Originally posted by geeogree

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actually.... Christianity is very accepting and well treating of women... it was when the catholics took over Christianity that women were put down into a lesser role

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Originally posted by geeogree

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Peter is seen as the first pope by the catholic church....

Protestants and other reformers don't see it the same way as the catholics do.

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Originally posted by Plus Sign Abomination

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Good for them. However, most historians will tell you that the Occidental Christian Church is what is called in modern terms the "Roman Catholic Church" as well as the "Greek Orthodox" with their various Patriarchies (also included are the modern Coptic and other Orthodox Churches). Thusly said, regardless of what Protestant theology and Reformer dogma states, history rules that the Catholic Church WAS all that was Christian.

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Originally posted by geeogree

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after Jesus and the apostles all died.... the christian church began to mingle with pagan religions.... the result was the catholic church


after the apostles died there were hundreds of manuscripts of writings by different apostles and other people that all claimed to be valid scripture. There were also a lot of different doctrines that came up in the first 200-300 years.

Eventually the council of nicea decided what Christians were to believe. 300 years after Jesus was alive doctrine was redecided upon and the writings that are now in the bible were also decided upon at that time.

and you guys honestly believe that there was no change in doctrine between Jesus' time and the time when Constantine legitimized Christianity?

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Originally posted by geeogree

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Probably not.... even if I was more respectable, Ziff and SS wouldn't listen to my arguments. They are both catholic. Do you honestly think anything I say is really going to make a difference? They both have ideas in their heads about their religion and what went on during the early Christian period.

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Originally posted by Kutske

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I'm sure it is, but he said, "The whole idea of misogyny is not supported by Islam." That's utterly contradictory to everything I've ever learned about a woman's role in the Islamic world, and I've seen excerpts from - among books - the Quran to confirm this. Now, I don't for a minute doubt that Jin must come from a community that supports women in the way he claims, but my original question wasn't, "Jin -- how are women treated in your specific Muslim community?" The question was why Islam in general places women so low (what with the thirty-howevermany virgins promised to a man in his afterlife, among other examples). It can't all be blamed on extremists and cultural setting, most of it has to trace back to the core belief system.

Not that I'm here to vilify Islam or anything -- Christian and Jewish texts are equally terrible to women, it's just that since I live in a country with many Christians and Jews, I can see from firsthand experience that by and large, their misogyny has been abandoned and is attributed to customs and cultures of days gone past, with a focus being on the more positive things the Christian and Jewish texts promote, what with the charity and caring for the sick and needy, etc. I haven't been able to observe this sort of thing first-hand with regards to Islam - most of my knowledge comes from my own admitedly-loose understanding of the Quran and Islamic tradition - so I figured I'd take the opportunity to ask an actual Muslim straight up, "What's with the misogyny?" I'm more inclined to believe an individual's testimony (that is, Jin's) over the scholarly disambiguation of Islamic texts made by outside observers which, unfortunately, is all I've had access to up until this point, I just need him to elaborate and give examples.

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Originally posted by geeogree

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Ziff: you're right.... that is the reason you won't listen to anyone else's opinion on the subject

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