Is Islam Evil? - Part V

Sexism in Genesis

If Jehovah does not exist, then Jehovah is a false god and Judaism is a false religion.  If Jehovah is a false god and Judaism is a false religion, then Christianity is also a false religion, since Jesus was a devout follower of Judaism and he prayed to Jehovah, and taught his disciples to pray to Jehovah.  So, if Jehovah does not exist, then Christianity is a false religion. 

If Jehovah does not exist, then there would be little point in comparing Islam and Christianity in terms of sexism, for we would just be comparing two false religions, both of which should be expected to reflect some degree of sexism, given that both religions were founded in ancient times when sexism was widespread and when there were few or no moral objections being raised against sexism.

So, for the sake of argument, I'm going to suppose that Jehovah does exist, or at least that Jehovah did once exist.  Furthermore, since Jehovah is supposed to be an invisible and intangible spirit we don't have any objective observational facts about Jehovah, only biblical stories and claims about Jehovah.  If the biblical stories and claims about Jehovah are fictional, then we have no basis for making any evaluation, positive or negative, about the character of Jehovah. So, for the sake of argument, I'm going to suppose that the biblical stories and claims about the words and actions of Jehovah are accurate.
  
Furthermore, since Christians believe that the Bible, including the Old Testament, was inspired by God, and that Jehovah is God, I'm going to assume, for the sake of argument, that Jehovah inspired the OT.

Therefore, by carefully examining the OT, we can form conclusions about whether and to what extent Jehovah was a sexist, based on the assumptions that the OT accurately describes the words and actions of Jehovah, and based on the assumption that Jehovah himself carefully guided the composition of the OT. Based on these Christian assumptions, I will attempt to show that Jehovah is a sexist.

Although I am accepting Christian assumptions here, for the sake of argument, we should keep in mind the naturalistic view of the OT. Atheists and naturalists have no problem explaining the acceptance and even promotion of sexism in ancient writings. Sexism has been around for a long time, across many peoples and cultures, and moral objections to sexism are a fairly recent phenomenon. Thus, it is no surprise to atheists and naturalists that ancient writings, such as the Quran and the OT, show acceptance of sexism and even promote sexism. This is what one would reasonably expect, if there are no omniscient and perfectly good beings who go around helping human authors to compose stories and books.

Christians and Muslims also accept this sort of naturalistic explanation for the acceptance and promotion of sexism in various ancient writings, with the exception of their own sacred books. Atheists and naturalists are simply being more logically consistent in accepting this kind of explanation in the case of the Quran and the OT, both of which appear to show acceptance of, and promotion of, sexism. 



The first indication of sexism in the OT occurs in the first book of the OT: Genesis.  The first indication of sexism occurs in the very first sentence of the very first paragraph of the very first book of the OT:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth...
(Genesis 1:1, NRSV)

The Hebrew for the phrase "God created" is Elohim bara.  Both the name Elohim and the verb bara are gendered: male.  The verb bara indicates 'he created', and the name is also masculine.

But for both Christians and Jews, God is a spirit, God has no physical body, and thus God cannot have a penis.  God is not physically a male, because God has no body at all, neither a male body nor a female body.  Given that God has no body, and thus cannot be either male or female, there is no necessity in Jehovah being represented as a male, referred to by a masculine name, nor for Jehovah's actions to be described in terms of masculine verbs.  

In the first Chapter of Genesis (NIV translation) there are seven instances where the masculine pronoun 'he' is used in reference to Jehovah:

1:4  ...and he separated the light from the darkness.
1:5   ...the darkness he called 'night'
1:10  ...and the gathered waters he called 'seas'
1:16  He also made the stars.
1:27  ...in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.
1:31  God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. 

The word 'his' is used in reference to Jehovah in Chapter 1:

1:27  So God created mankind in his own image...  

In the second chapter of Genesis (NIV) there are ten instances where the masculine pronoun 'he' is used in reference to Jehovah:

2:2 (twice), 2:3 (twice), 2:8 (twice), 2:19, 2:21, and 2:22 (twice).

The word 'his' is also used of Jehovah in Genesis chapter 2:

2:2  By the seventh day God had finished the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work.

[Note: this is not unique to the NIV translation.  Similar use of the masculine pronoun 'he' in the first two chapters of Genesis can be found in other modern English translations, such as NRSV and NASB].

If Jehovah was omniscient, then Jehovah would know that: (a) Jehovah is neither male nor female, and (b) that Elohim is a masculine name, and (c) bara is a masculine verb.  Jehovah would also know that English translations of the first two chapters of Genesis would use the masculine pronoun 'he' to refer to Jehovah, given the Hebrew words and phrases used in those chapters.  So, Jehovah would know that the words of the first verse of Genesis as well as the first two chapters of Genesis would be misleading in characterizing Jehovah as being a male.   

Furthermore, given the sexism of ancient cultures, including ancient Hebrew culture, Jehovah would (if omniscient) know that using primarily masculine language about Jehovah would tend to preserve and even promote the view that women were inferior to men and that men ought to maintain authority over women.  So, if omniscient, Jehovah would have knowingly promoted sexism among the Hebrew people by inspiring the words of the first verse of the book of Genesis.

Of course, if Jehovah was omniscient, then Jehovah did not hold the false belief that women were inferior to men.  That implies that Jehovah would have promoted discrimination against women even though Jehovah knew that women were not inferior to men and that women were just as capable as men of being rulers and leaders.  This makes Jehovah doubly sexist, because not only did he knowingly promote sexism, but he did so knowing that sexism was based on false assumptions about the inferiority of women to men, so presumably Jehovah is a misogynist: Jehovah dislikes women and is unfair to women, for no good reason.  Unlike the ignorant and fallible Hebrews of ancient times, Jehovah (if omniscient) knew better than to believe that women were morally or intellectually inferior to men, and yet Jehovah promoted sexism and discrimination against women anyway.  

If Jehovah was not omniscient, Jehovah might be excused for mistakenly believing that women were inferior to men, but then Jehovah would not be God, and Judaism would be a false religion.  On the other hand, if Jehovah was omniscient, then Jehovah must have known that women were not morally or intellectually inferior to men, and that the sexism and discrimination against women that Jehovah promoted was unfair and based on a false belief in the inferiority of women.  In this case, Jehovah was unfair and mean for promoting sexism, and thus Jehovah was not a perfectly good person, and thus Jehovah was not God, and Judaism is a false religion.  Either Jehovah was omniscient or Jehovah was not omniscient.  In either case, Jehovah was not God, and Judaism is a false religion, and thus Christianity is also false religion.

To be continued...