This is an unfair attack on religion Doug. You never once mention the magnificence of the Sistine Chapel or the wonderful prose of many scriptural verses. You make it sound like the loss of these women is somehow greater than the losses of the above mentioned wonders would be were religion to be eliminated. Religion brings us so much beauty how can you be so callous as to ignore that fact?
[WS:] I think you got it all backwards, John. Organized religion merely appropriated and exploited human creativity for its own wicked and sinister purposes. It did not enable it - it merely steered it in a certain direction. The Sistine Chapel is no more a product of religion than it is a product of feudalism - it would have been created in one form or another in the absence of religion, because humans are by nature creative producers of art. OTOH, organized religion would hardly be able to exist without appropriating the material products of human creativity as signifiers of its warped ideology.
Wojtek