God's sex.

[amitten]

So my question is this: Why have most religions assigned God a sex?

Sex is determined by genitalia. Genitalia is for one thing only: reproduction. So, why would God have genitalia, and therefore a particular sex???

My answer: It wouldn't.

[PsychoDad]

1. And you are right.

You are right. Islam teachs that same aspect. The One no form or Sex.

Peace.

[blonndee]

2. Because assigning god a sex makes one sex superior to the other.

And it's easier.

[Crandor]

3. Lack of gender neutral pronouns?

I don't think God would appreciate being called "it" :)

[amitten]

6. I don't think that's the reason.

Most religions go beyond pronouns in describing their God's sex, using words like Father or Mother, etc.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

31. Hebrew has NO gender-neutral pronouns

Everything, including inanimate objects, is either masculine or feminine, as in French and Spanish.

[Random_Australian]

4. 'It' carries objectification (sp!) which would devalue the concept, I

think.

[Erika]

5. Why did God have a son, not a daughter?

That's where you will find your answer. In the ME culture where the Bible and Koran were written, women had only a minor role to play in life. Colorful women such as Delilah and Jezebel had only minor parts. There were lots of concubines, and some incest with daughters. But it was basically the Tarzan/Jane type thing. Now Sarah was something else.

[beam me up scottie]

7. Wow.

Way to make a point.

:)

[blonndee]

8. You're right on target. And Sarah LAUGHED. And that was

remarkable.

[SPKrazy]

24. Now Another Aspect To That Is The Writers Were From That Culture

and there are a good number of scholars who have tried to discover the real roles of women in the bible.

Particularly in the new testament, the role of Mary, Jesus's mother, Mary Magdeline, and other women are getting some new attention due to a work of fiction called the DiVinci Code.

But that is good for women of the bible, because the likelihood is that they had a much bigger role in everything than the writers of the bible gave them credit for anywhere.

[Dervill Crow]

47. But how 'bout that Lilith? n/t

[RoyGBiv]

9. "Most" religions don't ...

Most dominant religions in the world today do, but this was not always the case, and if you think about it a little, i.e. the fact that most dominant relgions today *do* define a gender, how that came to be, and what has resulted, you'll have a great deal of your answer. Of course, that answer isn't a simple one.

And, to be pedantic about it, "God" in the judeo-christian tradition doesn't have a "sex," rather a gender, which comes packaged with gender roles, another part of the answer. Put another way, God is assigned the dominant role, God is masculine; therefore, in this tradition, men are dominant.

[Erika]

11. Men being the ruler

and women subservient. That's why God had a son, to keep men thinking they are rulers, and us po folk women should just tend to being pregnant and cooking the meals and accepting our place.

[NMMNG]

12. That's right

So keep quiet, woman! :P

[johnaries]

10. Except Daoism (aka Taoism).

"Know Masculinity, maintain Femininity".

In fact, the true nature of the Dao cannot be known:
"The Dao that can be described is not the True Dao, The Name that can be named is not the Eternal Name."

Daoism even seems to support Evolution:
"In the Beginning was the One, and the One gave birth to the Two, the Two gave birth to the Three, and the Three gave birth to everything known in the Universe"

I love Daoism!

[AmericanaAustraliana]

13. The genitalia are structured in the archetypal geometry

of penetration/incorporation. Think also of reproductive organs in the plant queendom. I think God, the source of personhood and the Universal Person is female, male, both female and male, and neither female nor male; since It contains all personhood and all persons (and also plant proto-persons).

I think it is valid to talk of God as a person in a non-trivial sense; the duality of personal/impersonal is linguistic:

The 'Universe' (one-song) is the impersonal side of the coin, and the universal or divine person 'God' (the singer and audience of the song), is the personal side . Or Ronald Reagan on those new dimes.

'person' is embedded semantically in the term 'impersonal'. Look at the pronouns in eg English:

It - the foundational impersonal pronoun --> in it's all-inclusive sense 'The Universe'
I - the foundational personal pronoun --> in it's all-inclusive sense 'God' or the 'Universal Person'

I guess my point is that God is female and male in the full sense; and that conflicts about whether SHe is male or female, or even about whether the term God has any verifiable meaning, can be resolved by understanding grammar, in particular the relationships between and among personal and impersonal pronouns; as well as the topology of the reproductive organs and other gender-specific anatomy.

I also think of our brains as neurons in God's brain. God's face is literally made up of all our faces (even Jesus') and so obviously is both male and female.

Also consider the grammar of the 6 primary questions and their simplest and most inclusive answers:

What? -It (impersonal)
Who? -I (personal)

Where? -Here (space)
When? -Now (time)

How? -in This Way (technique)
Why? -for This Reason (purpose)

[Strong Atheist]

15. Welcome to D.U.!

:toast:

[DarkTirade]

14. Well, in most of the polytheistic pantheons

the gods DID reproduce.
And most of the monotheistic religions sprung from those cultures, for the most part starting with just the worship of a single god, and leading down eventually to a belief in a single god.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

16. We're talking concepts here

Most religions were started as an attempt for humans to better understand their reality. So early humans celbrated life by conceptualizing God as woman, the bringer of life. Later, God was considered male because males had, by and large, taken on the protector role; the God concept fell into line with this new way of thinking. Some faiths saw masculine/feminine aspects in their God concepts; Hindus do today, so it's not an archaic way of thinking.

Most spiritual people I know (who are of different faiths) see God as beyond names and forms; everything and more than everything. So again the God concept evolves.

[Dogmudgeon]

17. I don't wish to quibble, but ...

... most of our ideas about the primality of Goddess faith are also insupportable. We don't know what early people believed. We can make educated guesses to just a few thousand years before written history, but before that, the human experience recedes behind an impenetrable curtain of time.

Emphasis on the historical and cultural influence of Goddess(es) has become popular because of the ascendancy of Feminism in modern politics, and recent discoveries about pre-Indo-European peoples -- both of which are Good Things, by any measure. But even Marija Gimbutas, a strong supporter of the Goddess hypothesis (i.e., that primal religion was female-oriented), pointed out that many of our own beliefs about feminine spirituality (so-called) are quite recent. Most of the ancient peoples did not strongly sexualize their languages and philosophies the same way the Semites (Hebrews as well as many non-Hebrew groups) and later Indo-Europeans did. In Basque folklore, for instance, both the Sun and the Moon are Male and Female, depending on the legend; the primary Goddess of pre-Christian Basque lore, Mari, does not conform well to most modern Western conceptions of a female deity. The Basques are thought (with considerable supporting evidence) to be the last surviving remnants of an European culture dating back to the end of the Ice Age, a culture including the Aquitanians and the Kingdom of Navarre.

There are also non-sexual aspects of a people's perception of reality that differ considerably from what we are used to. Southern and Western African languages, religions, and folk philosophies have animate and inanimate aspects, which are completely absent in modern European, Semitic, and Sino-Asiatic languages, and even small children from our own Western cultures will often strongly sort out things into "living" and "non-living", in ways adults do not. (The Berbers -- Tuareg -- like the Basques, are an even-older group of people, recently Muslimized.) In Europe, the old idea of the neither-living-nor-dead "elemental" survives mainly in folk occult lore and (possibly) the Resurrection of Jesus.

The Ancients' ideas of sexuality, mortality, and most of the other "big questions" were in many ways far different from ours. And that's just going back seven or eight thousand years. Human existence goes back over 100,000 years, perhaps as far as 150 or 180 thousand; the Great Human Die-Back occurred 78,000 years ago after the Toba supervolcano exploded; the Great Human Diasporas began shortly thereafter, and entire strata of artifacts have been destroyed in Europe, Asia, and the Americas by the advance and retreat of the glaciers.

Of over 100,000 years of Human culture and thought, less than 7,000 years remain, most of it in fragmentary condition. And the first quarter-to-half of Human culture and existence was wiped out by a single cataclysm far smaller than that which killed off the dinosaurs. That 7,000 years is 7% or less of the full human line, yet every moment of those 100,000-plus years can be argued to have contributed to the people we are now, mentally as well as physically. Most of what we are, is unknown. That which we call "philosophical" or "spiritual", or even "irrational", is the biggest part of us, and is mostly hidden from our view.

Many, if not most, of the conversations here -- whether they are screeds or sublime philosophical dialogs -- suffer from the same cultural baggage that caused most of the problems in the first place. And what's inside the baggage, we can only guess. It is nearly impossible to disentangle oneself from cultural presuppositions, biases, and reactions, but many of us still struggle to do so. Perhaps every dialog about religion or philosophy should have a section for the discussion of preconceived notions and how they hold us back.

So we're left with two sad results: First, that we really aren't able to trace back much beyond the first written histories, and second, we're hamstrung by our own often-unrecognized mythologies. Our work is cut out for us, long before we even start to think about how divinities may or may not figure into it. If ours is the Age of (Re-) Discovery, it must start with ourselves.

--p!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

18. My take on this comes from archeological evidence

namely the many "Venus" figures from prehistorical Europe. From what I recall from my Art History classes in college, the idea of woman as giver of life was shown by these figures.

[Finder]

21. True...but she went from giver of life to a mere vessel...

for life when patriarchy took over it seems.

[greyl]

35. No, it isn't true and there's no need to consult archaeological evidence

to prove it(and definitely not from Europe). We only need to look at aboriginal human societies that exist today, who are living a tried and true and successful way of life without a male or female godhead. The evidence of how humans lived before our culture began writing history and expanding at such a rapid, destructive, and disastrous pace still exists. Among many things in common, their lack of belief in Divine Prophets is pretty much across the board. Why? Because they already know how to live. Put another way, they haven't forgotten.

Just one example out of thousands:

The Mentawai Future: Religions

All Indonesians are required to profess one of the state-supported religions: Islam, Christianity, Hinduism and Buddhism. The government of Indonesia views Jarayak, traditional Mentawai animism, as a primitive belief of ignorant tribal people. Although many Mentawai still practice Jarayak, most shamans will say they are Christian, to avoid the possibility of violence against them and their families.

Though Islam arrived in Indonesia a decade after the Christian missionaries, it may soon surpass Christianity in total number of converts; church-run schools begin influencing children early. Islam promises youngsters the "best" education for “free,” as well as great opportunities for the brightest pupils to continue their studies on the mainland. The price is that they must live in Muslim communities and strictly adhere to Muslim beliefs.

Both Christian and Muslim beliefs are devastating to the traditional Mentawai way of life. Pigs are pivotal in Mentawai culture, central to every major ritual and a primary source of protein. Conversion to Islam means eating no pork. Both religions consider all rituals and ceremonies to be abominations. This religious conflict tears clans apart and prevents family members of other faiths from attending important Jarayak ceremonies, such as weddings. Throughout history, religion, when used as a weapon of assimilation and oppression, has effectively exterminated countless peoples and cultures. If this continues, the same will be true of the Mentawai.
NativePlanet.org

Btw, I don't fault women one bit for trying to reclaim their religion from patriarchal influence; it's an improvement. However, it doesn't go nearly far enough toward dispelling the myths of our arrogant young culture and it's salvationist religions.

[Finder]

20. We have more of a record than you think...

and glaciers covered but did not destroy much of the evidence we have collected and are collecting. I do agree some in the feminist and/or neopagan movements have taken the facts a bit far at times, but the record certainly does show a prevalence of the feminine in ancient times. I will say one thing though, much of the evidence was overlooked(sometimes on purpose)until females were allowed to enter the fields of archeaology and anthropology. I don't mean as a male conspiracy but as a church one, since most universities were run by the church.

The biggest misconception,in my opinion, is that these goddesses were all peaceloving, pacifists. Early man surely recognized the female of most species could be brutal in order to protect their young. Look at Kali the Hindu goddess--she is the giver of life as well as a destroyer.

I do agree with you as far as our(humans)presuppositions holding us back from understanding.

[greyl]

37. Not human presuppostitions, cultural presuppositions. nt

[greyl]

29. Your age of human existence is a little off.

By about 3 million years. ;)

[Crunchy Frog]

32. I think the intended reference was to anatomically modern humans.

The hominid line goes back several million years, but 3 myo hominids were probably little more than bipedal chimpanzees.

[greyl]

33. My intended reference was to the age of human existence; Human species.

According to the person I replied to: "Human existence goes back over 100,000 years, perhaps as far as 150 or 180 thousand".

I think it's a shame that so many people don't realize how long humans have been around. During a conversation about the origin of relatively very young religions and speculation about what the first "religious" ideas and experiences must have been like for humans, I think it's especially important to keep in mind that humans have existed on Earth for about 3 million years.

[Crunchy Frog]

34. I won't argue with you, other than to reiterate

that australopithecines are not generally considered to have been human, only that their lineage eventually lead to humans. In fact, the hominid line is thought to go back considerably farther than 3 million years.

There's certainly no evidence for complex symbolic thought in early hominids.

[greyl]

36. I'm not talking about australopithecines.

I'm talking about the genus Homo and all of it's human species. Humans. :)

Though I've seen some opinions that humanity may be 4 or more million years old, I think my work is cut out sticking with a conservatively averaged scientific consensus of 3 million years.
There are still people on this board who've told me that humanity may be 6 thousand years old, I shit you not. ;)

[Crunchy Frog]

38. I think the genus Homo is about 2 million years old.

I suspect that there are a handful of people who troll this board for the sole purpose of trying to convert us poor librul heathens. I can think of one or two, but mentioning names is verboten.:) I doubt that many genuine DUers believe that creationist shit (though now I come to think of it, I have debated a couple).

[greyl]

39. You wanna compromise at 2.5? :)

Homo habilis first appeared around 2.5 million years ago.
http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/biology/humanevolution/habilis.html

People belong to the genus Homo, which first evolved at least 2.3 million to 2.5 million years ago.
http://encarta.msn.com/encyclopedia_761566394_7/Human_Evolution.html

Now that you bring this up, I'm thinking it may be better to include hominids and say that humanity is at least 4.5 million years old. ;)

[Crunchy Frog]

40. I'll go with 2.5 .

If we're going to include all hominids though, I'd say we should throw in the great apes as well. Actually, as long as Dubya is considered human, great apes should definitely be included. ;)

[ozone_man]

19. God had a wife (Asherah).

Dever finds that 90% of the people of ancient Palestine -- of the second millennium and the early centuries of the first millennium BCE -- lived in scattered and isolated rural communities, even after Jerusalem had emerged as the capital of a united monarchy. These communities practised a folk religion quite different from the monotheistic, patriarchal, literary and theo-retical religion we find in the Old Testament and the Hebrew scriptures. It was characterised by what people did, rather than what they thought; polytheistic, not bound by written rules and egalitarian. But, most importantly, it was matriarchal.

Their principal goddess was Asherah, consort of the most senior of the ancient deities of the area. Also in the pantheon of goddesses was Shapsh (Sun), Yarih (Moon), Astarte (androgynous) and Anat (warrior), some of whom were also sometimes identified with Asherah.

The cult of Asherah is confirmed by the archaeological record, which allows us to reinterpret previously incomprehensible passages in ancient texts. These include the Bible itself, which provides ample evidence of attempts to suppress information of the widespread worship of Asherah and other polytheistic practices.

She was a central deity to whom women and men both gave allegiance. Jewish Kabbalistic writings also confirm an early goddess called Shekinah, and testify to the holy act of sexual union between her and Yahweh, sometimes graphically described. Under the matriarchy, sex is not just holy, it is also very sexy; under the patriarchy it is regulated, controlled and, finally, under Paul, barely tolerated.

Of course, the existence of the matriarchy as predating patriarchal deities in many ancient civilisations is commonly accepted, and some argue for the one Great Mother as the original deity of all. But what is new and controversial is the discovery that the matriarchy was so firmly entrenched in the heartland of the world’s three great monotheistic religions.

http://www.mg.co.za/articlePage.aspx?articleid=251463&area=/insight/insight__international/


What a better world it might have been with a female deity counterpart.

[Finder]

22. The original "Trinity"...Mother, Father, Child as archetypes.

or perhaps, Virgin,Mother,Crone. ;)

[lvx35]

23. Its really less meaningful than people think.

In christianity for instance, the name of God 'Elohim' is a masculine singular prefix with a feminine plural suffix. I think like in english, Male is the default pronoun in Hebrew...And the term Father is used instead of Mother, which you hear more in Hinduism....but the concept is essentially the same...In catholicism Mary is seen as representing the female aspect that was previously worshipped by pagans in Rome.

[Solon]

25. Actually, that isn't accurate...

The proper name is YHWH, or Yahweh, a male God. El, which is the base for the word Elohim, and other words of that sort, was the supreme God of the Canaanites. In Ancient Hebrew, it used to be a proper name for a particular God, but eventually transmuted to be a generic name simply meaning "God". Elohim (אלהים) is a Hebrew word related to deity, but whose exact significance is often disputed. It is the third word in the Hebrew text of Genesis and occurs frequently throughout the Hebrew Bible. In some cases (e.g. Ex. 3:4 ...Elohim called unto him out of the midst of the bush...), it clearly denotes the God of Israel. In other cases (e.g. Ex. 20:3 Thou shalt have no other Gods before me.), it refers to the polytheistic notion of multiple Gods. In this case, it would be rather confusing, not to mention that you have it reversed, its the singular word for Goddess, Eloah combined with the Masculine plural form(-im). The closest English equivelent would be saying "God(dess)es".

This suggests that, at least during the early oral tradition, that the ancient Israelites were polytheistic, this is strengthened with the idea that Yahweh had a Consort, Asherah, who was decidedly a Goddess, and she even had a shrine within the Temple of Solomon. Yahweh Himself is never referred to as an androgynous Deity, He is decidedly male.

[lvx35]

26. Its basically accurate.

El/Elohim is the GOD OF ISREAL (you said the God of the Canaanites). From wikipedia:

In some cases (e.g. Ex. 3:4 ...Elohim called unto him out of the midst of the bush...), it acts as a singular noun in Hebrew grammar (see next section), and is then generally understood to denote the single God of Israel.

And yes, I said that wrong, Eloah is feminine and and the im suffix is masculine, but my point is the same, the name is MEANT to contain the paradox of femininity and masculinity, plurality and singularity. The plural aspect of God in modern times is expressed through angels, the feminine more often through Mary nowadays. But God is transcendant.

[Solon]

27. Actually, El is the equivelent to Yahweh, controversial to say they are...

the same entity, as shown here:

El
Leader of the gods. The first Canaanite god, El dwelt on Mount Saphon, and it was under his aegis that Baal married Anat, defeated the sea god Yam and the death lord Mot, and was installed as the divine bestower of life-giving rain. Represented as an aged man, El wore bull's horns, the symbol of strength, and was usually depicted as seated. It is thought that he corresponded to the Hebrew god, Yahweh. He is also known as El 'Elyon, "God Most High."

http://www.pantheon.org/areas/mythology/middle_east/judaic/articles.html

[TallahasseeGrannie]

28. Humans need to humanize God

so they made him a man. But he is so far beyond that that we can't begin to imagine what he is.

[ozone_man]

30. God keeps changing.

You keep lowering the bar. ;)

Certainly the anthropomorphic god is easier to disprove than some I could imagine. The safest thing is to say that God is unknowable, not a personal god. But if we do that, many of the creeds that were established thousands of years ago become obsolete. And that would be a good thing for religion.

"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated." - Mark Twain

"If God did not exist, he would have to be invented." - Voltaire

[TallahasseeGrannie]

42. Great quotes

Actually, we didn't lower the bar. I think a whole LOT of religious folks think of a dude in a white nightgown. To me, that is as much myth as Adam and Eve.

I believe humans search for "God" because they instincitvely know there is more to the story than what we see with our eyes. Unfortunately, what we see with our eyes is all we really have to go on, so it has been easier to assign him/her/it human characteristics, because that is what we are the most familiar with.

[ozone_man]

44. Isn't God still a father (or mother) figure?

Whether he has a nightgown or not. Believing that there is a father figure of abstract form or unkowable is only slightly more credible in this day and age than believing there was a god in a nightgown a thousand years ago. It is still driven by the same human need to be taken care of, to help deal with the unknowns and fears in life and death, and to explain their existence or purpose in life.

I don't think anyone can instinctively know there is a god, though I think we can say based on how we've progressed in our understanding of life on Earth and the physical universe, that there is more to the story. We will never know the whole story, but we can't make stuff up that we can't explain at this point in time. Well, I suppose we can, but that involves faith instead of reason. The two are not compatible though.

"Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and ... know nothing but the word of God." - Martin Luther

[greyl]

41. Not all humans.

By that I mean not all human societies or individual humans.
Animism is still going on around the world.

[TallahasseeGrannie]

43. Yes

and that makes sense because what is more common (and therefore understandable) to us than animals?

[greyl]

45. Yup, can't forget the animals.

The way I imagine it, the earliest humans saw everything as "sacred", including plants, weather, sky, rivers and bugs. What else did they have to pay attention to, learn about, and value? Their life depended on these things. They had to know how to make best use of all that reality in order to evolve in reality in the first place. They didn't consider their world to be a fallen world. The gods they knew were proven by the abundance and diversity of life.
They lived in the hands of the gods as well as among them and this is how the animist cultures that exist today around the world are very much like. Animism doesn't concentrate on animals, it's a view of all the animating forces of the world.

On their lack of need for prophets, I doubt that any person alive today in an indigenous culture has ever thought anything remotely comparable to "God, I'm stuck in a 50 hour a week deadend job that I hate just to put food on the table for my girlfriend's 2 kids and keep up the payments on my new Mustang. Why does life have to suck? God, are you out there listening to me? Send help!"

[Dervill Crow]

46. There's more to it than genitalia, IMO.

That's why I'm pagan. I consider deity equally masculine and feminine.