Religion and Rape.

BY JENNIFER ROBACK MORSE

And why the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception matters.

//But I have a deeper concern about the overall rhetorical strategy in this article. Dr. Tarico wants to speak of religion in general, and sweeps Catholicism into a bucket with all sorts of religions. She is quite correct to see that in religion after religion, the gods come to earth and rape women. Indeed, this is part of the general pattern of the gods indulging themselves and doing what they like with humans.

Atheists sometimes sneer that "man creates god in his own image." And so we do. Quite regularly, as a matter of fact.

And when we do create god in our own image, this is what we come up with: gods who rape, pillage, get drunk, get jealous, make war, and generally do whatever their superior power allows them to get away with. Alpha males love this kind of stuff. I believe that is why the patterns Dr. Tarico points out are so consistent across time and space. Elites of all societies love having religious sanction to use their power without restraint.

All except Christianity. In Christianity, God sends a gentle messenger to ask Mary to be the mother of His Son. She could have said no. In Christianity, God comes to earth, and allows us to do what we want to Him. We do the worst things we can think of, and He takes it. He triumphs over our worst sins, and over death itself. Christianity most specifically says that the Elites do not get to do whatever they can get away with.

"One of these things is not like the others." So unlike the others, that it is hard to imagine that someone just made it up. One might even suppose that God revealed Himself to us, since He knew we would not figure it out on our own.

The danger of attacking "religion in general" is that it undermines the one religion that has the potential to put the brakes on the rich and powerful. Indeed philosophers from Machiavelli to Nietzsche have understood as much. They hated Christianity precisely for the restraints it places on the Prince and the Uber Mensch. Sweep Christianity away, especially the Catholic version, and all that will be left standing is the paganism that Dr. Tarico rightly fears.//