Neither morality nor science are solely the province of either sex.

The biblical and related texts only forbid murder; whether abortion IS murder depends on whether a fetus is a person, a MEDICAL queston on which the bible is largely silent. The closest it comes is Exodus 21:22-25, but that covers injuring a fetus against a womans will, so the assault is against her as well.

In terms of science, the most incredible thing is that Akin is on the House Science and Technology Committee even though he thinks rape cannot cause pregnancy. But Republicans control the House, so they make its committee appointments. That is an object lesson for anyone willing to learn it.


My personal view is divine inspiration compensates for human failings, preventing true CORRUPTION, but human languages inherent LIMITATIONS preclude any written text fully conveying Gods position. We tell kids too young to understand fusion that stars are "burning" but, while strictly inaccurate, that is not FALSE, just oversimplified to aid their limited understanding and language.

Genesis creation is a good example: "Let there be light" squares so well with the Big Bang some scientists initially called the latter a Trojan Horse for the former, yet Bronze Age scribes had no word for "universe," and could only speak of "the world." Even if they understood God created stars and galaxies spanning billions of light years, how could they convey that in ancient Hebrew? That does not invalidate the text, only demonstrate the limitations of mere mortal words.


Even without considering translation, human language remains central to that criticism for the reason just demonstrated. Translation, however, does compound the problem; I like to think I know the texts fairly well, but I know them in English; I cannot share Tom and Dans credit for Greek knowledge I do not have (and for which I have consequently picked the brains of both more than once.)

Yet the bible is not and never claims to be a science text: It is a moral and philosophical text. It works phenomenally well on those bases, but the farther we deviate to subjects on which it says little or nothing, the less useful it is. The bible forbids murdering people; it does not define people. It is certainly fascinating that Genesis states myriad species were created in precisely the order evolution says they arose, but the bible is no more a biology text than it is a quantum physics text.


Gender concepts have little relevance to an omnipresent being such as God; their relevance lies in the perspective and language of the scribes.

I must note in passing that you do those scribes a disservice in saying they disdained humanism and caused the Dark Age. The Dark Age was caused by a series of periodic pagan marauding from the north and east that all but destroyed Christian Romes civilization. Europes eventual re-emergence afterward is due almost entirely to securely walled monasteries preserving what remained of classical knowledge and culture. Much of that was written in Greek, the lingua franca of educated Romans, but the monks painstakingly translating virtually all of it into Latin during the Dark Age made Latin the literate language by the end.

When that end came, scholasticism—and humanism—were born from theologians in those same monasteries. They surely disdained SECULAR humanism as a contradiction in terms (to the extent they acknowledged it at all, which was slight,) but created humanism. Scholasticisms development by St. Thomas Aquinas and humanisms culmination in Desiderus Erasmus occured, not despite their devotion to Christ and scripture, but because of it. Blaming the bible for thoroughly Christian Romes fall before wholly pagan assault, and ignoring its critical Medieval and Renaissance role, is a rather backward analysis of history.