Is God a Woman?

Emmeline Pankhurst once said “Trust in God – she will provide.” Pankhurst was a political activist in Great Britain who helped women win the right to vote. This really brings us to the question on whether God is a woman?

I will try not to dwell into the religious interpretations of this subject matter for three reasons. The first reason which is of primary importance is that most (if not all) religions, in spite of the fact that they have both men and women followers have subjected their own women to great cruelty. The witch hunts in the middle part of this millennium had accounted for about a hundred thousand deaths in cold blood effected by followers of Christianity. Pope John Paul II has in his open letter to all women in 1995 expressed deep regret on behalf of the Church’s actions. Indians will be much aware of the shameful practices of ‘Sati’ and exploitation over dowry over centuries in both the first and second millennium of the Common Era. And last but not the least are the still occurring violations of basic human rights against women in the name of the Islamic religion. One thing that is clear from this is that the so called ‘followers’ of none of these religions have held women in high respect. Hence in order to be unbiased in forming our opinion we will try to keep religion out of this debate.

The second reason as to not go into the religious interpretations is because they are just that - interpretations, the correct word would be ‘exegesis’. Exegesis is the interpretation of textual material. Different exegets might interpret the same material differently. That is, they might each claim a different meaning from the same text or passage. This allows for the subsequent drawing out of sometimes very different implications from the same core source.

I’d tell you the third reason, but then I will have to kill you. Actually I’m not Tom Cruize and this is not Top Gun so let me give you  some clue. Its an old Spanish proverb “una onza de madre vale una libra de clérigos”.

I would also like to keep Philosophy out of this debate. To discuss any idea of Philosophy, one would first have to understand Ontology. Ontology is concerned with ‘Being’. It is about what is really ‘out there’. Ontology crudely explained is like a base. Is everyone made of up 5 bases (Ether, Air, Fire, Water, Earth) or just 2 bases (Matter and Spirit) or just 1 base (Illusion). Initially I found it very similar to the Logarithmic base. (The point of similarity being that I could not understand either).

Galileo once said “The great book of nature lies before our eyes and the true philosophy is written in it...” So to nature we shall turn.

Let us consider some biological facts. We are all present in this world today because of reproduction. Reproduction is the only way any living thing can move forward. As we all know that reproduction can be asexual as well as sexual. Species that reproduce by the former means do not have a gender classification. There is no male and female. Some people I know would die to be in their shoes. Imagine not having to go through commitment and marriage.

Not having a man and woman basically means that there is no sex involved. This form of reproduction is mainly found in bacteria or single-celled organisms (prokaryotes), which basically do not have any nucleus. (Just to clarify that not having a nucleus is very different from not having a soul, or else most of our politicians would have made it to this classification.)  We now know that in the beginning, right at the beginning, the only living beings that existed were all asexual prokaryotes.

In other words, in the asexual prokaryotes we have the mother and then we have the child, who then becomes a mother only to asexually have another child and so on.

Under the above arrangement the mother is a free being. There is no man in her life. She is the master of her destiny. She can wear skimpy clothes and does not have to worry about eve-teasers and rapists. No fighting for rights. The President, the leader of the ruling party, the leader of the opposition and the speaker would all be women. Just like the Indian parliament.

One cannot but wonder as to why the prokaryotes had to evolve into eukaryotes – organisms with a nucleus (and a soul preferably). The corollary of evolving into these  eukaryotes is that now they need to have sex. So they had to get some of them to evolve into a man. Why did the woman (asexual) who was her own master go through all this trouble. Now, she has a man to deal with (and a headache).

Richard Dawkins in his book ‘The Selfish Gene’, Matt Ridley in his book ‘The Red Queen’ and Nick Lane in his book ‘Life Ascending’ have very well explained the most probable reason. It would be much better if you’ll read the books yourselves rather than try to understand it from me. The gist of these books (I just got to understand the gist, as most of the matter was not for minds like mine) is that genes (the prokaryotic bacteria also have genes) would be able to mix and match with others (a man’s genes with a woman’s genes) and put their best product forward only when they had sex. A mix-and-match of various combinations of genes raises the chances of the child surviving against various parasites. The good mixtures (of genes) will survive successfully and try for a still better match whereas the poorer cousins will just be dispensed with in time. On the other hand, asexually the organism would just copy her own self. The genius Picasso couldn’t have explained it better, albeit in a different context, “...to copy oneself... leads to sterility.”#

A gene does not die with the body. It remains alive in the next generation and then in the generation after and after and after. If we think of a gene as being ‘immortal’, nothing could describe the above process of gaining immunity and evolving better than the words of Nietzsche (Americans pronounce his name as Neechee) – “What does not kill me makes me stronger.”

Sophia Loren can help us put all this in context; “A mother has to think twice, once for herself and once for her child.” The woman (asexual) having the best interest of her child in mind evolved into a sexual organism and got the men up (pun not intended). As Nick Lane says “Men are woman’s insurance policy against her children being wiped out by influenza or small pox.”

We are here today immune from the zillions of parasites because of our Mother. She will go to any extent to see the well-being of her child, even if that amounts to getting a man in her life. At the microscopic level we all have our Mother whom we are indebted to. At the cosmic level there is another Mother we are indebted to, that is, our Mother Earth. And what the Spanish (or Mexican) guys wanted to say was that “An ounce of mother is worth a pound of priests.”

Is God a woman? The mathematician Poincare once said “There are questions that one chooses to ask and other questions that ask themselves.” And then there are some questions which just should not be asked.