Case in Point...

[chezlaw]

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Also I'm suprised people think that the roots of this belief/practice are particularly religous.

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It's a chicken/egg problem. The roots of the belief go back thousands of years, and "religion" meant something different back then. It's impossible to cleanly separate everything. To some extent, the scriptures themselves were civil, rather than spiritual, documents.

If people wanted to follow the Code of Hammurabi today, I'd criticize them too. But they don't - because nobody thinks it's divine.

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but its not the case that this type of attitude is only found within the religous. The root cause is largly economic and 'She deserved all she got' is a common refrain even in our 'civilised' advanced world. Put those sentiments in a brutal primative society and the results aren't suprising.

Even if you think that the reason these societies are still brutal and primative is because of religon its not the case that root cause of this barbarism are religous.

chez