The Gender of God
An issue far closer to the scientific evidence is the matter of the Divine Gender Bender. At some time in our past we all revered a single female deity, and the line dividing that time from the present in which we refer to that deity in undeniably masculine terms is very clear from an archaeological perspective. The Minoan objects of faith were exhaustively vandalised as were those of the people indigenous to Jerusalem before the Israelites arrived. The proselytisation of the Male God was very aggressive indeed, and perhaps the brutality of the Old Testament is a window on the expansion of this idea.
Given that creation and giving birth are at least partially synonymous, as well as the fact that the potential to "create" life is the biological definition of what it means to be female, it stands to reason that God is really Goddess and that it would take a very great deal of aggression and terror to overcome such reason - as the archaeology bears out. This is all we really know. From here we extrapolate...
While a grammarian would point out that the default gender is male, as a scientist I know that female gender is defined by the ability to give birth such that all organisms that reproduce asexually are also by definition female. From the scientific standpoint, the creation of life dictates that the gender of the Creator would be female as a matter of biological definition that supersedes the politically correct "he and/or she" fad and the archaic male default. This sticks in the throat considering that every Adamic "Manifestation of God" on record refers to God in the masculine. Need I point out that in the business of creating life, the female does not necessarily need a partner (depending on species) whereas a male is always dependent on a female partner regardless of species. This shows that every Manifestation of God including Moses and Mohammed; from Hermes(?) to Baha'u'llah ascribes a partner to God by implication; simply by referring to God in the masculine gender. While some may argue that it is unreasonable to expect Manifestations of God to be up to speed in the sciences, the Baha'i assertion that they possess "essential infallibility" suggests that this is something that should have been foreseen or at the very least anticipated.
A closer examination of verses 11b-12 of "Poemandres, Shepherd of Men" attributed to Hermes suggests that the gender switch, at least on Hermes' part, was intended to communicate the idea that God is something more and something other than the Creator of life; that God instead is the creator of reason, intelligence, or sentience. However, subsequent repetition of such an idea without communicating any understanding of its intent is prone to degradation into the internal contradiction it appears to be.
This still neglects the question of whether Hermes was indeed Bright; perhaps androgenised along with her teachings by all but the Celts and a few scattered pagans...?
