And, of course, literature is the most important of the three disciplines. :)

We shouldn’t forget that, being ignorant doesn’t mean being stupid. The men who wrote the bible, etc.., and many of those who interpret it, are just as intelligent as you or I.

There certainly is misogyny in the bible, but Nietzsche was also raving misogynist. There are some nasty bits in his writing that have no redeeming value. He also though, uses women as a metaphor in ways that are important to understanding his philosophy.

As to theology. I think Dawkins makes a faulty assumption that many atheists make. Theology is not about convincing atheists. It’s about explaining religious scripture and tradition, in a rational way, to the faithful. Without that last part as an assumption, the bible is just literature.

Atheism didn’t really do much for my critical thinking, it was too easy for me. It just made sense on a very intuitive level for me. What challenged me to think critically was literature, philosophy and science, in that order.

Personally, I have found that thinking critically about everything has only increased with my burgeoning atheism. But alas, I am only human after all.

Mental gymnastics.

Possibly, but we can’t determine that, by cherry-picking. I am not a Jewish scholar, so I don’t know, but I’m happy to look at different opinions. Formal traditional prayers tend to have specific contexts that inform their meaning, dismissing that, without thorough analysis is simply prejudice. We should be better than that, I think, if critical thinking is indeed important to us.

http://www.torah.org/learning/women/class31.html

Context is everything. :)

The prayer reads, “Blessed are You, Hashem our G-d, King of the universe, for not having made me a woman.”

Imagine!