Flare Sci-Fi Forums: "My Goodess gave birth to your God" *

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Posted by D. Lerious on :

Here is a question for those of you who, like me, beleive in God or in a supreme being. Do you believe that God is male, or female. In my opinion, God goes beyond gender, but was given male traits cause of the way he provides for his creations, ie humanity, like a father did in traditional times, hence Jesus himself called God "father".

*said in a poster I saw at someone's door, at college

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Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :

Something like that.

The problem comes from the fact that "it" sounds slightly offensive, so that's out. And the problem with saying "She", is that it really sticks out. If it's a genderless being, calling it "She" draws far more attention to the gender than calling it "He", simply because we're used to the latter.

As a (very weak example), take ships. They don't actually have a sex in the accurate use of the word, but many people call them "she". If you called them "he" though, it sticks out for miles.

And the English language does tend to use the male versions of word when talking about all of humanity. "Man", "Mankind", "history" and so on. If someone insists that the lesson be called "herstory", or "genderlestory", then that person needs to get a real hobby. God is written down using the male forms. In all likelihood, He isn't a gender at all. But calling Him a Her is like changing His name because you don't like how it's spelt.

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Posted by D. Lerious on :

Hmmmm.Good points, PsyLiam .

They make good sense.

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Of course, lots of languages have all kinds of gendered but non-living nouns...even English did, until the French came along and wrecked it. Actually, most Old English pronouns had identical forms for the masculine and neuter.

Speaking of French influence on English, "history" comes from a French word, which came from a Latin word, which came from a Greek word, which came from the Indo-European word *weid-. Thus, there's no connection to the masculine possessive pronoun.

Oh, and Grui doesn't have any gendered pronouns.

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[This message has been edited by The Shadow (edited July 10, 2000).]

Posted by Jeff Raven (Member # 20) on :

By design, no doubt, Phranq

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Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :

Well, yes, but still...

Posted by BlueElectron (Member # 281) on :

Here's a question, before God came along, is there such gender preference in any ancient language?

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Posted by Shik (Member # 343) on :

I thought everyone knew that before there was God, there was Phil.

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