Shazzy wrote:Women are raped, abused, and oppressed all the time by non-religious men.
True, but excluding psycho/sociopaths who lack normal human emotions, those non-religious men know what they're doing is morally wrong. If they were religious men (christian bible-reading men) they would know that it's a man's duty to rule over his wife, his daughter, and any woman in his community who lacks a father or husband to keep her in line. As long as he owns her through marriage or fatherhood, he can do whatever he likes to her. He's expected to beat her regularly if that's what's necessary to keep her well behaved, and to rape her if she refuses to perform her duty as his wife. He's to do the same thing to his daughters to prepare them for marriage (not the rape, just the beating, since technically incest went out after the new testament was written).
If you look at the specific rules written by the stricter literalist churches, you'll see that they don't just condone treating women like cattle, they believe it's their moral duty in the service of god as men created in his image. When these men rape, abuse, and oppress women, they're not doing anything morally wrong. They're just being good christians.
That's the difference and it's a big one.
Believing in a God is not a direct correlation to female oppression.
That's true. But mimicking the "acceptable behavior" in the bible
is in direct correlation to female oppression. It's especially bad in churches that base their morals entirely on the old testament. Times have changed in the US, but we still have church leaders telling their congregation that the literal interpretation of the bible is the only guide on which they should base every single action they take.
It's not faith in God that's to blame, he has nothing to do with how men interpret a single book written in his name and edited by so many people over the years that no one knows what it originally contained.