This is valid as the only one of warrant is the non-mystical natural world around us all, existing in or caused by nature; not made or caused by superstitions like gods or other monsters to many sill fear irrationally.
Do beliefs need justification?
Yes, it all requires a justification and if you think otherwise you should explain why but then you are still trying to employ a justification to challenge justification. So, I still say yes it all needs a justification and I know everything is reducible to feeling the substation of existence. I feel my body and thus I can start my justificationism standard right there and then build all logic inferences from that justified point and I don’t know a more core presupposition to start from. A presupposition is a core thinking stream that like how a tree of beliefs always has a set of assumed sets of presuppositions or a presupposition is relatively a thing/thinking assumed beforehand at the beginning of a line of thinking point, belief projection, argument or course of action. And that as well as everything needs justification to be concluded as reasonable. Sure, you can believe all kinds of things with no justification at all but we can’t claim them as true, nor wish others to actually agree unless something is somehow and or in some way justified. When is something true that has no justification? If you still think so then offer an example, you know a justification. Sure, there can be many things that may be true but actually receiving rational agreement that they are intact true needs justification.
Without Nonsense, Religion Dies
I am against ALL Pseudoscience, Pseudohistory and Pseudomorality. And all of these should openly be debunked, when and where possible. Of course, not forgetting how they are all highly represented in religion. All three are often found in religion to the point that if they were removed, their loss would likely end religion as we know it. I don’t have to respect ideas. People get confused ideas are not alive nor do they have beingness, Ideas don’t have rights nor the right to even exist only people have such a right. Ideas don’t have dignity nor can they feel violation only people if you attack them personally. Ideas don’t deserve any special anything they have no feelings and cannot be shamed they are open to the most brutal merciless attack and challenge without any protection and deserve none nor will I give them any if they are found wanting in evidence or reason. I will never respect Ideas if they are devoid of merit I only respect people.
I Hear Theists?
I hear what theists say and what I hear is that they make assertions with no justification discernable of or in reality just some book and your evidence lacking faith. I wish you were open to see but I know you have a wish to believe. I however wish to welcome reality as it is devoid of magic which all religions and gods thinkers believe. I want to be mentally free from misinformed ancient myths and free the minds of those confused in the realm of myths and the antihumanism views that they often attach to. So, I do have an agenda human liberation from fears of the uninformed conception of reality. Saying that some features of reality are not fully know is not proof of god myth claims. II’s not like every time we lack knowledge, we can just claim magic and if we do we are not being intellectually honest to the appraisal of reality that is devoted of anything magic. Theists seem to have very odd attempts as logic, as they most often start with some evidence devoid god myth they favor most often the hereditary favorite of the family or culture that they were born into so a continuous blind acceptance generation after generation of force indicated faith in that which on clear instinctually honest appraisal not only should inspire doubt but full disbelief until valid and reliable justification is offered. Why are all gods unjustified? Well, anything you claim needs justification but no one has evidence of god claim attributes they are all unjustified. All god talk as if it is real acts as if one can claim magic is real by thinking it is so or by accepting someone’s claim of knowing the unjustifiably that they understand an unknowable, such as claims of gods being anything as no one has evidence to start such fact devoid things as all knowing (there is no evidence of an all-knowing anything). Or an all-powerful (there is no evidence of an all-powerful anything). Or the most ridiculous an all-loving (there is no evidence of an all loving anything). But like all god claims, they are not just evidence lacking, the one claiming them has no justified reason to assume that they can even claim them as proof (it’s all the empty air of faith). Therefore, as the limit of all people, is to only be able to justify something from and that which corresponds to the real-world to be real and the last time I checked there is no magic of any kind in our real-world experiences. So, beyond the undefendable magical thinking not corresponding to the real-world how much more ridicules are some claimed supreme magical claimed being thus even more undefendable to the corresponding real-world, which the claimed god(s) thinking is a further and thus more extremely unjustified claim(s). What is this god you seem to think you have any justification to claim?
God: “antihumanism thinking”
God thinking is a superstitiously transmitted disease, that usually is accompanied with some kind of antihumanism thinking. Relatively all gods in general are said to have the will and power over humans. Likewise, such god claims often are attributed to be the ones who decide morality thus remove the true morality nature in humans that actually assist us in morality. So, adding a god is to welcome antihumanism burdens, because god concepts are often an expression. This is especially so when any so-called god somethingism are said to makes things like hells is an antihumanism thinking. A general humanism thinking to me is that everyone owns themselves, not some god and everyone is equal. Such humanism thinking to me, requires a shunning of coercion force that removes a human’s rights or the subjugation of oppression and threats for things like requiring belief or demanding faith in some other unjustified abstraction from others. Therefore, humanism thinking is not open to being in such a beliefs, position or situations that violate free expression of one’s human rights which are not just relinquished because some people believed right or their removal is at the whims of some claimed god (human rights removing/limiting/controlling = ANTIHUMANISM). Humanism to me, summed up as, humans solving human problems through human means. Thus, humanism thinking involve striving to do good without gods, and not welcoming the human rights removing/limiting/controlling, even if the myths could somehow come to be true.
Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
My thoughts on religious progression
Religion is an Evolved Product
Reasons for or Types of Atheism
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12 Powerful Women that Held the Position of Rulers/Pharaohs of Ancient Egypt
Here are the names and possible dates for these women who may have been rulers. 1. Queen Meryt-Neith ruled 5,020 years ago. 2. Queen Nimaathap (Third Dynasty, 4,706–4,633 years ago). 3. Queen Khentkaus (Fourth Dynasty, 4,633–4,514 years ago). 4. Queen Ankhesenpepi II (Sixth Dynasty, 4,385–4,201 years ago). 5. Princess Neithhikret (Died 4,201 years ago). 6. Princess-Queen Sobeknefru (Died 3,822 years ago). 7. Queen Ashotep (3,580–3,550 years ago). 8. Princess-Queen Ahmose-Nefertari (3,582–3,515 years ago). 9. Queen Hatshepsut (3,527–3,478 years ago). 10. Queen Nefertiti (3,390–3,350 years ago). 11. Queen Tausret (Died 3,209 years ago). 12. Queen Cleopatra I (2,224–2,196 years ago).
Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük
“The Seated Woman of Çatalhöyük (also Çatal Höyük) is a baked-clay, nude female form, seated between feline-headed arm-rests. It is generally thought to depict a corpulent and fertile Mother goddess in the process of giving birth while seated on her throne, which has two hand rests in the form of feline (lioness, leopard, or panther) heads in a Mistress of Animals motif. The statuette, one of several iconographically similar ones found at the site, is associated to other corpulent prehistoric goddess figures, of which the most famous is the Venus of Willendorf. It is a neolithic sculpture shaped by an unknown artist, and was completed in approximately 6000 BCE.” ref
Kubaba
“Kubaba is the only queen on the Sumerian King List, which states she reigned for 100 years – roughly in the Early Dynastic III period (ca. 2500–2330 BCE) of Sumerian history. A connection between her and a goddess known from Hurro–Hittite and later Luwian sources cannot be established on the account of spatial and temporal differences. Kubaba is one of very few women to have ever ruled in their own right in Mesopotamian history. Most versions of the king list place her alone in her own dynasty, the 3rd Dynasty of Kish, following the defeat of Sharrumiter of Mari, but other versions combine her with the 4th dynasty, that followed the primacy of the king of Akshak. Before becoming monarch, the king list says she was an alewife, brewess or brewster, terms for a woman who brewed alcohol.” ref
“Kubaba was a Syrian goddess associated particularly closely with Alalakh and Carchemish. She was adopted into the Hurrian and Hittite pantheons as well. After the fall of the Hittite empire, she continued to be venerated by Luwians. A connection between her and the similarly named legendary Sumerian queen Kubaba of Kish, while commonly proposed, cannot be established due to spatial and temporal differences. Emmanuel Laroche proposed in 1960 that Kubaba and Cybele were one and the same. This view is supported by Mark Munn, who argues that the Phrygian name Kybele developed from Lydian adjective kuvavli, first changed into kubabli and then simplified into kuballi, and finally kubelli. However, such an adjective is a purely speculative construction.” ref
Cybele
“Cybele (Phrygian: “Kubileya/Kubeleya Mother”, perhaps “Mountain Mother”) is an Anatolian mother goddess; she may have a possible forerunner in the earliest neolithic at Çatalhöyük, where statues of plump women, sometimes sitting, have been found in excavations. Phrygia‘s only known goddess, she was probably its national deity. Greek colonists in Asia Minor adopted and adapted her Phrygian cult and spread it to mainland Greece and to the more distant western Greek colonies around the 6th century BCE. In Greece, Cybele met with a mixed reception. She became partially assimilated to aspects of the Earth-goddess Gaia, of her possibly Minoan equivalent Rhea, and of the harvest–mother goddess Demeter. Some city-states, notably Athens, evoked her as a protector, but her most celebrated Greek rites and processions show her as an essentially foreign, exotic mystery-goddess who arrives in a lion-drawn chariot to the accompaniment of wild music, wine, and a disorderly, ecstatic following.” ref
“Uniquely in Greek religion, she had a eunuch mendicant priesthood. Many of her Greek cults included rites to a divine Phrygian castrate shepherd-consort Attis, who was probably a Greek invention. In Greece, Cybele became associated with mountains, town and city walls, fertile nature, and wild animals, especially lions. In Rome, Cybele became known as Magna Mater (“Great Mother”). The Roman State adopted and developed a particular form of her cult after the Sibylline oracle in 205 BCE recommended her conscription as a key religious ally in Rome’s second war against Carthage (218 to 201 BCE). Roman mythographers reinvented her as a Trojan goddess, and thus an ancestral goddess of the Roman people by way of the Trojan prince Aeneas. As Rome eventually established hegemony over the Mediterranean world, Romanized forms of Cybele’s cults spread throughout Rome’s empire. Greek and Roman writers debated and disputed the meaning and morality of her cults and priesthoods, which remain controversial subjects in modern scholarship.” ref
Animism: Respecting the Living World by Graham Harvey
“How have human cultures engaged with and thought about animals, plants, rocks, clouds, and other elements in their natural surroundings? Do animals and other natural objects have a spirit or soul? What is their relationship to humans? In this new study, Graham Harvey explores current and past animistic beliefs and practices of Native Americans, Maori, Aboriginal Australians, and eco-pagans. He considers the varieties of animism found in these cultures as well as their shared desire to live respectfully within larger natural communities. Drawing on his extensive casework, Harvey also considers the linguistic, performative, ecological, and activist implications of these different animisms.” ref
My thoughts on Religion Evolution with external links for more info:
- (Pre-Animism Africa mainly, but also Europe, and Asia at least 300,000 years ago), (Pre-Animism – Oxford Dictionaries)
- (Animism Africa around 100,000 years ago), (Animism – Britannica.com)
- (Totemism Europe around 50,000 years ago), (Totemism – Anthropology)
- (Shamanism Siberia around 30,000 years ago), (Shamanism – Britannica.com)
- (Paganism Turkey around 12,000 years ago), (Paganism – BBC Religion)
- (Progressed Organized Religion “Institutional Religion” Egypt around 5,000 years ago), (Ancient Egyptian Religion – Britannica.com)
- (CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS after 4,000 years ago) (Origin of Major Religions – Sacred Texts)
- (Early Atheistic Doubting at least by 2,600 years ago) (History of Atheism – Wikipedia)
“Religion is an Evolved Product” and Yes, Religion is Like Fear Given Wings…
Atheists talk about gods and religions for the same reason doctors talk about cancer, they are looking for a cure, or a firefighter talks about fires because they burn people and they care to stop them. We atheists too often feel a need to help the victims of mental slavery, held in the bondage that is the false beliefs of gods and the conspiracy theories of reality found in religions.
Understanding Religion Evolution:
- Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago)
- Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago)
- Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago)
- Shamanism (Siberia: 30,000 years ago)
- Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago)
- Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago), (Egypt, the First Dynasty 5,150 years ago)
- CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago)
- Early Atheistic Doubting (at least by 2,600 years ago)
“An Archaeological/Anthropological Understanding of Religion Evolution”
It seems ancient peoples had to survived amazing threats in a “dangerous universe (by superstition perceived as good and evil),” and human “immorality or imperfection of the soul” which was thought to affect the still living, leading to ancestor worship. This ancestor worship presumably led to the belief in supernatural beings, and then some of these were turned into the belief in gods. This feeble myth called gods were just a human conceived “made from nothing into something over and over, changing, again and again, taking on more as they evolve, all the while they are thought to be special,” but it is just supernatural animistic spirit-belief perceived as sacred.
Quick Evolution of Religion?
Pre-Animism (at least 300,000 years ago) pre-religion is a beginning that evolves into later Animism. So, Religion as we think of it, to me, all starts in a general way with Animism (Africa: 100,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in supernatural powers/spirits), then this is physically expressed in or with Totemism (Europe: 50,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in mythical relationship with powers/spirits through a totem item), which then enlists a full-time specific person to do this worship and believed interacting Shamanism (Siberia/Russia: 30,000 years ago) (theoretical belief in access and influence with spirits through ritual), and then there is the further employment of myths and gods added to all the above giving you Paganism (Turkey: 12,000 years ago) (often a lot more nature-based than most current top world religions, thus hinting to their close link to more ancient religious thinking it stems from). My hypothesis is expressed with an explanation of the building of a theatrical house (modern religions development). Progressed organized religion (Egypt: 5,000 years ago) with CURRENT “World” RELIGIONS (after 4,000 years ago).
Historically, in large city-state societies (such as Egypt or Iraq) starting around 5,000 years ago culminated to make religion something kind of new, a sociocultural-governmental-religious monarchy, where all or at least many of the people of such large city-state societies seem familiar with and committed to the existence of “religion” as the integrated life identity package of control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine, but this juggernaut integrated religion identity package of Dogmatic-Propaganda certainly did not exist or if developed to an extent it was highly limited in most smaller prehistoric societies as they seem to lack most of the strong control dynamics with a fixed closed magical doctrine (magical beliefs could be at times be added or removed). Many people just want to see developed religious dynamics everywhere even if it is not. Instead, all that is found is largely fragments until the domestication of religion.
Religions, as we think of them today, are a new fad, even if they go back to around 6,000 years in the timeline of human existence, this amounts to almost nothing when seen in the long slow evolution of religion at least around 70,000 years ago with one of the oldest ritual worship. Stone Snake of South Africa: “first human worship” 70,000 years ago. This message of how religion and gods among them are clearly a man-made thing that was developed slowly as it was invented and then implemented peace by peace discrediting them all. Which seems to be a simple point some are just not grasping how devastating to any claims of truth when we can see the lie clearly in the archeological sites.
I wish people fought as hard for the actual values as they fight for the group/clan names political or otherwise they think support values. Every amount spent on war is theft to children in need of food or the homeless kept from shelter.
Here are several of my blog posts on history:
- To Find Truth You Must First Look
- (Magdalenian/Iberomaurusian) Connections to the First Paganists of the early Neolithic Near East Dating from around 17,000 to 12,000 Years Ago
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- Possible Clan Leader/Special “MALE” Ancestor Totem Poles At Least 13,500 years ago?
- Jewish People with DNA at least 13,200 years old, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- Baltic Reindeer Hunters: Swiderian, Lyngby, Ahrensburgian, and Krasnosillya cultures 12,020 to 11,020 years ago are evidence of powerful migratory waves during the last 13,000 years and a genetic link to Saami and the Finno-Ugric peoples.
- The Rise of Inequality: patriarchy and state hierarchy inequality
- Fertile Crescent 12,500 – 9,500 Years Ago: fertility and death cult belief system?
- 12,400 – 11,700 Years Ago – Kortik Tepe (Turkey) Pre/early-Agriculture Cultic Ritualism
- Ritualistic Bird Symbolism at Gobekli Tepe and its “Ancestor Cult”
- Male-Homosexual (female-like) / Trans-woman (female) Seated Figurine from Gobekli Tepe
- Could a 12,000-year-old Bull Geoglyph at Göbekli Tepe relate to older Bull and Female Art 25,000 years ago and Later Goddess and the Bull cults like Catal Huyuk?
- Sedentism and the Creation of goddesses around 12,000 years ago as well as male gods after 7,000 years ago.
- Alcohol, where Agriculture and Religion Become one? Such as Gobekli Tepe’s Ritualistic use of Grain as Food and Ritual Drink
- Neolithic Ritual Sites with T-Pillars and other Cultic Pillars
- Paganism: Goddesses around 12,000 years ago then Male Gods after 7,000 years ago
- First Patriarchy: Split of Women’s Status around 12,000 years ago & First Hierarchy: fall of Women’s Status around 5,000 years ago.
- Natufians: an Ancient People at the Origins of Agriculture and Sedentary Life
- J DNA and the Spread of Agricultural Religion (paganism)
- Paganism: an approximately 12,000-year-old belief system
- Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism)
- Shaman burial in Israel 12,000 years ago and the Shamanism Phenomena
- Need to Mythicized: gods and goddesses
- 12,000 – 7,000 Years Ago – Paleo-Indian Culture (The Americas)
- 12,000 – 2,000 Years Ago – Indigenous-Scandinavians (Nordic)
- Norse did not wear helmets with horns?
- Pre-Pottery Neolithic Skull Cult around 11,500 to 8,400 Years Ago?
- 10,400 – 10,100 Years Ago, in Turkey the Nevail Cori Religious Settlement
- 9,000-6,500 Years Old Submerged Pre-Pottery/Pottery Neolithic Ritual Settlements off Israel’s Coast
- Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city” around 9,500 to 7,700 years ago (Turkey)
- Cultic Hunting at Catal Huyuk “first religious designed city”
- Special Items and Art as well as Special Elite Burials at Catal Huyuk
- New Rituals and Violence with the appearance of Pottery and People?
- Haplogroup N and its related Uralic Languages and Cultures
- Ainu people, Sámi people, Native Americans, the Ancient North Eurasians, and Paganistic-Shamanism with Totemism
- Ideas, Technology and People from Turkey, Europe, to China and Back again 9,000 to 5,000 years ago?
- First Pottery of Europe and the Related Cultures
- 9,000 years old Neolithic Artifacts Judean Desert and Hills Israel
- 9,000-7,000 years-old Sex and Death Rituals: Cult Sites in Israel, Jordan, and the Sinai
- 9,000-8500 year old Horned Female shaman Bad Dürrenberg Germany
- Neolithic Jewelry and the Spread of Farming in Europe Emerging out of West Turkey
- 8,600-year-old Tortoise Shells in Neolithic graves in central China have Early Writing and Shamanism
- Swing of the Mace: the rise of Elite, Forced Authority, and Inequality begin to Emerge 8,500 years ago?
- Migrations and Changing Europeans Beginning around 8,000 Years Ago
- My “Steppe-Anatolian-Kurgan hypothesis” 8,000/7,000 years ago
- Around 8,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Mistress of Animals, “Ritual” Motif
- Pre-Columbian Red-Paint (red ochre) Maritime Archaic Culture 8,000-3,000 years ago
- 7,522-6,522 years ago Linear Pottery culture which I think relates to Arcane Capitalism’s origins
- Arcane Capitalism: Primitive socialism, Primitive capital, Private ownership, Means of production, Market capitalism, Class discrimination, and Petite bourgeoisie (smaller capitalists)
- 7,500-4,750 years old Ritualistic Cucuteni-Trypillian culture of Moldova, Romania, and Ukraine
- Roots of a changing early society 7,200-6,700 years ago Jordan and Israel
- Agriculture religion (Paganism) with farming reached Britain between about 7,000 to 6,500 or so years ago and seemingly expressed in things like Western Europe’s Long Barrows
- My Thoughts on Possible Migrations of “R” DNA and Proto-Indo-European?
- “Millet” Spreading from China 7,022 years ago to Europe and related Language may have Spread with it leading to Proto-Indo-European
- Proto-Indo-European (PIE), ancestor of Indo-European languages: DNA, Society, Language, and Mythology
- The Dnieper–Donets culture and Asian varieties of Millet from China to the Black Sea region of Europe by 7,022 years ago
- Kurgan 6,000 years ago/dolmens 7,000 years ago: funeral, ritual, and other?
- 7,020 to 6,020-year-old Proto-Indo-European Homeland of Urheimat or proposed home of their Language and Religion
- Ancient Megaliths: Kurgan, Ziggurat, Pyramid, Menhir, Trilithon, Dolman, Kromlech, and Kromlech of Trilithons
- The Mytheme of Ancient North Eurasian Sacred-Dog belief and similar motifs are found in Indo-European, Native American, and Siberian comparative mythology
- Elite Power Accumulation: Ancient Trade, Tokens, Writing, Wealth, Merchants, and Priest-Kings
- Sacred Mounds, Mountains, Kurgans, and Pyramids may hold deep connections?
- Between 7,000-5,000 Years ago, rise of unequal hierarchy elite, leading to a “birth of the State” or worship of power, strong new sexism, oppression of non-elites, and the fall of Women’s equal status
- Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite & their slaves
- Hell and Underworld mythologies starting maybe as far back as 7,000 to 5,000 years ago with the Proto-Indo-Europeans?
- The First Expression of the Male God around 7,000 years ago?
- White (light complexion skin) Bigotry and Sexism started 7,000 years ago?
- Around 7,000-year-old Shared Idea of the Divine Bird (Tutelary and/or Trickster spirit/deity), “Ritual” Motif
- Nekhbet an Ancient Egyptian Vulture Goddess and Tutelary Deity
- 6,720 to 4,920 years old Ritualistic Hongshan Culture of Inner Mongolia with 5,000-year-old Pyramid Mounds and Temples
- First proto-king in the Balkans, Varna culture around 6,500 years ago?
- 6,500–5,800 years ago in Israel Late Chalcolithic (Copper Age) Period in the Southern Levant Seems to Express Northern Levant Migrations, Cultural and Religious Transfer
- KING OF BEASTS: Master of Animals “Ritual” Motif, around 6,000 years old or older…
- Around 6000-year-old Shared Idea of the Solid Wheel & the Spoked Wheel-Shaped Ritual Motif
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan; a Proto-Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna or Star of Venus?
- Religious/Ritual Ideas, including goddesses and gods as well as ritual mounds or pyramids from Northeastern Asia at least 6,000 years old, seemingly filtering to Iran, Iraq, the Mediterranean, Europe, Egypt, and the Americas?
- Maykop (5,720–5,020 years ago) Caucasus region Bronze Age culture-related to Copper Age farmers from the south, influenced by the Ubaid period and Leyla-Tepe culture, as well as influencing the Kura-Araxes culture
- 5-600-year-old Tomb, Mummy, and First Bearded Male Figurine in a Grave
- Kura-Araxes Cultural 5,520 to 4,470 years old DNA traces to the Canaanites, Arabs, and Jews
- Minoan/Cretan (Keftiu) Civilization and Religion around 5,520 to 3,120 years ago
- Evolution Of Science at least by 5,500 years ago
- 5,500 Years old birth of the State, the rise of Hierarchy, and the fall of Women’s status
- “Jiroft culture” 5,100 – 4,200 years ago and the History of Iran
- Stonehenge: Paganistic Burial and Astrological Ritual Complex, England (5,100-3,600 years ago)
- Around 5,000-year-old Shared Idea of the “Tree of Life” Ritual Motif
- Complex rituals for elite, seen from China to Egypt, at least by 5,000 years ago
- Around 5,000 years ago: “Birth of the State” where Religion gets Military Power and Influence
- The Center of the World “Axis Mundi” and/or “Sacred Mountains” Mythology Could Relate to the Altai Mountains, Heart of the Steppe
- Progressed organized religion starts, an approximately 5,000-year-old belief system
- China’s Civilization between 5,000-3,000 years ago, was a time of war and class struggle, violent transition from free clans to a Slave or Elite society
- Origin of Logics is Naturalistic Observation at least by around 5,000 years ago.
- Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State)
- Ziggurats (multi-platform temples: 4,900 years old) to Pyramids (multi-platform tombs: 4,700 years old)
- Did a 4,520–4,420-year-old Volcano In Turkey Inspire the Bible God?
- Finland’s Horned Shaman and Pre-Horned-God at least 4,500 years ago?
- 4,000-year-Old Dolmens in Israel: A Connected Dolmen Religious Phenomenon?
- Creation myths: From chaos, Ex nihilo, Earth-diver, Emergence, World egg, and World parent
- Bronze Age “Ritual” connections of the Bell Beaker culture with the Corded Ware/Single Grave culture, which were related to the Yamnaya culture and Proto-Indo-European Languages/Religions
- Low Gods (Earth/ Tutelary deity), High Gods (Sky/Supreme deity), and Moralistic Gods (Deity enforcement/divine order)
- The exchange of people, ideas, and material-culture including, to me, the new god (Sky Father) and goddess (Earth Mother) religion between the Cucuteni-Trypillians and others which is then spread far and wide
- Koryaks: Indigenous People of the Russian Far East and Big Raven myths also found in Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Indigenous People of North America
- 42 Principles Of Maat (Egyptian Goddess of the justice) around 4,400 years ago, 2000 Years Before Ten Commandments
- “Happy Easter” Well Happy Eostre/Ishter
- 4,320-3,820 years old “Shimao” (North China) site with Totemistic-Shamanistic Paganism and a Stepped Pyramid
- 4,250 to 3,400 Year old Stonehenge from Russia: Arkaim?
- 4,100-year-old beaker with medicinal & flowering plants in a grave of a woman in Scotland
- Early European Farmer ancestry, Kelif el Boroud people with the Cardial Ware culture, and the Bell Beaker culture Paganists too, spread into North Africa, then to the Canary Islands off West Africa
- Flood Accounts: Gilgamesh epic (4,100 years ago) Noah in Genesis (2,600 years ago)
- Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism)
- When was the beginning: TIMELINE OF CURRENT RELIGIONS, which start around 4,000 years ago.
- Early Religions Thought to Express Proto-Monotheistic Systems around 4,000 years ago
- Kultepe? An archaeological site with a 4,000 years old women’s rights document.
- Single God Religions (Monotheism) = “Man-o-theism” started around 4,000 years ago with the Great Sky Spirit/God Tiān (天)?
- Confucianism’s Tiān (Shangdi god 4,000 years old): Supernaturalism, Pantheism or Theism?
- Yes, Your Male God is Ridiculous
- Mythology, a Lunar Deity is a Goddess or God of the Moon
- Sacred Land, Hills, and Mountains: Sami Mythology (Paganistic Shamanism)
- Horse Worship/Sacrifice: mythical union of Ruling Elite/Kingship and the Horse
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Bronze Age Exotic Trade Routes Spread Quite Far as well as Spread Religious Ideas with Them
- Sami and the Northern Indigenous Peoples Landscape, Language, and its Connection to Religion
- Prototype of Ancient Analemmatic Sundials around 3,900-3,150 years ago and a Possible Solar Connection to gods?
- Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
- The Weakening of Ancient Trade and the Strengthening of Religions around 3000 years ago?
- Are you aware that there are religions that worship women gods, explain now religion tears women down?
- Animistic, Totemistic, and Paganistic Superstition Origins of bible god and the bible’s Religion.
- Myths and Folklore: “Trickster gods and goddesses”
- Jews, Judaism, and the Origins of Some of its Ideas
- An Old Branch of Religion Still Giving Fruit: Sacred Trees
- Dating the BIBLE: naming names and telling times (written less than 3,000 years ago, provable to 2,200 years ago)
- Did a Volcano Inspire the bible god?
- The Amorite/Amurru people’s God Amurru “Lord of the Steppe”, relates to the Origins of the Bible God?
- Dené–Yeniseian language, Old Copper Complex, and Pre-Columbian Mound Builders?
- No “dinosaurs and humans didn’t exist together just because some think they are in the bible itself”
- Sacred Shit and Sacred Animals?
- Everyone Killed in the Bible Flood? “Nephilim” (giants)?
- Hey, Damien dude, I have a question for you regarding “the bible” Exodus.
- Archaeology Disproves the Bible
- Bible Battle, Just More, Bible Babble
- The Jericho Conquest lie?
- Canaanites and Israelites?
- Accurate Account on how did Christianity Began?
- Let’s talk about Christianity.
- So the 10 commandments isn’t anything to go by either right?
- Misinformed christian
- Debunking Jesus?
- Paulism vs Jesus
- Ok, you seem confused so let’s talk about Buddhism.
- Unacknowledged Buddhism: Gods, Savior, Demons, Rebirth, Heavens, Hells, and Terrorism
- His Foolishness The Dalai Lama
- Yin and Yang is sexist with an ORIGIN around 2,300 years ago?
- I Believe Archaeology, not Myths & Why Not, as the Religious Myths Already Violate Reason!
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Aquatic Ape Theory/Hypothesis? As Always, Just Pseudoscience.
- Ancient Aliens Conspiracy Theorists are Pseudohistorians
- The Pseudohistoric and Pseudoscientific claims about “Bakoni Ruins” of South Africa
- Why do people think Religion is much more than supernaturalism and superstitionism?
- Religion is an Evolved Product
- Was the Value of Ancient Women Different?
- 1000 to 1100 CE, human sacrifice Cahokia Mounds a pre-Columbian Native American site
- Feminist atheists as far back as the 1800s?
- Promoting Religion as Real is Mentally Harmful to a Flourishing Humanity
- Screw All Religions and Their Toxic lies, they are all fraud
- Forget Religions’ Unfounded Myths, I Have Substantiated “Archaeology Facts.”
- Religion Dispersal throughout the World
- I Hate Religion Just as I Hate all Pseudoscience
- Exposing Scientology, Eckankar, Wicca and Other Nonsense?
- Main deity or religious belief systems
- Quit Trying to Invent Your God From the Scraps of Science.
- Archaeological, Scientific, & Philosophic evidence shows the god myth is man-made nonsense.
- Ancient Alien Conspiracy Theorists: Misunderstanding, Rhetoric, Misinformation, Fabrications, and Lies
- Misinformation, Distortion, and Pseudoscience in Talking with a Christian Creationist
- Judging the Lack of Goodness in Gods, Even the Norse God Odin
- Challenging the Belief in God-like Aliens and Gods in General
- A Challenge to Christian use of Torture Devices?
- Yes, Hinduism is a Religion
- Trump is One of the Most Reactionary Forces of Far-right Christian Extremism
- Was the Bull Head a Symbol of God? Yes!
- Primate Death Rituals
- Christian – “God and Christianity are objectively true”
- Australopithecus afarensis Death Ritual?
- You Claim Global Warming is a Hoax?
- Doubter of Science and Defamer of Atheists?
- I think that sounds like the Bible?
- History of the Antifa (“anti-fascist”) Movements
- Indianapolis Anti-Blasphemy Laws #Free Soheil Rally
- Damien, you repeat the golden rule in so many forms then you say religion is dogmatic?
- Science is a Trustable Methodology whereas Faith is not Trustable at all!
- Was I ever a believer, before I was an atheist?
- Atheists rise in reason
- Mistrust of science?
- Open to Talking About the Definition of ‘God’? But first, we address Faith.
- ‘United Monarchy’ full of splendor and power – Saul, David, and Solomon? Most likely not.
- Is there EXODUS ARCHAEOLOGY? The short answer is “no.”
- Lacking Proof of Bigfoots, Unicorns, and Gods is Just a Lack of Research?
- Religion and Politics: Faith Beliefs vs. Rational Thinking
- Hammer of Truth that lying pig RELIGION: challenged by an archaeologist
- “The Hammer of Truth” -ontology question- What do You Mean by That?
- Navigation of a bad argument: Ad Hominem vs. Attack
- Why is it Often Claimed that Gods have a Gender?
- Why are basically all monotheistic religions ones that have a male god?
- Shifting through the Claims in support of Faith
- Dear Mr. AtHope, The 20th Century is an Indictment of Secularism and a Failed Atheist Century
- An Understanding of the Worldwide Statistics and Dynamics of Terrorist Incidents and Suicide Attacks
- Intoxication and Evolution? Addressing and Assessing the “Stoned Ape” or “Drunken Monkey” Theories as Catalysts in Human Evolution
- Sacred Menstrual cloth? Inanna’s knot, Isis knot, and maybe Ma’at’s feather?
- Damien, why don’t the Hebrews accept the bible stories?
- Dealing with a Troll and Arguing Over Word Meaning
- Knowledge without Belief? Justified beliefs or disbeliefs worthy of Knowledge?
- Afrocentrism and African Religions
- Crecganford @crecganford offers history & stories of the people, places, gods, & culture
- Empiricism-Denier?
I am not an academic. I am a revolutionary that teaches in public, in places like social media, and in the streets. I am not a leader by some title given but from my commanding leadership style of simply to start teaching everywhere to everyone, all manner of positive education.
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Low Gods “Earth” or Tutelary deity and High Gods “Sky” or Supreme deity
“An Earth goddess is a deification of the Earth. Earth goddesses are often associated with the “chthonic” deities of the underworld. Ki and Ninhursag are Mesopotamian earth goddesses. In Greek mythology, the Earth is personified as Gaia, corresponding to Roman Terra, Indic Prithvi/Bhūmi, etc. traced to an “Earth Mother” complementary to the “Sky Father” in Proto-Indo-European religion. Egyptian mythology exceptionally has a sky goddess and an Earth god.” ref
“A mother goddess is a goddess who represents or is a personification of nature, motherhood, fertility, creation, destruction or who embodies the bounty of the Earth. When equated with the Earth or the natural world, such goddesses are sometimes referred to as Mother Earth or as the Earth Mother. In some religious traditions or movements, Heavenly Mother (also referred to as Mother in Heaven or Sky Mother) is the wife or feminine counterpart of the Sky father or God the Father.” ref
“Any masculine sky god is often also king of the gods, taking the position of patriarch within a pantheon. Such king gods are collectively categorized as “sky father” deities, with a polarity between sky and earth often being expressed by pairing a “sky father” god with an “earth mother” goddess (pairings of a sky mother with an earth father are less frequent). A main sky goddess is often the queen of the gods and may be an air/sky goddess in her own right, though she usually has other functions as well with “sky” not being her main. In antiquity, several sky goddesses in ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and the Near East were called Queen of Heaven. Neopagans often apply it with impunity to sky goddesses from other regions who were never associated with the term historically. The sky often has important religious significance. Many religions, both polytheistic and monotheistic, have deities associated with the sky.” ref
“In comparative mythology, sky father is a term for a recurring concept in polytheistic religions of a sky god who is addressed as a “father”, often the father of a pantheon and is often either a reigning or former King of the Gods. The concept of “sky father” may also be taken to include Sun gods with similar characteristics, such as Ra. The concept is complementary to an “earth mother“. “Sky Father” is a direct translation of the Vedic Dyaus Pita, etymologically descended from the same Proto-Indo-European deity name as the Greek Zeûs Pater and Roman Jupiter and Germanic Týr, Tir or Tiwaz, all of which are reflexes of the same Proto-Indo-European deity’s name, *Dyēus Ph₂tḗr. While there are numerous parallels adduced from outside of Indo-European mythology, there are exceptions (e.g. In Egyptian mythology, Nut is the sky mother and Geb is the earth father).” ref
Tutelary deity
“A tutelary (also tutelar) is a deity or spirit who is a guardian, patron, or protector of a particular place, geographic feature, person, lineage, nation, culture, or occupation. The etymology of “tutelary” expresses the concept of safety and thus of guardianship. In late Greek and Roman religion, one type of tutelary deity, the genius, functions as the personal deity or daimon of an individual from birth to death. Another form of personal tutelary spirit is the familiar spirit of European folklore.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Korean shamanism, jangseung and sotdae were placed at the edge of villages to frighten off demons. They were also worshiped as deities. Seonangshin is the patron deity of the village in Korean tradition and was believed to embody the Seonangdang. In Philippine animism, Diwata or Lambana are deities or spirits that inhabit sacred places like mountains and mounds and serve as guardians. Such as: Maria Makiling is the deity who guards Mt. Makiling and Maria Cacao and Maria Sinukuan. In Shinto, the spirits, or kami, which give life to human bodies come from nature and return to it after death. Ancestors are therefore themselves tutelaries to be worshiped. And similarly, Native American beliefs such as Tonás, tutelary animal spirit among the Zapotec and Totems, familial or clan spirits among the Ojibwe, can be animals.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Austronesian beliefs such as: Atua (gods and spirits of the Polynesian peoples such as the Māori or the Hawaiians), Hanitu (Bunun of Taiwan‘s term for spirit), Hyang (Kawi, Sundanese, Javanese, and Balinese Supreme Being, in ancient Java and Bali mythology and this spiritual entity, can be either divine or ancestral), Kaitiaki (New Zealand Māori term used for the concept of guardianship, for the sky, the sea, and the land), Kawas (mythology) (divided into 6 groups: gods, ancestors, souls of the living, spirits of living things, spirits of lifeless objects, and ghosts), Tiki (Māori mythology, Tiki is the first man created by either Tūmatauenga or Tāne and represents deified ancestors found in most Polynesian cultures). ” ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref, ref
Mesopotamian Tutelary Deities can be seen as ones related to City-States
“Historical city-states included Sumerian cities such as Uruk and Ur; Ancient Egyptian city-states, such as Thebes and Memphis; the Phoenician cities (such as Tyre and Sidon); the five Philistine city-states; the Berber city-states of the Garamantes; the city-states of ancient Greece (the poleis such as Athens, Sparta, Thebes, and Corinth); the Roman Republic (which grew from a city-state into a vast empire); the Italian city-states from the Middle Ages to the early modern period, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara, Milan (which as they grew in power began to dominate neighboring cities) and Genoa and Venice, which became powerful thalassocracies; the Mayan and other cultures of pre-Columbian Mesoamerica (including cities such as Chichen Itza, Tikal, Copán and Monte Albán); the central Asian cities along the Silk Road; the city-states of the Swahili coast; Ragusa; states of the medieval Russian lands such as Novgorod and Pskov; and many others.” ref
“The Uruk period (ca. 4000 to 3100 BCE; also known as Protoliterate period) of Mesopotamia, named after the Sumerian city of Uruk, this period saw the emergence of urban life in Mesopotamia and the Sumerian civilization. City-States like Uruk and others had a patron tutelary City Deity along with a Priest-King.” ref
“Chinese folk religion, both past, and present, includes myriad tutelary deities. Exceptional individuals, highly cultivated sages, and prominent ancestors can be deified and honored after death. Lord Guan is the patron of military personnel and police, while Mazu is the patron of fishermen and sailors. Such as Tu Di Gong (Earth Deity) is the tutelary deity of a locality, and each individual locality has its own Earth Deity and Cheng Huang Gong (City God) is the guardian deity of an individual city, worshipped by local officials and locals since imperial times.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) in Hinduism, personal tutelary deities are known as ishta-devata, while family tutelary deities are known as Kuladevata. Gramadevata are guardian deities of villages. Devas can also be seen as tutelary. Shiva is the patron of yogis and renunciants. City goddesses include: Mumbadevi (Mumbai), Sachchika (Osian); Kuladevis include: Ambika (Porwad), and Mahalakshmi. In NorthEast India Meitei mythology and religion (Sanamahism) of Manipur, there are various types of tutelary deities, among which Lam Lais are the most predominant ones. Tibetan Buddhism has Yidam as a tutelary deity. Dakini is the patron of those who seek knowledge.” ref
“A tutelary (also tutelar) The Greeks also thought deities guarded specific places: for instance, Athena was the patron goddess of the city of Athens. Socrates spoke of hearing the voice of his personal spirit or daimonion:
You have often heard me speak of an oracle or sign which comes to me … . This sign I have had ever since I was a child. The sign is a voice which comes to me and always forbids me to do something which I am going to do, but never commands me to do anything, and this is what stands in the way of my being a politician.” ref
“Tutelary deities who guard and preserve a place or a person are fundamental to ancient Roman religion. The tutelary deity of a man was his Genius, that of a woman her Juno. In the Imperial era, the Genius of the Emperor was a focus of Imperial cult. An emperor might also adopt a major deity as his personal patron or tutelary, as Augustus did Apollo. Precedents for claiming the personal protection of a deity were established in the Republican era, when for instance the Roman dictator Sulla advertised the goddess Victory as his tutelary by holding public games (ludi) in her honor.” ref
“Each town or city had one or more tutelary deities, whose protection was considered particularly vital in time of war and siege. Rome itself was protected by a goddess whose name was to be kept ritually secret on pain of death (for a supposed case, see Quintus Valerius Soranus). The Capitoline Triad of Juno, Jupiter, and Minerva were also tutelaries of Rome. The Italic towns had their own tutelary deities. Juno often had this function, as at the Latin town of Lanuvium and the Etruscan city of Veii, and was often housed in an especially grand temple on the arx (citadel) or other prominent or central location. The tutelary deity of Praeneste was Fortuna, whose oracle was renowned.” ref
“The Roman ritual of evocatio was premised on the belief that a town could be made vulnerable to military defeat if the power of its tutelary deity were diverted outside the city, perhaps by the offer of superior cult at Rome. The depiction of some goddesses such as the Magna Mater (Great Mother, or Cybele) as “tower-crowned” represents their capacity to preserve the city. A town in the provinces might adopt a deity from within the Roman religious sphere to serve as its guardian, or syncretize its own tutelary with such; for instance, a community within the civitas of the Remi in Gaul adopted Apollo as its tutelary, and at the capital of the Remi (present-day Rheims), the tutelary was Mars Camulus.” ref
Household deity (a kind of or related to a Tutelary deity)
“A household deity is a deity or spirit that protects the home, looking after the entire household or certain key members. It has been a common belief in paganism as well as in folklore across many parts of the world. Household deities fit into two types; firstly, a specific deity – typically a goddess – often referred to as a hearth goddess or domestic goddess who is associated with the home and hearth, such as the ancient Greek Hestia.” ref
“The second type of household deities are those that are not one singular deity, but a type, or species of animistic deity, who usually have lesser powers than major deities. This type was common in the religions of antiquity, such as the Lares of ancient Roman religion, the Gashin of Korean shamanism, and Cofgodas of Anglo-Saxon paganism. These survived Christianisation as fairy-like creatures existing in folklore, such as the Anglo-Scottish Brownie and Slavic Domovoy.” ref
“Household deities were usually worshipped not in temples but in the home, where they would be represented by small idols (such as the teraphim of the Bible, often translated as “household gods” in Genesis 31:19 for example), amulets, paintings, or reliefs. They could also be found on domestic objects, such as cosmetic articles in the case of Tawaret. The more prosperous houses might have a small shrine to the household god(s); the lararium served this purpose in the case of the Romans. The gods would be treated as members of the family and invited to join in meals, or be given offerings of food and drink.” ref
“In many religions, both ancient and modern, a god would preside over the home. Certain species, or types, of household deities, existed. An example of this was the Roman Lares. Many European cultures retained house spirits into the modern period. Some examples of these include:
- Brownie (Scotland and England) or Hob (England) / Kobold (Germany) / Goblin / Hobgoblin
- Domovoy (Slavic)
- Nisse (Norwegian or Danish) / Tomte (Swedish) / Tonttu (Finnish)
- Húsvættir (Norse)” ref
“Although the cosmic status of household deities was not as lofty as that of the Twelve Olympians or the Aesir, they were also jealous of their dignity and also had to be appeased with shrines and offerings, however humble. Because of their immediacy they had arguably more influence on the day-to-day affairs of men than the remote gods did. Vestiges of their worship persisted long after Christianity and other major religions extirpated nearly every trace of the major pagan pantheons. Elements of the practice can be seen even today, with Christian accretions, where statues to various saints (such as St. Francis) protect gardens and grottos. Even the gargoyles found on older churches, could be viewed as guardians partitioning a sacred space.” ref
“For centuries, Christianity fought a mop-up war against these lingering minor pagan deities, but they proved tenacious. For example, Martin Luther‘s Tischreden have numerous – quite serious – references to dealing with kobolds. Eventually, rationalism and the Industrial Revolution threatened to erase most of these minor deities, until the advent of romantic nationalism rehabilitated them and embellished them into objects of literary curiosity in the 19th century. Since the 20th century this literature has been mined for characters for role-playing games, video games, and other fantasy personae, not infrequently invested with invented traits and hierarchies somewhat different from their mythological and folkloric roots.” ref
“In contradistinction to both Herbert Spencer and Edward Burnett Tylor, who defended theories of animistic origins of ancestor worship, Émile Durkheim saw its origin in totemism. In reality, this distinction is somewhat academic, since totemism may be regarded as a particularized manifestation of animism, and something of a synthesis of the two positions was attempted by Sigmund Freud. In Freud’s Totem and Taboo, both totem and taboo are outward expressions or manifestations of the same psychological tendency, a concept which is complementary to, or which rather reconciles, the apparent conflict. Freud preferred to emphasize the psychoanalytic implications of the reification of metaphysical forces, but with particular emphasis on its familial nature. This emphasis underscores, rather than weakens, the ancestral component.” ref
“William Edward Hearn, a noted classicist, and jurist, traced the origin of domestic deities from the earliest stages as an expression of animism, a belief system thought to have existed also in the neolithic, and the forerunner of Indo-European religion. In his analysis of the Indo-European household, in Chapter II “The House Spirit”, Section 1, he states:
The belief which guided the conduct of our forefathers was … the spirit rule of dead ancestors.” ref
“In Section 2 he proceeds to elaborate:
It is thus certain that the worship of deceased ancestors is a vera causa, and not a mere hypothesis. …
In the other European nations, the Slavs, the Teutons, and the Kelts, the House Spirit appears with no less distinctness. … [T]he existence of that worship does not admit of doubt. … The House Spirits had a multitude of other names which it is needless here to enumerate, but all of which are more or less expressive of their friendly relations with man. … In [England] … [h]e is the Brownie. … In Scotland this same Brownie is well known. He is usually described as attached to particular families, with whom he has been known to reside for centuries, threshing the corn, cleaning the house, and performing similar household tasks. His favorite gratification was milk and honey.” ref
Hinduism around 3,700 to 3,500 years old. ref
Judaism around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (The first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew” dated to around 3,000 years ago Khirbet Qeiyafa is the site of an ancient fortress city overlooking the Elah Valley. And many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed around 2,500) ref, ref
Judaism is around 3,450 or 3,250 years old. (“Paleo-Hebrew” 3,000 years ago and Torah 2,500 years ago)
“Judaism is an Abrahamic, its roots as an organized religion in the Middle East during the Bronze Age. Some scholars argue that modern Judaism evolved from Yahwism, the religion of ancient Israel and Judah, by the late 6th century BCE, and is thus considered to be one of the oldest monotheistic religions.” ref
“Yahwism is the name given by modern scholars to the religion of ancient Israel, essentially polytheistic, with a plethora of gods and goddesses. Heading the pantheon was Yahweh, the national god of the Israelite kingdoms of Israel and Judah, with his consort, the goddess Asherah; below them were second-tier gods and goddesses such as Baal, Shamash, Yarikh, Mot, and Astarte, all of whom had their own priests and prophets and numbered royalty among their devotees, and a third and fourth tier of minor divine beings, including the mal’ak, the messengers of the higher gods, who in later times became the angels of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Yahweh, however, was not the ‘original’ god of Israel “Isra-El”; it is El, the head of the Canaanite pantheon, whose name forms the basis of the name “Israel”, and none of the Old Testament patriarchs, the tribes of Israel, the Judges, or the earliest monarchs, have a Yahwistic theophoric name (i.e., one incorporating the name of Yahweh).” ref
“El is a Northwest Semitic word meaning “god” or “deity“, or referring (as a proper name) to any one of multiple major ancient Near Eastern deities. A rarer form, ‘ila, represents the predicate form in Old Akkadian and in Amorite. The word is derived from the Proto-Semitic *ʔil-, meaning “god”. Specific deities known as ‘El or ‘Il include the supreme god of the ancient Canaanite religion and the supreme god of East Semitic speakers in Mesopotamia’s Early Dynastic Period. ʼĒl is listed at the head of many pantheons. In some Canaanite and Ugaritic sources, ʼĒl played a role as father of the gods, of creation, or both. For example, in the Ugaritic texts, ʾil mlk is understood to mean “ʼĒl the King” but ʾil hd as “the god Hadad“. The Semitic root ʾlh (Arabic ʾilāh, Aramaic ʾAlāh, ʾElāh, Hebrew ʾelōah) may be ʾl with a parasitic h, and ʾl may be an abbreviated form of ʾlh. In Ugaritic the plural form meaning “gods” is ʾilhm, equivalent to Hebrew ʾelōhîm “powers”. In the Hebrew texts this word is interpreted as being semantically singular for “god” by biblical commentators. However the documentary hypothesis for the Old Testament (corresponds to the Jewish Torah) developed originally in the 1870s, identifies these that different authors – the Jahwist, Elohist, Deuteronomist, and the Priestly source – were responsible for editing stories from a polytheistic religion into those of a monotheistic religion. Inconsistencies that arise between monotheism and polytheism in the texts are reflective of this hypothesis.” ref
Jainism around 2,599 – 2,527 years old. ref
Confucianism around 2,600 – 2,551 years old. ref
Buddhism around 2,563/2,480 – 2,483/2,400 years old. ref
Christianity around 2,o00 years old. ref
Shinto around 1,305 years old. ref
Islam around 1407–1385 years old. ref
Knowledge to Ponder:
Stars/Astrology:
- Possibly, around 30,000 years ago (in simpler form) to 6,000 years ago, Stars/Astrology are connected to Ancestors, Spirit Animals, and Deities.
- The star also seems to be a possible proto-star for Star of Ishtar, Star of Inanna, or Star of Venus.
- Around 7,000 to 6,000 years ago, Star Constellations/Astrology have connections to the “Kurgan phenomenon” of below-ground “mound” stone/wood burial structures and “Dolmen phenomenon” of above-ground stone burial structures.
- Around 6,500–5,800 years ago, The Northern Levant migrations into Jordon and Israel in the Southern Levant brought new cultural and religious transfer from Turkey and Iran.
- “The Ghassulian Star,” a mysterious 6,000-year-old mural from Jordan may have connections to the European paganstic kurgan/dolmens phenomenon.
“Astrology is a range of divinatory practices, recognized as pseudoscientific since the 18th century, that claim to discern information about human affairs and terrestrial events by studying the apparent positions of celestial objects. Different cultures have employed forms of astrology since at least the 2nd millennium BCE, these practices having originated in calendrical systems used to predict seasonal shifts and to interpret celestial cycles as signs of divine communications. Most, if not all, cultures have attached importance to what they observed in the sky, and some—such as the Hindus, Chinese, and the Maya—developed elaborate systems for predicting terrestrial events from celestial observations. Western astrology, one of the oldest astrological systems still in use, can trace its roots to 19th–17th century BCE Mesopotamia, from where it spread to Ancient Greece, Rome, the Islamicate world and eventually Central and Western Europe. Contemporary Western astrology is often associated with systems of horoscopes that purport to explain aspects of a person’s personality and predict significant events in their lives based on the positions of celestial objects; the majority of professional astrologers rely on such systems.” ref
Around 5,500 years ago, Science evolves, The first evidence of science was 5,500 years ago and was demonstrated by a body of empirical, theoretical, and practical knowledge about the natural world. ref
Around 5,000 years ago, Origin of Logics is a Naturalistic Observation (principles of valid reasoning, inference, & demonstration) ref
Around 4,150 to 4,000 years ago: The earliest surviving versions of the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh, which was originally titled “He who Saw the Deep” (Sha naqba īmuru) or “Surpassing All Other Kings” (Shūtur eli sharrī) were written. ref
Hinduism:
- 3,700 years ago or so, the oldest of the Hindu Vedas (scriptures), the Rig Veda was composed.
- 3,500 years ago or so, the Vedic Age began in India after the collapse of the Indus Valley Civilization.
Judaism:
- around 3,000 years ago, the first writing in the bible was “Paleo-Hebrew”
- around 2,500 years ago, many believe the religious Jewish texts were completed
Myths: The bible inspired religion is not just one religion or one myth but a grouping of several religions and myths
- Around 3,450 or 3,250 years ago, according to legend, is the traditionally accepted period in which the Israelite lawgiver, Moses, provided the Ten Commandments.
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, a collection of ancient religious writings by the Israelites based primarily upon the Hebrew Bible, Tanakh, or Old Testament is the first part of Christianity’s bible.
- Around 2,400 years ago, the most accepted hypothesis is that the canon was formed in stages, first the Pentateuch (Torah).
- Around 2,140 to 2,116 years ago, the Prophets was written during the Hasmonean dynasty, and finally the remaining books.
- Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections:
- The first five books or Pentateuch (Torah).
- The proposed history books telling the history of the Israelites from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon.
- The poetic and proposed “Wisdom books” dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world.
- The books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God:
- Henotheism:
- Exodus 20:23 “You shall not make other gods besides Me (not saying there are no other gods just not to worship them); gods of silver or gods of gold, you shall not make for yourselves.”
- Polytheism:
- Judges 10:6 “Then the sons of Israel again did evil in the sight of the LORD, served the Baals and the Ashtaroth, the gods of Aram, the gods of Sidon, the gods of Moab, the gods of the sons of Ammon, and the gods of the Philistines; thus they forsook the LORD and did not serve Him.”
- 1 Corinthians 8:5 “For even if there are so-called gods whether in heaven or on earth, as indeed there are many gods and many lords.”
- Monotheism:
- Isaiah 43:10 “You are my witnesses,” declares the LORD, “and my servant whom I have chosen, so that you may know and believe me and understand that I am he. Before me no god was formed, nor will there be one after me.
Around 2,570 to 2,270 Years Ago, there is a confirmation of atheistic doubting as well as atheistic thinking, mainly by Greek philosophers. However, doubting gods is likely as old as the invention of gods and should destroy the thinking that belief in god(s) is the “default belief”. The Greek word is apistos (a “not” and pistos “faithful,”), thus not faithful or faithless because one is unpersuaded and unconvinced by a god(s) claim. Short Definition: unbelieving, unbeliever, or unbelief.
Expressions of Atheistic Thinking:
- Around 2,600 years ago, Ajita Kesakambali, ancient Indian philosopher, who is the first known proponent of Indian materialism. ref
- Around 2,535 to 2,475 years ago, Heraclitus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Anatolia, also known as Asia Minor or modern Turkey. ref
- Around 2,500 to 2,400 years ago, according to The Story of Civilization book series certain African pygmy tribes have no identifiable gods, spirits, or religious beliefs or rituals, and even what burials accrue are without ceremony. ref
- Around 2,490 to 2,430 years ago, Empedocles, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. ref
- Around 2,460 to 2,370 years ago, Democritus, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher considered to be the “father of modern science” possibly had some disbelief amounting to atheism. ref
- Around 2,399 years ago or so, Socrates, a famous Greek philosopher was tried for sinfulness by teaching doubt of state gods. ref
- Around 2,341 to 2,270 years ago, Epicurus, a Greek philosopher known for composing atheistic critics and famously stated, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him god?” ref
This last expression by Epicurus, seems to be an expression of Axiological Atheism. To understand and utilize value or actually possess “Value Conscious/Consciousness” to both give a strong moral “axiological” argument (the problem of evil) as well as use it to fortify humanism and positive ethical persuasion of human helping and care responsibilities. Because value-blindness gives rise to sociopathic/psychopathic evil.
While hallucinogens are associated with shamanism, it is alcohol that is associated with paganism.
The Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries Shows in the prehistory series:
Show two: Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show tree: Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show four: Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show five: Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”
Show six: Emergence of hierarchy, sexism, slavery, and the new male god dominance: Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves!
Prehistory: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” the division of labor, power, rights, and recourses: VIDEO
Pre-animism 300,000 years old and animism 100,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Totemism 50,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Shamanism 30,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism”: VIDEO
Paganism 12,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Pre-Capitalism): VIDEO
Paganism 7,000-5,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Capitalism) (World War 0) Elite and their slaves: VIEDO
Paganism 5,000 years old: progressed organized religion and the state: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (Kings and the Rise of the State): VIEDO
Paganism 4,000 years old: related to “Anarchism and Socialism” (First Moralistic gods, then the Origin time of Monotheism): VIEDO
I do not hate simply because I challenge and expose myths or lies any more than others being thought of as loving simply because of the protection and hiding from challenge their favored myths or lies.
The truth is best championed in the sunlight of challenge.
An archaeologist once said to me “Damien religion and culture are very different”
My response, So are you saying that was always that way, such as would you say Native Americans’ cultures are separate from their religions? And do you think it always was the way you believe?
I had said that religion was a cultural product. That is still how I see it and there are other archaeologists that think close to me as well. Gods too are the myths of cultures that did not understand science or the world around them, seeing magic/supernatural everywhere.
I personally think there is a goddess and not enough evidence to support a male god at Çatalhöyük but if there was both a male and female god and goddess then I know the kind of gods they were like Proto-Indo-European mythology.
This series idea was addressed in, Anarchist Teaching as Free Public Education or Free Education in the Public: VIDEO
Our 12 video series: Organized Oppression: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of power (9,000-4,000 years ago), is adapted from: The Complete and Concise History of the Sumerians and Early Bronze Age Mesopotamia (7000-2000 BC): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szFjxmY7jQA by “History with Cy“
Show #1: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Samarra, Halaf, Ubaid)
Show #2: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #3: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Uruk and the First Cities)
Show #4: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (First Kings)
Show #5: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Early Dynastic Period)
Show #6: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power
Show #7: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Sargon and Akkadian Rule)
Show #9: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Gudea of Lagash and Utu-hegal)
Show #12: Mesopotamian State Force and the Politics of Power (Aftermath and Legacy of Sumer)
The “Atheist-Humanist-Leftist Revolutionaries”
Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ Atheist Leftist @Skepticallefty & I (Damien Marie AtHope) @AthopeMarie (my YouTube & related blog) are working jointly in atheist, antitheist, antireligionist, antifascist, anarchist, socialist, and humanist endeavors in our videos together, generally, every other Saturday.
Why Does Power Bring Responsibility?
Think, how often is it the powerless that start wars, oppress others, or commit genocide? So, I guess the question is to us all, to ask, how can power not carry responsibility in a humanity concept? I know I see the deep ethical responsibility that if there is power their must be a humanistic responsibility of ethical and empathic stewardship of that power. Will I be brave enough to be kind? Will I possess enough courage to be compassionate? Will my valor reach its height of empathy? I as everyone, earns our justified respect by our actions, that are good, ethical, just, protecting, and kind. Do I have enough self-respect to put my love for humanity’s flushing, over being brought down by some of its bad actors? May we all be the ones doing good actions in the world, to help human flourishing.
I create the world I want to live in, striving for flourishing. Which is not a place but a positive potential involvement and promotion; a life of humanist goal precision. To master oneself, also means mastering positive prosocial behaviors needed for human flourishing. I may have lost a god myth as an atheist, but I am happy to tell you, my friend, it is exactly because of that, leaving the mental terrorizer, god belief, that I truly regained my connected ethical as well as kind humanity.
Cory and I will talk about prehistory and theism, addressing the relevance to atheism, anarchism, and socialism.
At the same time as the rise of the male god, 7,000 years ago, there was also the very time there was the rise of violence, war, and clans to kingdoms, then empires, then states. It is all connected back to 7,000 years ago, and it moved across the world.
Cory Johnston: https://damienmarieathope.com/2021/04/cory-johnston-mind-of-a-skeptical-leftist/?v=32aec8db952d
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Cory Johnston ☭ Ⓐ @Skepticallefty Evidence-based atheist leftist (he/him) Producer, host, and co-host of 4 podcasts @skeptarchy @skpoliticspod and @AthopeMarie
Damien Marie AtHope (“At Hope”) Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist. Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Poet, Philosopher, Advocate, Activist, Psychology, and Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Historian.
Damien is interested in: Freedom, Liberty, Justice, Equality, Ethics, Humanism, Science, Atheism, Antiteism, Antireligionism, Ignosticism, Left-Libertarianism, Anarchism, Socialism, Mutualism, Axiology, Metaphysics, LGBTQI, Philosophy, Advocacy, Activism, Mental Health, Psychology, Archaeology, Social Work, Sexual Rights, Marriage Rights, Woman’s Rights, Gender Rights, Child Rights, Secular Rights, Race Equality, Ageism/Disability Equality, Etc. And a far-leftist, “Anarcho-Humanist.”
I am not a good fit in the atheist movement that is mostly pro-capitalist, I am anti-capitalist. Mostly pro-skeptic, I am a rationalist not valuing skepticism. Mostly pro-agnostic, I am anti-agnostic. Mostly limited to anti-Abrahamic religions, I am an anti-religionist.
To me, the “male god” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 7,000 years ago, whereas the now favored monotheism “male god” is more like 4,000 years ago or so. To me, the “female goddess” seems to have either emerged or become prominent around 11,000-10,000 years ago or so, losing the majority of its once prominence around 2,000 years ago due largely to the now favored monotheism “male god” that grow in prominence after 4,000 years ago or so.
My Thought on the Evolution of Gods?
Animal protector deities from old totems/spirit animal beliefs come first to me, 13,000/12,000 years ago, then women as deities 11,000/10,000 years ago, then male gods around 7,000/8,000 years ago. Moralistic gods around 5,000/4,000 years ago, and monotheistic gods around 4,000/3,000 years ago.
Damien Marie AtHope (Said as “At” “Hope”)/(Autodidact Polymath but not good at math):
Axiological Atheist, Anti-theist, Anti-religionist, Secular Humanist, Rationalist, Writer, Artist, Jeweler, Poet, “autodidact” Philosopher, schooled in Psychology, and “autodidact” Armchair Archaeology/Anthropology/Pre-Historian (Knowledgeable in the range of: 1 million to 5,000/4,000 years ago). I am an anarchist socialist politically. Reasons for or Types of Atheism
My Website, My Blog, & Short-writing or Quotes, My YouTube, Twitter: @AthopeMarie, and My Email: damien.marie.athope@gmail.com