jefferson dale abandia's Blog

This is my first time to encounter the term neurotheology and it triggers my mind to think what it is all about.  The first thing that came in to my mind upon encountering this word was the Feuerbach concept of God. According to him our religious experience or our concept of God is just a product of our mind or just the projection of it. It is only our mind who created God. Read the rest of this entry »

“Religulous” is a documentary film about religion, particularly Christianity, Islam and Judaism. It talks about the loopholes of religion, its criticisms and weaknesses. This triggered my mind and led me to so many questions about my religion. In a way it disturbed me, especially the way I look at religion. At first I was shocked and surprised maybe because this is my first time to know of the problems and inconsistencies of religion or maybe I am not open to this kind of reality. Like other Christians, I just take for granted what my religion teaches me. I just follow and accept what my religion taught me without asking any questions. It is not because I don’t have doubt or questions about my faith, it is not also because what I believe in is clear to me, but it is because I am just afraid and hesitant to question my religion. I am afraid that I might offend God or disrespect my religion if I questioned my belief. However in my surprise here is this guy in the film in the person of Bill Maher questioning and putting everything about religion onto doubt. Although some are just superficial questions, it triggered my mind in such a way no one did. It is in our culture that makes me afraid of asking questions about God and religion, because of the “Taboo mentality.”

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The article “Godwomen and Religion”, talks about the original meaning of the word “paganism” and how the feminine concept of God was rejected in the course of history. I will not give further attention on the origin of the word paganism; rather, I’d focus my attention on the rejection of the feminist concept of God in the course of history and its implications.

In the article “Godwomen and Religion,” paganism was being defined by the ruling people as wrong not only for the reasons that they worshipped many gods but also for the reason that it is a goddess-centered religion. Before, they attributed God as feminine. They even considered nature’s way as female and they attribute the working of the universe to the female deities. Female gods that time has important functions namely the sexual attraction and reproduction. The people on those times believe that it is through these goddesses that all things came about. They believe that only these goddesses have the capability to reproduce. They do everything to please these goddesses.  They also believe that the queen is the earthly representatives of Goddesses. It was through the queen that the new king will come. They consider women as king makers. They gave importance to the queen and even to the women. They respect women because they believed that the women are the representations of their goddesses. The idea of surrogate king takes place. They started to take over the functions of the queen. They started to degrade women and treat them as mere possessions. They consider women as evil or the source of evil. They started to replace the feminine concept of god with a male God. The new religion takes place with Yahweh as their God. They started to eradicate the feminist concept of god. They started to destroy temples who worshipped other gods. They even kill those persons who worship female gods and the superiority of male gods take place. They believed that the worshipping of many gods is against the commandments of God. They started to attribute all things to Yahweh who they believe was the source of everything. The new religion takes place through force and violence. Paganism was being condemned for having female concept of gods. They reject feminine concept of god because they believed that women are weak, in the history especially in the bible women was being portrayed as the cause of sin, and to the point that they claim that women have no souls. They consider women warrior or the woman who has the capabilities or abilities to become a fighter or soldier as abnormal or has defects. They cannot accept the fact that women can be a warrior or a soldier. They believed that the character of being a warrior is only proper to man. Unfortunately feminine concept of God was not being introduced to us. There is already the bias. In fact only in this paper that I came to know that there is a feminine concept of God and it is prior to male concept of God.

However the feminist concept of God makes us aware of our environment. It makes us conscious on the way of nature. It brings back the status and the dignity of women. It also encourages us to take care and give importance to our mother earth. Feminist concept of God makes us aware of the importance of rituals and women. Feminist concept makes us realized the works of nature in our daily life.