Paraphrasing Jesus since 345AD.

News recently that the Anglican Church has cleared the way for women to become Bishops. Reminds me of a quote from the late Bill Hicks about female priests being allowed in the US. “Great, great. That makes priests of BOTH sexes that I won't listen to.”

But that’s just my godless cynicism talking. The real question should be what kind of institution in 2007 specifically prevents women from acting in certain positions? The answer would be none except our various religious bureaucracies of course, because if anyone else tried it nowadays they would be taken to court by the equal opportunity commission.

The zeitgeist of our semi-enlightened times considers men and women equal in pretty much everything except the obvious physical differences (can I beat most of you ladies in an arm wrestle, and you can grow a little human in your guts: Q.E.D). So why would the Anglican Church, or any religions body for that matter, still be discriminating against women?

Answer 1: They are an archaic sexist cult and their outdated beliefs should be recognised as the irrelevant superstitious gibberish that they are and ignored.

Answer 2: Their holy teachings specify that the position of priest or bishop should only be held by men and we should respect those beliefs.

I personally go for answer one, but, at the risk of being accused of straw man debating, I’m going to focus on option two, if only to bring up one of my favourite points that Richard Dawkins espouses. If you find it unfair of me to use the ‘women as bishops’ issue as the launching pad for this rant then feel free to substitute homosexual priests, homosexual marriage, capital punishment, working on the Sabbath etc.

The basic point is that if the bible contains the teachings of Christ and the word of God then He (they? that transubstantiation stuff does my head in) surely knows best and we should follow His teachings to the letter of the book. So if the bible forbids women priests or flared trousers then God fearing Christians should adhere to that and try to prevent it.

But things don’t seem to be that clear-cut in the bible. If they were there would be little reason for things like Papal Councils, Archbishops or theologians. Those people and institutions exist to provide judgement on religious matters and interpretation of religious document, and that’s the kicker, because as soon as you introduce human judgement and interpretation the whole system falls down.

There can be no bootstrapping here. If the bible by itself cannot provide unambiguous guidance, then personal judgement is required and the basis for that judgement must be external to the bible; ergo, mankind does not require God for moral guidance.

In fact the suggestion that mankind should be allowed to taint the teachings of God with our own judgement is in itself blasphemous. If we can use our free will to interpret the word of God into a system of morality then I would argue that we could use that same interpreting mind to do the same without God.

If you think like this the way I do then you sort of have to respect the fundamentalist religiods more than the so-called moderates. At least their beliefs are less tainted by arbitrary human judgement. They are also batshit crazy when compared with what most of us would consider normal behaviour so it’s a win-win for Señor Atheist here.

It’s all or nothing. If the teachings of the Church of your choice change with the times then they have been altered by human judgement and bias. Why not skip the fables and damnation and just develop a system of living together that reflects the times and aims to provide compassion, opportunity and respect to all, sans the magic?

Probably going to burn for that one.