Religion

Keeping society the way it is so that those with money and power maintain money and power.

The women being valued part was definitely a target in those decisions. The other book of acts that parallels the one they kept showed Paul working beside women and them as important members of the first century church. They kept the parts where Paul said bad things about woman's never put in the context. For example, in some parts of mid east, only women who were prostitute or priestesses of others gods spoke in public and had authority over men. So, Paul wrote to THAT church that women should be silent. But, if you read Acts, you know that there were several women who were preaching along with Paul, Barnabas, Silas, and Luke (Priscilla is the most obvious example).

I have worked for a long time to separate the "human organized religion" with its corruption and fallacies with "God inspired truths" of love your God; love your neighbor; and do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God.

I hope I am getting better...but this past 9 years have been hard to love my neighbor and to love mercy as I want some serious FAFO, like old testament find out, experienced by these cheats and liars who claim to be messengers of God.

But I will never forget what my professor for history of the ancient world said: "the problem with fundamentalists, whether they be Christian, Muslim, political or any other kind of fundamentalist, is that they are ahistorical. They take the movement out of its historical context and treat the people involved as cardboard cutouts that pop out of the ground for the story and then disappear. Then they do not allow the movement to evolve over time. So, they ignore the original history and do not allow it to change over history."

I would add they do this to confirm what they want. My best analogy is to the statistician who slices the data forty different ways to get the 'daya to show' what they already believe.