Friday, March 9, 2012

Why Do Christians Hate Women?

The answer to this lies in the very beginning of the Bible and is clear to anyone who removes the cultural blinders from their eyes to see what the story of Adam and Eve is actually saying.  It is first necessary to understand the symbols being used.  Whether the tradition you hold to within christianity says it was the apple or the pomegranate that was "the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil" matters not when you realize both of these fruits were sacred to the Mother Goddess.  The christian "villain" in the story is the serpent.  From the beginning of recorded history, the serpent has been held sacred, again, to the Mother Goddess.  So even before we get started the story suddenly is no longer a creation story but a war story. 

Consider, the very name "Adam" was originally a notaricon of the first letters of the four directions, a distinctly Pagan concept to this day.  Consider, Yahweh tells Adam and Eve that if they eat from the tree of knowledge, they will die.  Yahweh does not want them to gain knowledge, he wants them to be stupid!  The serpent, as a stand in for the Mother Goddess, tells Eve (notice the Mother Goddess speaks to the woman rather than the man) and points out Yahweh is lying through his teeth.  Hardly the attribute of a Divine parent with his kids best interest in mind is it?  Eve eats the divine fruit and invents clothing.  The creation of fabric was the providence of women historically in every ancient culture.  Accident?  I hardly think so.  In the spirit of the egalitarian nature of ancient Goddess cultures, Eve shares the fruit with Adam.  They don't die.  So who told the truth?  Then we learn from Yahweh's internal dialogue? with himself? that there is also a tree of life that grants eternal life and Yahweh is totally freaked out at the idea that Adam and Eve eat that as well and thus live forever.  So much for the eternal life part of christianity from the beginnings but wait, Mother Goddess traditions are base on the idea that the "soul" is the divine part of the individual that IS part of the Mother Goddess and thus eternal.  So Yahweh actually wants people to be stupid and die, the "evil" serpent (Mother Goddess) wants them to be educated and know they live forever.

Let's dig a bit deeper into this rather simple story because there is a lot more to see.  Let us look at the garden of Eden itself.  Adam and Eve are in a place where they pretty much just have to be simple hunters and gatherers with the addition of horticulture which is simple and effective.  A perfect allegory for the neolithic Goddess culture circa 10,000 BCE to 4000 BCE in central Anatolia (modern Turkey).  They are punished by being expelled from this place and now have to till the earth for their bread "by the sweat of their brow" with the very earth not cooperating with them.  Eve is further punished with difficult births and being forced ever after to submit to Adam and liking it.

Now let us look at Cain and Able where the curtain is actually pulled away from this farce once and for all.  Cain is a farmer and makes sacrifices to Yahweh of the fruit of his labour, bread.  Able is a goat herder and makes bloody sacrifices of killing animals.  True to the nature of a "god" who acts like a petty vindictive child himself, Yahweh likes the blood sacrifice and turns up his nose at the bread.  The sacrament of eating bread as part of ritual is one of the oldest Mother Goddess traditions that gives thanks for the fruits of horticulture (as opposed to agriculture) which was, once again, the providence of women in ancient cultures.  Wait, it gets better!  Cain is sent into exile for killing his brother after being rejected by Yahweh, to the land of Nod, east of Eden and then the curtain is pulled back on this story because Cain is first afraid anyone who will encounter him will kill him (anyone? who?) and lives among the people of his wife.  Wait a minute, weren't Adam and Eve the original people and their boys the original children?  Where did these folks living "east of Eden" come from?  Whole cities of them?  Oh, that is fairly simple when you realize this whole damn story is about a temperamental LOCAL diety who brags about creating the world when his own story proves that, just as was his bullshit about the tree of good and evil, that "creation" is a lying sack of excrement because there are whole, and apparently large, groups of people he did NOT create.

It was early christians who ran with this whole concept of "original sin" and laid it on the shoulders of the daughters of Eve when clearly Adam ate the fruit as well.  Yahweh wants people to be stupid and what was the actions of the early christians?  They burned the library of Alexandria, not once but several times.....book burnings, hatred of knowledge.  To this day they fight science with garbage and try to prevent actual knowledge being part of children's education. Yahweh is a proven liar, wants stupid people who die and gets his rocks off on bloody dead animals.  Christians have made the earth's ground run red with blood ever since and finally Yahweh hated women over men which is simply continued to this day in the war on women. And let us not forget that the promise of eternal life is now held by christians as a condition of subservience to their rather bizarre cult of Jesus beliefs rather than the birthright of all.

The real meanings of this story are crystal clear...and not at all pretty.  Christians hate women because this is hardwired into the very nature of their theology from the very first part of their holy book.

4 comments:

  1. I started with a comment and ended with a blog post in response to this post. I confess it became less a direct response and more a reaction to the impression of Christians that is present in the national discourse.
    http://timgraves.blogspot.com/2012/03/do-christians-hate-women.html

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  2. Bottom line is this Tim, just as Islam has widely been branded a religion of hatred and violence, so should christianity. It is no accident that the rightwing terrorists in the US from the extreme white supremacy to the bands of "militia" stockpiling weapons and the murdering bastards of the ironically named "right to lifers" are all loudly christians and they now own the brand from the POV of those of us who aren't christians and never were. You need go no further than the Phelps clan for an example.

    Where were you when these groups gained ascendency? The entire history of christianity is one of murder, hatred, xenophobia. I have spend most of a long life not saying these things even though they are crystal clear. No more.,

    Jesus, save me from your followers.

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  3. I will add, I have known many christlike Pagans during my lifetime and almost no christlike christians. That pretty much says it.

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  4. I love this post! Way to go my Crone sister, your voice of truth rings clear to us all! For too long we (pagans and non-christians) have sat by and said nothing. Each day being more and more ostrecized by christians. From our work place to our home. It is an utter shame! I am a born again pagan who has sat by while my christian fundamentalist ex-husband has insulted my beliefs and put down women in general saying that "Woman are from the devil" This is the christian point of view and this is not about women having rights its about telling the truth and not living in fear! Every christian I know is a control freak and they cant stand to be wrong. You dont love women or uphold them, in your book we are second best! We dont measure up to "man"! If that is not a load of BS I dont know what is!

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