The mixing of religious and non-religious beliefs in an individual.

In Religion 2.0, Will The Role Of Women Change

First let this be an invitation to any sisters out there to share a thought or two . . .

What provoked the creation of this Discussion Forum was a TV commercial on CNN announcing
The Congress Of World and Traditional Religions that took place July 2009 in Kasakhstan.

So I Googled it and came across the list of presenters.
I found the list to be somewhat lacking so I posted a Blog entry entitled,
What's Wrong With This Picture - click for more.

As we move closer to Religion 2.0, what will be the role of women in defining the new spirituality. If we decide that the roles for men and women are to be equal, do you think women are better equipped to make some types of contributions then men? In order for woman to feel included, are there things what should change.

Girls, take it away!

Boys, if you have bothered to read this far, please conduct yourselves in a civil manner. Listen twice as much as you speak and don't forget to ask lots of questions. . . remember to breath and the wisdom of what your mother taught you - "LADIES FIRST".

For example - could we try for more gender balance. Would that be a good thing?

Tags: gender, religion 2.0, role, women

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Rachel Marie McDonnell on August 30, 2009 at 6:59pm

I like that you made a point of that. It just makes me question how many "invited religions" even give a woman a place of stature or office within it.

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on August 30, 2009 at 9:42pm

"Boys, if you have bothered to read this far, please conduct yourselves in a civil manner. Listen twice as much as you speak and don't forget to ask lots of questions. . . remember to breath and the wisdom of what your mother taught you - "LADIES FIRST"."

Questions;

1) If we assign "roles for women" have we not already exercised prejudice and presumption?
2) John, don't you think the organization should actually exist before you stick your tongue up their holiest of hollies?

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on August 31, 2009 at 12:48am

The female matures faster than the male
The dog matures faster than the female
The cat matures faster than the dog
The mouse matures faster than the cat
The lizard matures faster than the mouse
The ant matures faster than the lizard
The amoeba matures faster than the ant.

Getting the picture? ... the male has further to go.

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on August 31, 2009 at 1:27am

The distinction between the male and female in ALL species is a matter of specialty, not superiority.

When assigning "roles", if natural talent cannot be authorized, then such roles should be based on general specialty concerns. Typically, the female human has a "broader, more detailed" mental perspective. The male has a "deeper, more analytical" perspective.

The female is more likely to be able to tell you the color of the shoes the person who just walked by was wearing. The male is more likely to be able to tell you what direction they were heading. This attribute distinction also explains the relatively greater creative talent in the female and the relatively greater logic and reasoning talent in the male.

Go to any intellectual forum on any subject on the web and you will generally find about 80% of the participants to be male. Go to an emotion oriented or artistic site, and you will typically find the reverse.

The recent attempts to program, medicate, and legally force women into being masculine and men into being feminine is about like trying to alter a lion into being a deer and a deer into being a lion. The end result can be dictated relative to who is "superior", but the truth is that both become less than they were. Natural evolution is dead.

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Permalink Reply by lee a. clifford on September 4, 2009 at 7:32am

AS LONG AS GOD IS PERCEIVED AS A MAN AND FATHER FIGURE THIS PICTURE WILL REMAIN PRETTY MUCH THE SAME. AS WE EVOLVE, THIS PERCEPTION WILL EVOLVE. I'M "INTO" DR. LEARY'S 8-CIRCUIT MODEL MYSELF...

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on September 4, 2009 at 7:50am

lee a. clifford said:

AS LONG AS GOD IS PERCEIVED AS A MAN AND FATHER FIGURE THIS PICTURE WILL REMAIN PRETTY MUCH THE SAME. AS WE EVOLVE, THIS PERCEPTION WILL EVOLVE. I'M "INTO" DR. LEARY'S 8-CIRCUIT MODEL MYSELF...

No offense, but Bullshit!

Psychology has a great effect on people of course. That is what it is all about, "playing with the mind". But to think that you can merely arbitrarily present anything, perhaps a dog or a mouse, as "God" and thus make dogs or mice and humans feel equal, is both ignorance and arrogance.

Reality is what it is. Changing how people perceive it, is toying with their minds and certainly can change the state of Reality, but it can never change the principles.

If you respect the principles, then how you "feel" about God being male or female or malamute, is of little concern to anyone involved.

When you place perception higher than Reality, you create blindness that merely leads to destruction. It is a very UN-Science thing to do, not to mention totally irrational.

If you care whether God is male or female, then you are already a lost cause.

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Permalink Reply by lee a. clifford on September 4, 2009 at 1:26pm

then if men are representing all these religious orders, then reality "is what is is", so there is nothing "wrong" with the picture.leary's 8-circuit model is a map of where your at, what you perceive at the level your on.if a pick-pocket meets a saint, all he sees are his pockets. if god is on a sub-atomic level, then mice, trees, or turds could qualify.

James S Saint said:

lee a. clifford said:
AS LONG AS GOD IS PERCEIVED AS A MAN AND FATHER FIGURE THIS PICTURE WILL REMAIN PRETTY MUCH THE SAME. AS WE EVOLVE, THIS PERCEPTION WILL EVOLVE. I'M "INTO" DR. LEARY'S 8-CIRCUIT MODEL MYSELF...

No offense, but Bullshit!

Psychology has a great effect on people of course. That is what it is all about, "playing with the mind". But to think that you can merely arbitrarily present anything, perhaps a dog or a mouse, as "God" and thus make dogs or mice and humans feel equal, is both ignorance and arrogance.

Reality is what it is. Changing how people perceive it, is toying with their minds and certainly can change the state of Reality, but it can never change the principles.

If you respect the principles, then how you "feel" about God being male or female or malamute, is of little concern to anyone involved.

When you place perception higher than Reality, you create blindness that merely leads to destruction. It is a very UN-Science thing to do, not to mention totally irrational.

If you care whether God is male or female, then you are already a lost cause.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski on September 7, 2009 at 7:50am

Interestingly Lee said “if god is on a sub-atomic level, then mice, trees, or turds could qualify”, which I thought was a poignantly put yet reasonably justified response.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski on September 7, 2009 at 8:13am

As for differences between Men and Women and their roles within religions mainly historical patriarchal dominance, we first must appreciate the biopsychology of the two types in discussion here, and then maybe move on from there.

Most people think that the brains of baby boys and girls are blank slates at the beginning of life. But according to new scientific evidence, they're not.

Recent reports show that newborn males and females have very different brain circuitry, and hormones dramatically shape their future thoughts, feelings and behaviour in the first years of life.

"The day they're born their circuitry is already pretty much wired," says Dr. LouAnn Brizendine, a neuropsychiatrist and author of the new book "The Female Brain." "They're either formed as a male brain or a female brain."

Brizendine says that after eight weeks in utero all children's brains appear exactly the same: female. Female is nature's default setting. It is only after a surge of testosterone that boys' brains begin to look male.

Recent studies reveal that after birth girls are already better at reading faces and hearing human vocal tones. Incredibly, during the first two years of life a baby girl's ovaries will pump adult levels of estrogen. From six to nine months, a boy's testicles are flooded with adult levels of testosterone.

While the behavioral effect of all of this remains a mystery, conjectures have been made.

"The studies that were done with children around 12 months old where their moms went in a room with them and they were told not to touch an object," recounts Dr. Brizendine. "The boys would just go right for the object and touch it. The girls would hear their mom's voice, turn around, look at their mom's face, and stop. Boys don't hear the complete tones in the female voice."

"The reason little girls may play better together is brain wiring -- verbal ability at a younger age," she continued. "And they may just be able to negotiate the sharing better than boys. Of course, little boys and little girls act differently. Adult men and adult women act differently, too. But it has really been ignored until probably the middle '90s."

Female Brain Studies Relatively New

For years, brain studies focused primarily on male subjects. But in the '90s, the government began requiring that all its studies include women. At the same time, powerful new brain imaging technology and sophisticated animal studies provided scientists with tools to map human emotions and gender differences.

Due to this revolutionary technology, we now know that areas for emotional memory and communication are larger in the female brain, perhaps explaining why, on average, women remember fights that men insist never happened, and why women use 20,000 words a day, while men use only 7,000.

At puberty, there is again an explosion of hormones, according to Brizedine. As a female teen's brain emerges, hormones dramatically reorganize her brain circuitry, driving the way she thinks, feels, acts and even obsesses over her looks.

Studies show that these surges of estrogen can trigger teen girls' need to become sexually desirable to boys.

The teenage male brain reorganizes too. Flooded with testosterone, many become absorbed in sexual fantasies and the need to masturbate.

"It's hard to believe that something as tiny as a little hormone could have such a robust behavioral effect for all of us," said Dr. Brizendine.

[Ref: ‘The Female Brain’ by Dr. L. Brizendine]

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on September 7, 2009 at 10:03am

Another of the very many reasons why it is much better and rational to focus on the actual talent of the individual rather than presume categories based on theories based on desire for preference.

The presumption that this or that office must be male or female regardless of the individual necessitates that the choice always have a lower probability of being the best choice that was available.

The gender war makes no sense at all except to manipulate through deception at the expense of the masses.

Do yourself a favor. Stop thinking about it and just do what actually works at the moment - the NOW, regardless of theories.

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Permalink Reply by James S Saint on September 7, 2009 at 10:14am

"In an effort to ensure no prejudice, this term we have concluded that our new President must have the following attributes;

1) Female
2) Auburn hair
3) Yellow eyes
4) Under 4'3"
5) Particularly unattractive
6) Popular IQ less than 80
7) No public education whatsoever
8) No other means of support
9) oh, and not really able to prove that she is a natural born citizen."

If actual talent isn't an issue, the office must not be very important.

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Permalink Reply by Roman Kozlowski on September 7, 2009 at 11:21am

John, I really think you’ve opened up a can of worms here.

Only a generation ago in religion’s millennia of history, this sort of considered detailed conversation inclusive of modern scientific evidence would have been impossible and would have done little to affect the dominance of patriarchal continuation. Thankfully and hopefully (I hope) our current appreciation and better understanding of gender differences will encourage greater enablement towards a fairer equalization of our human species in all respects of philosophical life.