Refining the quest for civility in the discussions of atheism...

Nobody likes to be called "irrational", but nevertheless all of us are, now and then. Why not use the correct label??
There are many other cultural habits that are irrational, like doing a job you hate, living in a suburb, meeting substandard buddies, driving a SUV, having one drink too many, smoking a cigar, scolding a child, singing in the bathroom... We know it's irrational, but, alas, we're not always rational.
It is not rational to build an opinion on facts that are not or cannot be proven. The burden of proof for god's existence and, more important, of his authorship of only one out of thousands of holy books and holy tales, is not on the atheist, but on the theist side. And that side did not provide reasonable evidence over that last millennia.
Theists have no problem at all to call all the other holy books "heathen rubbish", but they get very emotional when their own special book is cast in doubt.
There are worse lifestyles than basing one's moral and lifestyle on a book allegedly written by someone outside of time and space, but containing three thousand years old misconceptions about the universe, society, slavery, human rights, women and children - it may be widely accepted, but it is not a decision based on a rational process. And the writing of holy texts is not a rational process either.
It is in the realm of the invisible and proof-less, that you claim that belief in a faith system - though, undoubtedly, it is not the result of a step-by-step rational process, and immune to reasoning - should not be called "irrational".
Well, what else?

Bal wrote of the quest for civility: "My suggestion helps to avoid the building of orthodoxies - whether they be religious or scientific or anything else."

Kudos, Bal. I'm with you on this one. It's a hard sell—the ideas that even atheists can make irrational arguments or resort to defensive sarcasm or straw arguments or dogmatic thinking and that we must all guard against those tendencies.

I also think that the level of civility would be raised if people chose neutral terms rather than pejorative or provocative ones. The intent seems to be to spark an emotional (perhaps "typically religious") reaction rather than serious thought and discussion. When the language chosen is provocative (I've been told I'm irrational, small-minded, and taboo-sensitive for asking for the sort of clarity you're advocating), one is at a loss to know how to respond to it rationally. These sorts of characterizations can cut off all serious debate. At the very least, they may lead the reader to believe that serious debate or discussion is not what is really desired.

I'd recommend, though, that it's probably best to ignore name calling and simply respond to any actual philosophical points the poster may have made.

MycroftH wrote: "It is not rational to build an opinion on facts that are not or cannot be proven. The burden of proof for god's existence and, more important, of his authorship of only one out of thousands of holy books and holy tales, is not on the atheist, but on the theist side. And that side did not provide reasonable evidence over that last millennia."

Is that the only option you recognize—that one MUST believe God has authored or inspired only one of the holy books?

Please be aware that that is a rapidly diminishing view among religious people. Many folks are coming to the realization that their holy book never claims exclusivity. That is something granted to it by clergymen with jobs to protect.

In the case of my own religion, one of the central tenets is that God's message to mankind has never been the exclusive province of one group or another.

Again and again, I see accusations made against "Religion" as a whole that are reflective of one small sect or dogmatic point of view. This would be tantamount to insisting that because Joseph Stalin believed "X" all atheists believe "X" or that atheism as a whole promotes "X". (Where X could be any number of heinous or inhumane ideas.)

Is that rational?

How do you decide which parts of other people's holy books are true and which are not?

@kaath
You criticized a metaphor in another thread not as weak- which it was - but as wrong, and I called making that point small minded, as everybody could see that the fellow meant otherwise. I did not call you small minded.
As for the "only one god per holy book" complex, well, the only "synergistic" religion I know is yours, Ba'hai, but, please don't take this quantitative argument personal, there are about seven point something million members of your religion worldwide, compared to billions of Christians and Muslims, even the members of the Jewish religion (which does not proselyte), outnumber you by the factor of two. So sometimes I forget the disclaimer concerning Ba'hai. It may be impolite, but it does not impair my arguments aimed at the majority of Abrahamic religions.
Just around the corner where I live, in Malaysia, regarded as a moderate and progressive islamic nation, tens of thousands of christian bibles in bahasa melayu were confiscated by gov't because they used the Malayan word for god, which is "Allah". And of course there were immediate, spontaneous, and violent demonstrations of deeply hurt devouts... And it is still illegal in quite a number of states to convert from the state religion (usually islam)... The unity of all god-fearers is nothing that can be observed, even if You may wish for it.

Paul asked: How do you decide which parts of other people's holy books are true and which are not?

I can suggest a place to start. Look for overlap.

If you take a set of holy books — the Bhagavad Gita, Dhammapadas or other Buddhist scriptures, Evangel, Qur'an, etc and look at the teachings you can see where the different holy books agree on the same principles. You can also see what is stressed, not by the institutions of the current faith, necessarily, but by the source of the ideas.

The most oft-cited passage of overlapping scripture is, of course, the Golden Rule, which appears in every revealed religion and, by extension, in the syncretic ones as well. The various Teachers not only repeat this principle, they accord it the utmost emphasis. It is variously referred to as "the sum of duty," "the entire law," "the law and the prophets", "an eternal commandment," etc.

This is just the tip of the iceberg. There are many, many points of unity even to the metaphors used to apply to such things as the scripture itself (often a City or the City of God or the Abode of the Eternal) and the Avatar (temple, tabernacle, etc).

The scriptures of various faiths suggest the application of reason to such a question. Or, as Christ put it, "You shall know them by their fruit."

MycroftH said: “You criticized a metaphor in another thread not as weak- which it was - but as wrong, and I called making that point small minded, as everybody could see that the fellow meant otherwise. I did not call you small minded.”

Really? Pardon me for taking your words at their face value, but if making a point is small-minded, don’t you impute that small-mindedness to the person making the point? There’s only one thing in your construct that has a mind and is therefore capable of making a point. That is, the person who made it.

And I said the metaphor was misapplied. That the comparison was a category mistake. But you're right—it was also weak. I’m not clear on what you meant by “everybody could see that the fellow meant otherwise.”

MycroftH said: “the only "synergistic" religion I know is yours, Ba'hai, but, please don't take this quantitative argument personal, there are about seven point something million members of your religion worldwide, compared to billions of Christians and Muslims, even the members of the Jewish religion (which does not proselyte), outnumber you by the factor of two.”

Actually, the Old Testament is made up of a number of individual books, the Christian Bible includes all of those plus the books of the Evangel, and the Qur’an accords both the Torah and the Evangel the status of having been inspired of God. The idea that religion is progressively revealed is part and parcel of all three faiths, but the followers of each have decided that the revelation stopped with their particular Prophet. Then there’s Hinduism, which has a very flexible understanding of the “other” faiths. I know Hindus, for example, who revere Christ and even Baha’u’llah as Avatars because the idea of the continual return of the Avatar is part of their belief system. Buddhism, likewise, is a faith that is flexible in that way—Buddha announced very clearly that He was not the first Buddha and would not be the last.

MycroftH said: “So sometimes I forget the disclaimer concerning Ba'hai. It may be impolite, but it does not impair my arguments aimed at the majority of Abrahamic religions.”

It impairs your arguments if you intend to extend them to all religion. If you had spoken of "some of the Abrahamic religions" or "the dogmas of certain religions" or "dogmatic religious thinking" then I would have appreciated the precision.

MycroftH said: “The unity of all god-fearers is nothing that can be observed, even if You may wish for it.”

As a Bahá’í I’m very aware of the amount of religious intolerance in the world—thousands of Bahá’ís have died and been imprisoned in Iran in the last century, and there are 50 Bahá’ís in Iranian prisons right now, awaiting trial on charges relating to their faith. But as a Bahá’í, I’m also committed to the cause of religious tolerance and am aware of the strides being made.

I’ve said this before, but I’ll repeat it because it bears repeating. I personally know Bahá’ís from every conceivable religious background including Christian, Buddhist, HIndu, Muslim, Wiccan, atheist, etc. who are now united in their dedication to global peace, tolerance and unity. I also work in an interfaith group with people who are dedicated to religious unity and who are still within those different groups -- except atheists. We are, in fact, working toward making Santa Clara county in Northern California a model community of religious harmony.

Back in the early sixties, one might have made the argument that racial equality was impossible, based on the intolerance demonstrated in this self-appointed “greatest nation on earth.” It was only through the efforts of people who believed racial equality was both needful and possible that we have achieved what we have in that area. In that realm, too, there’s still a lot of work to do. That's also on the Baha'i agenda.

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Small-mindedness can occur in broad-minded people - let me quote W.I.Ulyanov om R. Luxemburg: "If an eagle like her errs and flies low, that does not make her a chicken."
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The fact that there are very few Baha'i (excuse the wrong apostrophe in my previous posts) and 500 times as many followers of abrahamic religions who insist their special view of their god is right - the quantitative argument - does not urge me to refer to 99.8% as "some". It may be legitimate to refer to the 0.2% in a footnote, like one would do with the Lutheran "Church of Sweden" which is about the same size.
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The field of god's identity is an abrahamic swamp.
For Jews it's easy, Yahwe, and the messiah has not yet come. Purists.
Christians refer to Yahwe as the god of the old testimony, but they say his son changed everything - which is very much Paul's work as he cut the ties to Jewish culture. "You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?, Galatians 2:14
Muslims declare that as there is no god except Allah he must be the one who talked to Abraham and the one whom Jesus mentioned, only that the Jewish and Jesus did not understand him right, only Mohamed, blessed be his name, understood. There are certain differences between Sunni and Shi'ah in as far.
Baha'i say god is the one and only, predating Yahwe and Hindu tradition, and he sends manifestations now and then who update specific religious social teachings, the last one being Bahá'u'lláh.
But, isn't the insistence of adherents to earlier avatars that "their god" is the right one wrong from a Ba'hai point of view? Don't the other believers cling to outdated views? Is not the last avatar superior to the earlier ones?
Hard to see a difference here, which, I understand, lies in other fields like accepting societal changes, and the emphasis laid on reflection, individual development, tolerance...
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Which are all very acceptable standards, but you don't need a god for them. They are rational standards, developed by rational people in a hard struggle against meddled religious/political elite interests. And they perpetually change, as rationales do in the scientific and philosophic process of refinement and correction.
One avatar every 1000 years is a little too slow...

Mycroft, I’m bemused by the points you choose to “splanify.” I’m not bristling at being called small-minded, OR at being told I made a small-minded point OR that my making of the point was small-minded. It really requires no further discussion, nor does it require supporting quotations. I’ve been accused (and I mean intentionally, and zealously) of much worse. Hey, Christians have compared me to the anti-christ and Satan. Hard to top that.

First, you make a point of how few Bahá’ís there are. Mycroft, the earlier faiths have had thousands of years to spread and grow. The Bahá’í Faith has had less than 170 years but is second only to Christianity in how widely spread it is. Second, 99.8% is a gross exaggeration when it comes to citing religious bodies that view their revelation as exclusive. As I pointed out, in both Hinduism and Buddhism, there is very much a consciousness that there have been other Avatars/Buddhas who have brought a message from the same God. The sort of continuum that is a feature of Hindu belief is rather alien to the western mind, I suppose—or at least to folks whose idea of religion was formed by western Christianity.

You asked if “the insistence of adherents to earlier avatars that "their god" is the right one wrong from a Ba'hai point of view? Don't the other believers cling to outdated views? Is not the last avatar superior to the earlier ones?”

1) No. Not wrong. Their God is the only one regardless of the fact that they deny His having spoken to anyone else.
2) Some believers do cling to outdated views. That doesn’t mean that their love of God is futile or their efforts to live according their understanding of His teachings for naught.
3) No. Bahá’u’lláh, like Muhammad before Him, clearly that the Avatars or Prophets are equally the mirrors of God’s light. We are not to distinguish between them.


Think of it this way: you have two teachers that both go to college and study biology. Both acquire a degree in the subject and get a teaching credential. One teaches middle school, the other high school. What they teach of biology and the way int which they teach it reflects, not their own comprehension of the subject or the quality or depth of their education, but rather the capacity of the students. Would you say that the highschool teacher was superior to the middle school teacher?

Bahá’ís don’t view Bahá’u’lláh as being superior to Christ or Muhammad or Buddha, for example. His message, however, was intended for this time in human history. As Bahá’u’lláh put it: "Every age hath its own problem, and every soul its particular aspiration. The remedy the world needeth in its present-day afflictions can never be the same as that which a subsequent age may require. Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements."

Mycroft, really: “... all very acceptable standards, but you don't need a god for them. They are rational standards, developed by rational people in a hard struggle against meddled religious/political elite interests. “

I’m sorry, but this is revisionist history. The principles the revealed by men like Christ, Buddha and Bahá’u’lláh, seemed strange and even mad by the people They walked among. Look at the milieu into which Bahá’u’lláh brought His teachings of human unity, gender equality, abolition of prejudice, global disarmament, the harmony of science and religion etc. He taught these things—some of which we Westerners NOW believe we invented—in the mid-1800’s in Iran and Iraq. Men like Kaiser Wilhelm and Napoleon III were engaged in conquest and expansion, women had suffrage nowhere on the planet, blacks in the US would not see even a glimmer of equality before the law for one hundred years, people who clung to religion viewed scientific discovery with suspicion and fear. This was about par for the course—if you read the accounts of the earlier Teachers, you see the same pattern. These were not men of their time and place and the ideas they brought, at the time they brought them, seemed completely irrational to most of the people who heard them.

Stop for a moment and ask yourself how the idea of the equality of men and women would be met by a man on the streets of New York or London in the 1850’s. How “rational” would he think that idea? I’ve studied the course of women’s suffrage on this planet and I can tell you exactly how most men in that place at that time DID react. Now consider the first men to hear Bahá’u’lláh’s message that humanity would not progress until women achieved her rightful place in the arenas then only occupied by men. They were walking the streets of Tehran and Baghdad.

Yes, our ideas do perpetually change. Not that long ago, men thought women were incapable of being teachers, scientists, executives or world leaders. That seemed perfectly rational to most people (men, anyway). Which suggests that among human beings, morality is merely the majority view.

One avatar every 500 to 1000 years is a little too slow? I suppose that depends on your point of view. I would not presume to judge. I can say that some people (usually those in the current orthodoxy) think they come too often.

kaath-
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I was just trying to be nice and polite while at the same time quoting Lenin...
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I was clearly referring to "500 times as many followers of abrahamic religions", when explaining why a few dissenters don't request to call the rest of 99,8% "some". As for the reference to hindu beliefs and buddhism, those religions are based on the cyclic philosophy of the revolving wheel, which is not wholly compatible with the Baha'i avatar concept (many, not one, or, in Buddha's case, no god).
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I wrote rational standards, developed by rational people in a hard struggle against meddled religious/political elite interests
You claim that to be "revisionist history" because all these things were "taught (by Bahá'u'lláh) in the mid-1800’s in Iran and Iraq". You confront his teachings with Louis Napoleon III and Wilhelm I (who was not yet Kaiser when he fought France in 1870/71), and the opinion of average people in the street in New York or London in 1850.
So you compare the prophet with the peasant. And you completely forget the philosopher, whom - if at all - your prophet should be compared to.
It is a long, long line of rationalist thinking, based on Greek Philosophy (500 BC - 500 CE), with a 1000 years disruption due to Christian barbarism, re-vitalized in Renaissance's Humanism (1350 - 1600), T. More, J. Bodin, T. Campanella, H. Grotius, Erasmus and Montaigne, just to name a few. They laid the foundation for the early modern philosophers, Hobbes, Descartes, Locke, Spinoza, Berkeley, and the philosophy of the enlightenment, Leibnitz, Rousseau, Hume, and Kant. These guys phrased freedom, democracy and human rights, and from a rational point of view. Rational means, everybody who knew how to use his/her brains could follow their arguments. No belief or faith involved.
The age of enlightenment culminated and ended in the French revolution of 1789. That was half a century before Bahá'u'lláh started teaching... and for a rational philosopher of his time, none of is teachings sounded "revolutionary". More likely not up-to-date, as he claimed it was "revealed", not rationally developed.

PS
No female world leaders?
Elizabeth of Scotland(1596-1662) the Winter Queen
Sophia of Hanover (1630-1714)
Marquise de Maintenon (1635-1719)
Anne I (1702-1714) Queen UK
Catherine I (1725-1727) Empress Russia
Catherine II (1762-1796) Empress Russia
Maria Theresia(1765-1780) Empress(dowager) Austriaand Hungary
Victoria (1837-1901)Queen UK
Just to name a few European ones... History is as complicated as life. That's why we have a special science for it.

Mycroft: “I was clearly referring to "500 times as many followers of abrahamic religions", when explaining why a few dissenters don't request to call the rest of 99,8% "some". As for the reference to hindu beliefs and buddhism, those religions are based on the cyclic philosophy of the revolving wheel, which is not wholly compatible with the Baha'i avatar concept (many, not one, or, in Buddha's case, no god).”

1) Even if you restrict the sample to “Abrahamic” religions the generalization of beliefs across that broad a group is still just that—a generalization.

2) The Aryan faiths (Hinduism, Buddhism, etc) are based on the teachings of Avatars just as the Abrahamic religions are. The cyclic philosophy is derived from that through the interpretation of the teachings of these Avatars. Probably one of the most surprising things to me was realizing that the Biblical texts contained references to that same cyclic nature of the universe and life. I just hadn’t noticed them, or hadn’t interpreted them in that way because I had been wearing the “lenses” bestowed on me during my early religious training.

3) Krishna (for example) did not teach that there were many Gods; Buddha did not teach that there were none.

Mycroft: 
“You claim that to be "revisionist history" because all these things were "taught (by Bahá'u'lláh) in the mid-1800’s in Iran and Iraq". You confront his teachings with Louis Napoleon III and Wilhelm I (who was not yet Kaiser when he fought France in 1870/71), and the opinion of average people in the street in New York or London in 1850.”

Mycroft, I’m not sure whether I’m simply communicating badly or you've picked points out of my responses that I am not trying to make. I was using Bahá’u’lláh as an example of an historical pattern. I used Bahá’u’lláh because His revelation is new enough and well-documented enough that we can avoid the “Did He really say that?” sidetrack. Every Avatar’s appearance has occasioned changes in the fabric of the societies that have taken up the teachings.

I “confront” His teachings with Nappy and Will? I not sure what you mean by that. Bahá’u’lláh wrote letters directly to these world leaders laying out principles that are not even universally accepted today. And that is my point: at a time when slavery was practiced, women were second-class citizens the world over and the concept of universal disarmament (or universal anything) a pinprick of light on the horizon, this extraordinary human being stood up in a part of the world least likely to produce these ideas and proclaimed them emphatically, regardless of the fact that it caused Him to be stripped of his wealth, imprisoned, tortured and exiled. They did not grow out of a synergy of thought or a long course of study of comparative philosophy or religion.

Also, what the Avatars reveal about ethics etc doesn’t invalidate the individual efforts of philosophers or just plain folk. Bahá’u’lláh writes that in every age there are people who are sensitive to the needs of that age and focus their attention on them—that there are people in every population who are spiritually aware. I have a great deal of respect for these philosophers and was especially fascinated by the work of Spinoza and Descartes. (Which, in fact, I was studying at the time I first encountered the Bahá’í Faith.) Bahá’ís are, in fact, encouraged in the strongest terms to pursue knowledge in historical, scientific, and philosophical areas.

Mycroft:
“No female world leaders?”

I didn’t say there were no female world leaders, my dear Holmes. I said: “Not that long ago, men thought women were incapable of being teachers, scientists, executives or world leaders.” There have been female monarchs as far back as Hatshepsut—further. But as you are no doubt aware, the fact that a queen (a hereditary position) was in power had little impact on the place of women in government as a discipline or society as a whole. Nor did it change the general impression (held by many men still) that women were incapable of running a government. Rather, these women were viewed as exceptions to the rule, or worse, were considered mere figureheads while the men did the heavy lifting. (That is if people bothered to reason out why they trusted the reins of government to one woman, but wouldn’t allow another woman to instruct their children or operate on them. The first female Oxford don, for example, was Agnes Headlam-Morley, in 1948. Her chair was International Relations, btw.)

At the time of Queen Victoria, even, could it be imagined that women should hold other positions of government?

1
A generalization is a generalization - nothing bad about it as long as its is a good one. After all, it refers to my argument -Theists have no problem at all to call all the other holy books "heathen rubbish", but they get very emotional when their own special book is cast in doubt. Don't they?
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That avatar thing. Well, if someone comes up with a humanist philosophy - like Spinoza or Kant - he is part of the development of philosophy, and subject to thorough inspection by his or her peers (who often disagree), and subject to misunderstandings and such. And twenty years later he's either forgotten - a footnote - or head of another school of philosophers.
But there's one thing he or she is not allowed to do in decent company: declare him/herself an avatar of something supernatural. I mean, after all, s/he's only a philosopher. So everybody can read his or her books (or not) and follow or disagree freely. Of course, what e.g. Kant says is not "the final truth". There is no such, because philosophy - like science - is open-ended. Narrow minded people want the absolute - but that is no reason to declare something that is state of the art to be absolute truth.
But the avatar of your concept speaks or claims to be in possession of absolute truth. (Which is sort of a problem as he knows that he'll be followed by another one who will disagree in a lot of points 500 years later)
I much prefer the process of philosophy (constant change) to the process of revelation of different truths at different times, because the process of repeated revision devaluates truth. It reminds me of those teachers who lie to children, because they are too stupid to cope with reality. But mankind is not stupid.
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I wrote
all very acceptable standards, but you don't need a god for them. They are rational standards, developed by rational people in a hard struggle against meddled religious/political elite interests.
That you called "revisionist history".
I listed the long line of rationalist philosophy till the French revolution and the declaration of human rights, to name the "rational people" who developed those ideas, and to make it clear that they were not reacting to an Iranian prophet who lived roughly 100 years later. If you like, I said that Spinoza and Leibnitz and Kant had all these interesting ideas scores of years before Bahá’u’lláh.
But they did not call themselves prophets or avatars or God's messenger.
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You said: Not that long ago, men thought women were incapable of being teachers, scientists, executives or world leaders.
so, as an aside, I gave you a short list of world leading women.
Can't you just say - well, I should not have used that part of the argument?
Or, as my son would put it, "sh*t happens"?

MycroftH wrote: Theists have no problem at all to call all the other holy books "heathen rubbish", but they get very emotional when their own special book is cast in doubt. Don't they?

No. It's a bad generalization because not all theists do that. Not all theists even have holy books to cast in doubt.

And: But the avatar of your concept speaks or claims to be in possession of absolute truth. (Which is sort of a problem as he knows that he'll be followed by another one who will disagree in a lot of points 500 years later)

Where's the problem? The claims of an Avatar can be tested and a body of evidence accrued. The changes made by successive Avatars are part of the evolution of humans as a species and the evolution of cultures. They're only a problem if you want them to be.

Re the philosophers: Mycroft, Baha'u'llah is part of a continuum of Teachers that have been appearing, for all I know, since we looked like amoebas. Many of the teachings He brought are refinements and restatements of the same principles the previous Avatars brought. Many of these principles, frankly, we SHOULD have grokked ages ago, but only a few of us did and of those, only men like Spinoza and Descartes had the ability to write eloquently about it. Millions of rank and file believers in one Avatar or another have lived those principles without making a big deal about it. To look at it another way, Baha'i writings note that if the teachings of the previous Avatars had been put into general practice, the next Avatar would not have needed to come. The message would have spread, done its job.

The difference between Spinoza, say, and Baha'u'llah is that Spinoza arrived at his conclusions based on his own powers of observation and interpretation and through his interaction with other streams of philosophical thought. Philosophy was his mode of life and he built on the work of others engaged in the same work. Baha'u'llah did not come to His teachings by being immersed in the milieu. Far from it. Buddha comments on this as well, when He says that He did not attain Enlightenment through any "dharma" but that the foundation of His enlightenment is completely other.

Another difference is that, for reasons that even the deepened believer does not fully understand, while words have power, the words of the Avatars have special potency. Baha'u'llah refers to it as "the creative word of God," because that, essentially, is what it does—it creates spiritual momentum, shapes spiritual reality, and ultimately affects our material reality as well. As Krishna put it, when the Avatar speaks He creates a new spiritual union.

And: You said: Not that long ago, men thought women were incapable of being teachers, scientists, executives or world leaders.
so, as an aside, I gave you a short list of world leading women.
Can't you just say - well, I should not have used that part of the argument?

Did you not read my reply? It was not the fact of women leaders I was addressing, but the attitudes of the society around them to that leadership. I apologize for being wordy, so I'll rephrase it in short: Regardless of the leadership of a handful of women, men demonstrably loudly and sometimes violently showed that they did not believe that women—as a group—were capable of leadership. Sadly, women themselves doubted and continued to doubt their capacity. Your citations do not counter that in any way.

Even as Queen Victoria ruled, women were not thought to be capable of voting for their leaders, let alone walking among them. They would simply vote as their husbands voted and would be unable to understand the issues—or so the arguments went. And to insist that the appearance of these women rulers proves that men thought women capable of leadership is unarguably revisionist. These women were leaders because of who they were, in spite of what they were.

NOW, we elect female leaders—at least some of us do. But you cannot possibly be deaf to the fact that this debate still goes on. Women are still suspected of being weak or prone to emotionalism or too soft to make "tough choices." And that's in supposedly enlightened developed countries. In much of the world, the attitudes about women in roles outside home and hearth are even further behind the curve.