| | Max wrote:
Ahhh, Luker, that's a common misconception, because you have to define MAN. In the medieval Christian sense, this could only be Christians. Of course, this has changed slightly today, but if you look at the Islam world, you will see the same attitude: Only Muslim are proper men. Thank you, Max, for that clarification. I suspected this, but the modern Lutheran church in which I received Catechism training treated all human beings, regardless of race, gender, etc., as members of the species "Man." I hope that some day the Islam world will receive its versions of Aquinas and Luther to mitigate their dogma with independent reasoning.
Speaking of "Man," an old feminist I know through the local freethought group holds "sexist" language as one of her pet peeves, arguing that the medievalist mindset only treats males as proper members of "Man" with commensurate rights to life, etc. I respectfully disagree with her, but I understand her point of view given the historical abuse of the word. I still prefer the all-inclusive masculine convention that Ayn Rand used: "Man," "men," "his," "he," etc. as including both genders of the human species.
(Edited by Luke Setzer on 8/14, 7:51am)
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