exholt: The problem is, I don’t disagree with you on either the facts or the interpretation of history. I’m asking how we can move from pointing the finger at past injustices to the kinds of dialog that might help prevent future injustice.

From my studies of past injustices of history in East Asia and how it continues to affect people in the current time period, the effective way to have this kind of dialog is to have a frank honest discussion of past injustices ASAP in order to acknowledge and confront them head on.

Sweeping it under the rug as one commentator here has seemingly done or attempting to suppress/discourage such discussions as the historical right-wing revisionists in Japan, Germany, and the US ends up doing little except to forestall such discussion to a later time when discussion will be just as, if not more difficult due to more passage of time and thus, the ability by perpetrators and their supporters to further forget/rationalize the past injustices.

We really need to be clear about the separation of “religion” and “spirituality” here. “Religion,” especially as the “big three” are concerned, certainly arises from patriarchal/ classist/ often also racist interests. Take, for example, the genesis of the Bible–experiences written by men, collated by men, authorized by men, at the expense of potentially equally valid accounts from women’s perspectives, such as the gospel of Mary Magdalene, or from “pantheistic” perspectives, such as the Gospel of Thomas (now, I’m not a Bible scholar; I’ve just recently become interested in these two). The thing here is, when it’s about religion, it’s about The Law and social regulation, and conservative literalists of Dobson’s ilk tend to confuse “the word of God” with “the words of God as written down by the authoritative voices of men who’ve been around but use imperfect language to capture a DUDEWHOANOSHITDANGIT experience.” However, The Law (aka religion aka what’s written down in the Torah or the Bible) has really very little to do with authentic spirituality. Donald Miller describes this very well in “Blue Like Jazz,” BTW.

I’m an atheist, and I don’t feel like I should pull punches if the God topic comes up in feminist discussion. I’m proud to be an atheist, and I feel like my reasons for rejecting religion have been well-thought out.

I understand your point – being intolerant doesn’t help me or feminists who do believe in God. So it’s a waste of time and not good for the mission. And perhaps I’m quibbling a little bit over the degree of reverence we should give people’s choices in this matter. If that’s the case, it seems like a silly quibble. I believe in respecting other people’s choices just like any resonable person. But I don’t believe that respect should extend to allowing them to say things I disagree with while I keep my mouth shut.

Let me know if I’m misinterpreting some stuff. I think that generally, we’d probably agree mostly on this.

I also stuck to examples using the Big Three because those are what I’m most familiar with.