Hmm. Curious that you blame this on Christiandom but then proceed to cite mostly the Old Testament, which is included in the Christian Bible only to provide a more thorough context within which one can understand the revelation. But whatever.
Mostly this debate doesn't interest me. What the Bible says vs. what the Koran says is immaterial. What matters is that nearly every country where the followers of the Koran exist in any appreciable numbers dresses up their women like sacks of potatoes, subjects them to segregation, locks them up in the house, etc. If you're prepared to argue that Koranic societies today treat their women better than Christian ones do, I'd love to see what you have to offer.
Still, some of this is rife with sophistry and therefore worth getting into.
I don't see this as particularly controversial. It's a throwback to Corinthians 7:8-9, "Therefore to the unmarried and the widowed I say, it is better that you remain unmarried like me. But if you cannot control yourself, then you should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion." (i.e., if you can, never have sex except to procreate. But if you can't help it, at least get married first).
I don't see that it denigrates women especially here since they are presumably under the same injunction. The defiling lies in the act of sinful disobedience to God -- the means by which one does so (whether with women or with other men or even, say, goats) is immaterial.
Well, I don't have a copy of the Septuagint handy so I have no idea of the context in which this was written (nor would I be particularly inclined to defend it if I did -- I'm not Catholic). But I think it's curious that in your effort to attack the Bible you include something that isn't included in much of the world's Bibles.
Couple of things here:
(1) Again, this is the Old Testament. It's laws applied to Jews living under it at the time. It is not binding on Christians.
(2) Old Testament slave laws existed for the protection of slaves. They were rather, ahem, progressive by the standards of the time, given that most societies regarded slaves as barely even amounting to property.
(3) The Old Testament also provides rather detailed instructions for the ideal manner in which to clean fungus from between one's toes. I suppose you're going to tell me that Christians (or Jews) are therefore cleaner than Muslims?
In other words, it establishes agnatic-cognatic primogeniture. Also pretty progressive for the standards of the time. In some societies of the day, if all the male descendents of a household were extinguished, their property reverted to the control of the ruler even if there were competent women still surviving.
IIRC this was punishment for Eve's behavior in the garden of Eden -- childbirth would be painful but they would still desire it nonetheless. Certainly not an arbitrary thing if one accepts Genesis as canon.
I thought you were citing the Bible here?
I've always thought the feminist trope about how ancient man was afraid of womankind was silly. What would man have to fear from them? Why not assume it was simply contempt for people perceived to be physically inferior?
More importantly: who really cares? Does the fact that a religion has been historically unkind to a particularly lefty constituency render it untrue?
