From: JEK@cu.nih.gov
Subject: muslim tithe; sexism in Genesis 2
Lines: 33

According to mdbs@ms.uky.edu, muslims tithe 1/6 of their income.

Perhaps there are some offshoots of Islam that impose this on their
followers.  But the standard tithe is 1/40 of one's net worth, once
a year.

The same writer also objects to the Bible for teaching that

 > "woman was created after man, to be his helper" etc.

This is presumably a reference to Genesis 2. Suppose that that
chapter had been written with the sexes reversed. We have God
creating woman, and then saying, "It is not good that woman should
be alone. I will make a help meet for her." Feminists would be
outraged. The clear implication would be that God had started at the
bottom and worked up, making first the plants, then the fish and
birds, then the beasts, then woman, and finally His masterpiece, the
Male Chauvinist Pig. The statement that woman is not capable of
functioning by herself, that she needs a man to open doors for her,
would have been seen as a particularly gratuitous insult. The fact
that the creation of woman from the dust of the ground was given
only briefly and in general, while the creation of the Man was given
in six times the number of words, would have been cited as evidence
of the author's estimate of the relative importance of the sexes.
The verdict would have been unequivocal. "No self-respecting woman
can accept this book as a moral guide, or as anything but sexist
trash!" I suggest that Moses, fearing this reaction, altered his
original draft and described the creation with Adam first and then
Eve, so as to appease Miriam and other radical feminists of the day.
For some reason, however, it did not work.

 Yours,
 James Kiefer