The Meerkat Responds: Illogical Arguments, 2 & 3
The second part of Mr David Thiessen’s illogical arguments relates once again to material of mine, that once again he is too cowardly to give proper attribution to. There is nothing much of any value in part two, save for this intriguing little nugget, that reveals a nice dose of Mr Thiessen’s hypocrisy, and pretzel logic:
If you look at the false religions that abound, you will see that they tend to do what a lot of democrats, and liberals do and that is try to have power and control over others. That is wrong. Husbands and wives should discuss things rationally and like adults with the man having the final decision on all matters.
Emphasis mine. It would appear that for all Mr Thiessen’s posturing, he believes women are indeed subservient to men. He may deny this, he may scream and cry ‘distortion!’, yet the proof is in the proverbial pudding that he has served up. How else could he write the man having the final decision on all matters?
If this is what Mr Thiessen believes (and this would certainly seem to be the case), then it shows his expectation that his Biblically-inspired mind has been shaped by Christian teachings to believe that men should have authority over women, which is the first step in seeing women as less worthy of respect and freedoms. Mr Thiessen goes on at length as to how women need to be protected, even going as far as to write:
The Bible is very clear that women are the weaker of the two genders and men have a duty to protect their wives
Women are not weak, and in many respects are in fact the stronger. Women endure considerable physical and emotional changes during pregnancy. Women can multi-task to a superb degree, keeping a household in order whilst also working. Women have historically proven their strength countless times, and do not need protecting, least of all the sort of arrogant protection that Mr Thiessen, through his distorted lens of organised religion, would have us employ.
For the third and final part of Mr Thiessen’s Illogical Arguments, he chooses to to defend the notion that a woman’s body is not their own. He genuinely believes he has the right to tell women what they can and cannot do with their own bodies, perhaps motivated in part by a latent misogyny of his own. His willingness to regard women as inferior, as needing protecting, and as having no right to self-determination, has shone through across all three of his posts, ensuring that he has indeed written illogical arguments. It will be fascinating to see what further illogical positions he might hold.
I wondered what inspired theologyarchaeology to take up this topic.
I will say one thing. Men and women are different. There are a couple things that are true as a result.
— Women want men to protect them. It is difficult to have children without someone to keep and protect you, and most women love their children intensely. That is why traditional marriages are better for children. You want a woman to love you? Take care of her and her children.
— Men tend to be the final authority in most households, but that only works well if a woman believes that her man (think about those words, “her man”) is in love with her and trying his best to please her. In practice, marriage requires both the man and the woman to submit to each other. Usually, that mean the guy agrees to give his wife full authority where she has the most invested and vice versa.
I agree men and women are different, but equally, I think a lot of women (and men for that matter) have been conditioned by centuries of the belief that women are somehow inferior. It is only a short jump from believing women are in need of protection, to believing they are not capable of handling themselves (please note, I am not saying this is what you or anyone else we know believes, but I think it’s a thought process a lot of people inadvertently have). I believe a lot of women would prefer a partner, an equal party in a relationship. In that sense, I agree with what you said about submitting to each other. My wife is without question much better at handling certain aspects of our lives than I am, and I would be a fool if I tried to assert myself as the final authority on matters I lacked experience or wisdom in.
Actually, the belief that women are inferior is not purely a matter of cultural conditioning. Consider that it is next to impossible to find a culture where women have not been regarded as inferior.
In most societies, what matters is strength and power. Since women are about two-thirds the size of men, they have a very difficult time defending themselves from men. Prior to the invention of firearms, women were not serious competitors in combat with men, and strength and power generally establishes the pecking order.
This attitude, that women are inferior to men, began to change during the Reformation. When lots of people began to read the Bible in their own language, they observed that Jesus and His apostles treated women with respect. They noted that women had significant roles in both the Old and the New Testaments. They also noted that the greatest virtue was love and that a man is supposed to love his wife fervently.
Christian men are not supposed to treat women like little men. Each of the sexes has biologically driven roles. and it is silly to ignore such a thing. Instead, Christian men are supposed to love women just as much as they love their male neighbors, and husbands are supposed fervently love their wives.
It is important to remember what love means. Love does not give us the right to dominate anyone. Love requires us to treat others as we would wish to be treated if we were in their shoes.
I dare say the prevalence of seeing women as inferior is, in this day and age, very much a cultural issue. Power and strength are cultural too. I think this has persisted, both in spite of and because of what’s presented in organised religion. I appreciate not every Christian sees things in the same way, but some certainly do take the Bible as a reason to regard women as somehow lesser.
However, I do rather like what you say about love. I am rather fond of an expression, which I am going to mangle: Love is patient, love is kind. I can’t understand why some people see love through a lens of domination, or why they feel the need to.
The Bible says what it says, but that does not mean we do what it says. Often, we choose to refuse to understand what the Bible says. The Bible says to love Jesus, to repent, to accept His sacrifice for our sins and to obey His commands. But no one finds that easy. Agape love is an act of the will. We have to choose to love Jesus before we will obey Him.
They are four kinds of people.
1. There people who think they have been saved, and they have not been saved.
2. There are people who don’t know if they have been saved, and they have not been saved.
3. There are people who don’t know if they have been saved, and they have been saved.
4. There are people who think they have been saved, and they are right.
There are people who call themselves Christians in all four of those categories. God is our judge. I cannot point to anyone and say that they love Jesus. All I can say is that very few people have even bothered to read the whole Bible, even those people who are quite capable of doing so. So, when people blame organized religion for this, that, and everything else, I just think they are blame shifting, and they are getting away with it because almost everyone else is just as ignorant as they are. After all, before I started studying the Bible, I did the same thing.