Is feminism dead?

Craig has a post titled "The Death of Feminism" with the text "It's the left's fault, of course" and a link to an opinion piece from today's Australian. I know that Craig is generally not complimentary to either feminism or the left, but I thought this article raised some good points.

Pamela Bone writes "Let it be recorded that in the last decade of the 20th century the brave and great movement of Western feminism ended, not with a bang but with a whimper" and asks "On International Women's Day, where are the protests in our cities against stonings, honour killings or any other persecutions to which women are still subjected?"

Good question. Here are some more choice excerpts:

While a US administration that refused to fund programs against AIDS unless they taught about chastity instead of condoms could rightly be criticised, the mullahs whose abuses of women's rights were very many degrees worse could not.

Was it before or after September 11 that thinkers of the Left - for feminism was a movement of the Left - decided that racism was a far more serious crime than sexism? When did cultural sensitivity trump women's rights?

I don't hold much hope on this International Women's Day of seeing big protests in Australian cities against female genital mutilation; or against honour killings, stonings, child marriages, forced seclusion or any of the other persecutions to which women are still subjected. The fire of Western feminism has quietly died away, first as a victim of its success, lately as a victim of cultural relativism, of anti-Americanism and reluctance to be seen to be condemning the enemies of the enemy.

Yet as Western women take their rights for granted, other women are just beginning to demand theirs. There will be marches in Europe this International Women's Day, organised by Muslim (or ex-Muslim) women reformers. They will march through Germany and France to present a grievance to the European Parliament in Brussels, saying that the veil is "a manifestation of political Islam and a symbol of the oppression of women".

In Pakistan, the Prevention of Anti-Women Practices Bill, which would ban forced marriages and give women rights over property, is before the national assembly. In Syria, the murder of a 16-year-old girl by her brother, at her family's request, has prompted a national debate about the leniency shown to perpetrators of honour killings.

In Saudi Arabia, Bill Gates, addressing a recent business seminar, told the segregated audience - women, their faces and bodies shrouded in black, behind a large partition - that the country would not achieve its ambition to become an economic power while it failed to use the talents of half the population. "One side of the audience loved it," he quipped later.

Maybe my report on the death of Western feminism is greatly exaggerated. I hope so. "Don't be so polite, girls!" the old feminists used to sing. "Show a little fight, girls, show a little fight!" ...Human rights are universal. And women's rights are human rights.

I don't agree with everything Pamela Bone writes, particularly on "sexual rights" and a woman's "right" to control her own body, but I think she has some good points. It seems to me that many young women of my generation do take their rights for granted, and forget that women had to fight to work outside the home, to vote, and to own property. While maybe these aren't all necessarily rights but privileges, men (white men, anyway) did not have to fight in the same way. Many opportunities were denied to women simply because they were women.

I remember an email debate with some uni friends about whether feminism was still necessary. I think I was the only person arguing that it was. The general argument from the other girls seemed to be that since there were more women than men in their workplace (medical science), feminism was no longer needed. OK, so perhaps you are not suffering from any discrimination or limitation of opportunities, but what about other women?

I started to become much more interested in feminism (and, I guess, more passionate about the issue) at the end of my honours year. As I was leaving for uni to hand in my thesis, I grabbed a book off the shelf to read on the train. It was a book called DIY Feminism that my mother had given me a few years earlier, but I hadn't had a chance (or perhaps hadn't been motivated enough) to read it. I can't remember now exactly what was in it, except for the general idea that there is no "Feminism" - it's what women make of it - and the fact that many women were struggling with gender discrimination. This alerted me to the fact that while my life had been all fine so far, not every woman is so lucky.

And this was just in Australia. When you start thinking about things that happen to women all around the world, the situation is more desperate. And Pamela Bone mentions some of these things - honour killings, genital mutilation and stonings for adultery. This last one is particularly unfair for women. In some countries, when a woman is raped it is considered adultery, unless more than one reputable male witness will come forward to say that it is rape. The woman is punished for the adultery, but what happens to the man?

I suppose that's enough of a rant for the time being. I'm not sure what the point of this rant is anyway. I guess it would just be nice to see more women getting angry and upset about the treatment of other women around the world.

Donna's new nickname

I have decided that Donna's new nickname shall be "Chipper."

What is Romans about?

An essay I wrote for the Moore College External Studies unit on Romans:

Paul’s Letter to the Romans concerns two main questions: how salvation can be achieved and how a person can be part of the people of God. In the course of the letter, Paul argues that both Jew and Gentile need to be justified by faith in order to be saved from God’s wrath and to belong to the people of God.

In Romans 1:16-17, Paul states that the gospel is the power of salvation for both the Jew and the Greek, and in the following section he explains why salvation is needed. 1:18-32 describes the sinfulness of the Gentile world, and 2:1-3:20 shows that the Jews are in just as dire a state. All have sinned and are therefore facing God’s wrath. However, in 3:21, Paul begins to explain the hope of the gospel. God’s righteousness is being revealed in the world – not through the law, which no one has been able to keep, but through faith in Jesus Christ (3:22).

Paul brings this point home to the Jews by using the example of Abraham, the great patriarch of Israel, showing how his righteousness before God was based on faith, not works. For this reason, Gentiles can also take part in the promises God made to Israel through Abraham, if they have faith in God. Paul makes this crystal clear in 10:9: “if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your hear that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.” There is no distinction between Jew and Greek, he states, “for everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (10:13).

One may ask whether salvation is the same thing as belonging to the people of God, or whether something else is needed. Paul makes it clear that this is not the case. “God shows no partiality,” he declares in 2:11. Even the Jews’ privilege of being “entrusted with the oracles of God” (3:2) does not save them, since they have still broken God’s Law. However, Paul goes beyond the issue of salvation to show that both Jew and Gentile can belong to God. There is only one God, Paul states in 3:29-30, and he is God of the Jews and of the Gentiles. Even more dramatically, Paul argues that the promises made to Abraham apply to all who are his descendents by faith – he is the “father of all who believe without being circumcised” (4:11). It is not enough for a Jew simply to be circumcised (2:28-29), and a Gentile can become one of God’s people without being circumcised. The necessary step is justification by faith.

In addition, the Spirit of God, received after justification by faith, marks people out as belonging to God. “Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him” (8:9), but “all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (8:14). This, then, applies to both Jew and Gentile. Although the Jews were chosen by God to be a light to the nations, the salvation of the Gentiles was always part of God’s plan (11:11-12). Even as Paul mourns Israel’s unbelief, he acknowledges that it is the “children of the promise” who are counted as children of God. Finally, the change in a person’s life that happens after salvation – the way to live that Paul sets out in chapters 12-15 – also marks that person out as belonging to God.

Thus, the answers to the two main questions of Romans – how salvation is to be achieved and how entry into God’s people is to be obtained – are determined by the one act of righteousness on the part of Jesus, which allows all people who believe to be justified by faith.

Beautiful

One of my favourite songs by the Christian singer-songwriter Bethany Dillon:

I was so unique
Now I feel skin deep
Count on the makeup to cover it all
Crying myself to sleep
Because I cannot keep their attention
Thought I could be strong
But it’s killing me

Does someone hear my cry
I’m dying for new life

I want to be beautiful
And make you stand in awe
Look inside my heart
And be amazed
I want to hear you say
Who I am is quite enough
Just want to be worthy of love
And beautiful

Sometimes I wish I was someone other than me
Fighting to make the mirror happy
Trying to find whatever is missing
Won’t you help me back to glory

You make me beautiful
You make me stand in awe
You step inside my heart
And I am amazed
I love to hear You say
Who I am is quite enough
You make me worthy of love
And beautiful

And this is what Bethany Dillon has to say about why she wrote the song:

I wrote this song following a series of talks with my youth group about what it is to be a woman—how we reflect God’s glory and what our hearts desire most. “Beautiful” was both easy and tough to write. Easy because I fight those battles almost every second—“Am I enough? Do they think I’m beautiful?” – tough because it was almost shameful to admit those are often my thoughts and fears. Though it’s not something neatly packaged that I can cure, my heart is deeply burdened to just be in the struggle alongside women… to feel vulnerable together… to win the battles together… to finally come to understand that we are intensely pursued by the Strong and Rescuing Jesus—what we have wanted all along.

Judgment and Mercy

People sometimes suppose that judgment is an "Old Testament" idea, whereas in the New Testament you find only mercy. This isn't even a caricature; it's simple fiction.

Tom Wright, Romans for Everyone, Part 1, p. 29.

I hate wait

Before Christmas, I submitted an abstract for a Science and Religion conference being held in the UK in July. It would be a great conference to go to - it's my area of research; it's being held in honour of one of the foremost science and religion scholars in the world, whose work has been important in the development of my own ideas; there will be lots of other top-class scholars there, whose work I have also used extensively; it will be a great opportunity to network and share my research just before finalising my PhD thesis; and it's in England. I love England!

It's been nearly 7 weeks since the abstracts were due, and I still haven't heard whether mine has been accepted or rejected. I received an email from the organiser in early January, saying that he's received my abstract and that decisions should be made by the beginning of February. I waited until more than a week of February had passed, and sent a very nice email inquiring about when I might hear something. He said Monday. It's now Saturday. Well, in the UK, it's nearly Saturday. And I still haven't heard anything.

I'm not a very patient person, and I'm getting quite frustrated!

Maybe I could give him my word as a Spaniard? No good, he's probably known too many Spaniards...

I hate wait.

The Great Debate?

Chaser headline on the back of today's Herald:

Even worm refuses to watch Debnam-Iemma debate

I was watching it with my dad, and there wasn't even enough interest to have us making fun of the politicians (not for long, anyway). I resorted to tossing grapes at my dad.

Can I vote for Quentin Dempster?

Looking at the moon, thinking of the universe

About this time I started to read an article in a magazine, on the subject of the basic difference between the male and female habits of thought, relating chiefly to their experience of sex (the title of the article made you think it would tell a great deal more about sex than it actually did). The author was a famous New York psychiatrist, a disciple of Freud. He said that the difference between the male and female modes of through were easily illustrated by the thoughts of a boy and girl, sitting on a park bench, looking at the full moon. The boy thinks of the universe, its immensity and mystery; the girl thinks, "I must wash my hair." When I read this I was frantically upset; I had to put the magazine down. It was clear to me at once that I was not thinking as the girl thought; the full moon would never as long as I lived remind me to wash my hair... I wanted men to love me, and I wanted to think of the universe when I looked at the moon.

Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Woman

Baptism

He pushed me down again but this time I was expecting it. I held my breath and fought him. I fought strongly and naturally, as anybody does, held down in the water, and without thinking much about who was holding me. But when he let me come up just long enough to hear him say, "Now say you'll do it," I saw his face streaming with water I had splashed over him and I felt amazement, not that I was fighting with Garnet but that anybody could have made such a mistake, to think he had real power over me. I was too amazed to be angry, I forgot to be frightened, it seemed to me impossible that he should not understand that all the powers I granted him were in play.

Alice Munro, Lives of Girls and Women

Happy Birthday Galileo!

On this day in 1564, Galileo Galilei was born at Pisa.

Galileo and the so-called "Galileo Affair" have been favourite soap-boxes of mine for quite some time. People who know me well generally know not to get me started. People who don't know me well and make the mistake of commenting on how badly the Church treated Galileo generally regret it. I'm not exactly sure when this interest of mine began, however. The earliest exposure I had to the name of Galileo, as far as I can remember, would have been a song by the Christian pop singer Amy Grant. This would have been back when I was in primary school, when I was about 10 years old. I remember going to a concert of hers - she was touring after the release of her album Heart in Motion. One of my favourite songs on the album (I still enjoy it!) is called "Galileo." It has cute lyrics:

In the year of fourteen ninety-two
When Columbus sailed the ocean blue
Had he landed on India's shore
You might never have come to knock on my door.

Who needs a rhyme or a reason?
Some dreams were made to find
So I know that I must follow

Ask me just how much I love you
You are starlight, I'm Galileo
Even on the darkest night oh
I will find the shining light of our love.

I'm not sure if I found out much more about Galileo during primary school. The next time I encountered his story, as far as I can remember, was in my first year at university. I was enrolled in a Bachelor of Medical Science, but I decided to take some Science and Technology Studies subjects as electives. (It sounded more interesting than physics, psychology or computer science, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions I've ever made!) The first subject I took was called Cosmos and Culture, and it was an overview of the history of science from the ancient Greeks to the 20th century. It was all very new to me, but I was loving it. We got to the Copernican Revolution and Galileo the week before our major essay was due, but I was fascinated enough to abandon my research on Aristotle in order to write about whether the Copernican Revolution was indeed a revolution. I'm still amused that I relied heavily on Thomas Kuhn's 1957 classic The Copernican Revolution without knowing anything of its significance or that of the follow-up, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. But that's another story.

The main thing I remember hearing about Galileo is this class was how the Church had condemned him as a heretic on the basis of just one short passage from Scripture:

Joshua 10:12-14 - At that time Joshua spoke to the LORD in the day when the LORD gave the Amorites over to the sons of Israel, and he said in the sight of Israel, "Sun, stand still at Gibeon, and moon, in the Valley of Aijalon." And the sun stood still, and the moon stopped, until the nation took vengeance on their enemies. Is this not written in the Book of Jashar? The sun stopped in the midst of heaven and did not hurry to set for about a whole day. There has been no day like it before or since, when the LORD obeyed the voice of a man, for the LORD fought for Israel.

The message I received from this class was the Galileo was condemned as a heretic because the Church insisted on a literal interpretation of this passage. Of course the sun moves! Joshua wouldn't have told the sun to stop moving if it had actually been the earth that was moving - he would have told the earth to stop spinning! And because of this, science and religion became mortal enemies, as they still are. I remember thinking how stupid the Church was, and how it was responsible for the conflict between science and religion, just because they insisted on a literal interpretation of a verse that was obviously not meant to be taken as a scientific statement.

Such was my initial understanding of the "Galileo Affair." I was 18 years old, a first-year university student who had not yet even embarked on my career as an aspiring historian of science. I was still planning to study medicine to become an anaesthesiologist at that stage! But just as my continuing studies convinced me that I should head down a different path, so they also showed me that the "Galileo Affair" was not as straightforward as it first seemed.

While Galileo is often referred to as the "father of modern science," it is difficult to classify him as a scientist, or even a natural philosopher, as the people who studied the natural world were known at that time. Galileo was primarily a mathematician, although he sought the title of "philosopher" as they were more highly paid.

Galileo excelled at cultivating favour with the aristocracy, through his performances in debates, dedications of important works, and gifts of instruments such as the telescope. Contrary to popular belief, Galileo did not invent the telescope, nor was he the first person to use it in looking at the heavens - just perhaps the most outspoken! However good Galileo was at increasing his public profile, he was also very good at making enemies. His performances in debates often left his opponents looking stupid - a good thing for his patrons, but not when he needed crucial support from the academic community.

In his short book, Galileo, Stillman Drake argued that Galileo's condemnation by the Inquisition in 1633 was not a result of his defiance of the Church, but was rather caused by the hostility of contemporary philosophers. We are so conditioned to view the "Galileo Affair" as the result of an inevitable conflict between science and religion that this may come as a shock, but this is not a new perspective. Drake's book was first released in 1980, though the 2001 "Very Short Introduction" edition still labelled this as "a startling reinterpretation of the evidence."

If I go into too much detail here, this post will become far too long. I suspect that many people have already stopped reading! But here's a few points, just to whet your appetite.

We need to remember that this was a troubled time for the Church. The Reformation had challenged the authority of the Catholic Church, particularly with regard to the interpretation of Scripture. However, Pope Urban VIII, the one who eventually unleashed the Inquisition on to Galileo, was initially a huge fan. He even wrote a poem about Galileo, and gave him permission to write the Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems which eventually landed Galileo in hot water. Galileo made the mistake of putting the Pope's favourite argument into the mouth of Simplicio - the character in the dialogue who is indeed shown to be a simpleton. Urged on by Galileo's philosophical enemies, the Pope was not pleased. Even Cardinal Bellarmine - arch-Counter-Reformationist - who was intimately involved in the early years of the "Galileo Affair" but who had passed away before the 1633 trial, was prepared to at least consider reinterpreting certain passages of the Bible, so long as there was good reason... but Galileo had no real evidence.

Wait a minute! No evidence? Didn't Galileo have his telescope? Common sense? The scientific method?? Well... that's going to take too long to explain thoroughly. Stay tuned for details on where you can find out more!

So there was a context of religious upheaval, and the Church was anxious to retain its authority. But what is "the Church"? There was no such monolithic institution. For starters, there were the Protestant and Catholic churches (emphasis on the plural), and even within each of these, there were differing viewpoints. And the idea of "the Church" suppressing science? What is this "science" you speak of? There was "natural philosophy" - a mode of natural inquiry much broader than what we view science as - and there were many varieties of this as well. And there were the mechanical sciences (again, emphasis on the plural) which weren't considered to be on the same explanatory level as natural philosophy. A conflict between science and religion? Which science? Which religion? You can see how it gets complicated.

It's probably more accurate to view the Galileo Affair as a conflict between "old science" and "new science" than between "science" and "religion." The academic establishment of the day, which happened to be closely aligned with the Catholic Church, but by no means homogeneous theologically, resisted Galileo's attempts to change the accepted view of how the universe worked. And since Galileo's evidence was rather less than compelling, perhaps they were the really "scientific" or "rational" ones after all.

But still, Galileo was a great thinker, and I am a big fan. I particularly like his way of looking at nature as the work of God, and seeking to understand it better in this context. And the "Galileo Affair" and his work and ideas are important for striving to understand how religious belief and scientific understanding of the natural world relate to each other.

Some key quotes:

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to makes matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of the sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position - eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.
- Note added by Galileo in the preliminary leaves of his copy of Dialogue on the Great World Systems (1632)

Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one wanders about in a dark labyrinth.
- The Assayer (1623)

But I do not feel obliged to believe that that same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them
- Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine, Grand Duchess of Tuscany (1615)

That's all for now, folks, but if you should wish to hear more, I will be "Revisiting the Galileo Affair" on Tuesday, April 17, as part of the CASE Christianity and Contemporary Thought lecture series. I hope to see you all there (although those who live in a different hemisphere will, of course, be excused).

Lame Science, Blind Religion

Separate but equal? Faith versus evidence? Not convinced.

Click here.

Does Dawkins exist?

A parable.

If I had a hammer...

My dad just walked through the house holding a hammer and some nails.

Ah, you've got a hammer! Are you going to hammer in the morning?

Well, no, it's the afternoon now.

Are you going to hammer in the evening?

I hope to be finished before then.

Are you going to hammer all over this land?

No, just the back step.

Is it a hammer of justice?

No, it's a claw hammer.

Are you going to hammer out justice?

No.

Are you going to hammer out warning?

No.

Love between your brothers and your sisters all over this land?

Nope, I'm just going to fix the step.

He's now finished hammering...

Wine writers show that facts don't exist

Click here.

Sargeant Pepper

A stylish way to defend oneself from attackers. Too bad it's illegal here!

Loving it

Michael Jensen on blogging

Click here.

Putting 9/11 into perspective

Imagine that on 9/11, six hours after the assault on the twin towers and the Pentagon, terrorists had carried out a second wave of attacks on the United States, taking an additional 3,000 lives. Imagine that six hours after that, there had been yet another wave. Now imagine that the attacks had continued, every six hours, for another four years, until nearly 20 million Americans were dead. This is roughly what the Soviet Union suffered during World War II, and contemplating these numbers may help put in perspective what the United States has so far experienced during the war against terrorism.

Continue reading here.

Education or Indoctrination?

Nick has written a post about a movie called Jesus Camp. I thought my comment was going to get too long, so I'm posting it here instead.

Where do you draw the line between education and indoctrination? Can you give children a choice without educating them about religion anyway? I was a Christian from a young age, but I don't think I was indoctrinated. Do you? I didn't have a full understanding of what it meant to be a Christian. I "asked Jesus into my heart" when I was about 3 or 4 (maybe older, I can't remember), but I didn't really know what it meant. I did it just after my bath - I thought he'd be able to get in more easily if I wasn't wearing any clothes! But just because I only had a child's understanding doesn't mean I was indoctrinated. It wasn't something I was forced to do. I wanted to do it, and my parents weren't even in the room at the time.

My understanding of Christianity grew gradually as I got older. I don't know exactly when I understood different things, but I remember trying to evangelise my friends when I was about 6 or 7 (I was a very cute little girl back then, by the way). I organised a group of my friends at school into a little singing group and we performed some Sunday School songs for the rest of the class (and we were invited next door to sing to the other class as well). I used to invite friends to Sunday School. No one told me to. I just wanted my friends to know what I knew about Jesus. Does this sound like indoctrination?

When I was 12 (only 2 years older than your cut-off of 10), at Easter time, it really hit me just how significant and important it was that Jesus died for me. I count this as the time that I made a real commitment to Christ, and took my parents' faith on for myself. But that doesn't mean that I didn't believe it before, or that I just believed because my parents did. If that was the case, I might not have stayed a Christian. No one would have forced me to. My parents might not have been happy, but I'm sure they would have respected my decision.

Yes, my parents "forced" me to go to Sunday School when I was a kid. Mostly I enjoyed it, but sometimes I wanted to sleep in on Sunday mornings. But they forced me to do a lot of other things too - eat vegetables, go to school, practise piano - I'm grateful for all of it. Except for the brussels sprouts.

I'm a Christian, and I consider that I have been one pretty much my whole life. Although my understanding has changed, there was never a time that I didn't believe in God or what he has done. But I've always had a choice. I've had plenty of chances to change my mind. I've had my faith and beliefs challenged. I haven't shied away from such challenges - I read books by authors such as Dawkins, and I get into debates with people like Peter Slezak. I am not a Christian out of ignorance. The more I read and the more I think about it, the more it makes sense. This, I think, is what Dawkins just doesn't get. He seems to think that the only Christians who aren't ignorant, indoctrinated and blind are the ones whose beliefs hardly resemble Christianity any more. He's wrong.

Art and Science

Title: In Saturn's Shadow
2006, NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

With giant Saturn hanging in the blackness and sheltering Cassini from the sun's blinding glare, the spacecraft viewed the rings as never before, revealing previously unknown faint rings and even glimpsing its home world.

Read more here.