that such women haven't really got much in-depth knowledge of the texts of their religion.
They don't. I was on a chatsite with some women, one of whom was very very religious and all the women were appalled when I told them the brutal stories of the hebrew bible. They didn't want to believe it. They were very upset with me (for ruining their picture of god, I suppose) and I finally had to tell them that they were not angry with me, they were angry with god and to go read their own bibles.
I gave them chapters and verses. I doubt anyone of them ran to go read them to try to prove me wrong.
The more Jewish woman on the site reasoned - as most of my Born Again Christian friends do - that if god ordered Joshua and Moses to kill little children and babies and those still in the womb, it's because god is omniscient and
knew these children - who hadn't yet sinned - would grow up to be sinners.
[shrugs, shaking head]
I said if that was the case, god still didn't come out well, for he himself made these children and the not yet born for no other reason than to be butchered horribly.
Then again, there is another story (I'm sorry, I can't offer up chapter and verse off the top of my head) where a poor woman is offered up for gangrape by her husband without any intervening rain of fire, in order for him to stave off an equally angry mob. There's a horribly tragic passage of her crawling back after the night is over, lying helpless and maimed to death on her husband's doorstep.
She was his concubine who ran off and left him. He caught up with her at night and they had to spend the night at this place where they were accosted by thugs of another Tribe. He threw her out to them and in the morning, when she came crawling to the doorstep, he looked down at her and said 'Hey get up, we have to leave.' Then she died. And 'to avenge' this killing, though he was the primary cause of it, he dismembered her body, showing zero respect for her as a woman, a person and even a human being, and sent a piece to each Tribe, or something like that.
It's a horrific story, showing zero compassion and reads more like an allegory.
These stories are absolutely horrible on their own as reminders of a misogynistic historical past one would idealistically have hoped humankind had put far behind us by now (though we've not, of cuorse), but they're supposed to be the word of God? This is what the word of God has to tell me about the treatment of women? And they are only a few of a heap of examples.
When I confront my Born Again friends with this - from their own bible no less - they instantly say that Christianity has negated the Hebrew Bible teachings - god has changed his stripes - and is now kindler and gentler. But they still support the Ten Commandments.
I know of no Christian on this planet who follows the teachings absolutely. They can't and not be locked up as genocidal murdering abusive maniacs.
Yet the religion's followers like to sit smugly on their high horse and cast their noses down at other religions because theirs is a religion of Peace.