Religion, Vaginas and Penises

[Spooky]

[Wyrd of Gawd]

That's hilarious!

[Dystopia]

I think obsession with sex is more common in mainstream religions but you can find small, not well known religions that accept sexuality as a natural part of human behaviour. I also get the idea that polytheism was somehow better when it comes to sex but it depends.

Because sexuality is one of our most basic instincts only next to hunger, sleeping, etc, if you control people's deepest desires and make them feel sinful for it, ultimately you can control people's lives. Since many religious beliefs require dedication to some doctrine, it is required that you censor some of your most pleasurable desires.

[Jenny A]

Oh I think there's at least a little more to it than control of desires. Human sex is dangerous compared to that of other animals. Absent modern medicine the maternal fatality rate for pregnant women was quite high. Humans remain infants is need of care and training for much longer than other animals. In the absence of birth control or modern medicine, it's not surprising we worried more about sex. It just that established religions are inherently conservative and don't change with changing tech so easily.

[Dystopia]

Oh I think there's at least a little more to it than control of desires.  Human sex is dangerous compared to that of other animals.  Absent modern medicine the maternal fatality rate for pregnant women was quite high.  Humans remain infants is need of care and training for much longer than other animals.  In the absence of birth control or modern medicine, it's not surprising we worried more about sex.  It just that established religions are inherently conservative and don't change with changing tech so easily.

Additionally, with the well known universal expansion of the Church (I mean Catholicism) and the mix between political and religious authorities it became a good way to control procreation and perhaps even incite people to be poor by having lots of children because in Catholicism (unlike some parts of the protestant work ethic) being poor is good because it means you'll go to heaven - It also means you are more ignorant and starving and don't have time to rebel against the pseudo-feudalist State (I say pseudo because arguably the State in the middle ages wasn't genuinely a State until the late theorizations done by Jean Bodin)

[Cinjin]

We could invent a religion where breathing is a sin...

It wouldn't work, because there's no orgasm at the end of a long sigh ...

There IS one right before one however.

[Spooky]

That's hilarious!

I can't take credit. Found on the FB group "Atheist Meme Base".

[robvalue]

Oh I think there's at least a little more to it than control of desires. Human sex is dangerous compared to that of other animals. Absent modern medicine the maternal fatality rate for pregnant women was quite high. Humans remain infants is need of care and training for much longer than other animals. In the absence of birth control or modern medicine, it's not surprising we worried more about sex. It just that established religions are inherently conservative and don't change with changing tech so easily.

That's interesting, I hadn't thought of that! I've heard before about how lots of the weird rules of "morality" in the bible are nothing more than a sort of health and safety of the day. It's just they have say god commanded it, because otherwise no one would listen. And agreed, back then especially, sex can be dangerous and has severe consequences.

[abaris]

Oh I think there's at least a little more to it than control of desires.  Human sex is dangerous compared to that of other animals.  Absent modern medicine the maternal fatality rate for pregnant women was quite high.  Humans remain infants is need of care and training for much longer than other animals.  In the absence of birth control or modern medicine, it's not surprising we worried more about sex.  It just that established religions are inherently conservative and don't change with changing tech so easily.

Boil it down to what it really is. This got nothing to do with science and everything with a paternalistic society, who wanted their male dominance written in stone. You will notice that the laws concerning men and sex are much more lenient than when it comes to females.

Also, they certainly weren't concerned with high birth rates. With child mortality running rampant, the last thing they wished for was less children. Women you could easily replace if they were to die at childbirth, but children were the wealth and old age insurance policy of the society in question.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

 Is there any religion that isn't obsessed with what other people do with their genitalia?  It seems as if a lot of religious people expend a lot of energy being concerned that the consensual sex between adults be of the proper type between married individuals.  

A few years back conservatives were up in arms about a book about two mommas(or daddies). They didn't think that children should be exposed to 'sex'.  Telling little children that two men might love one another and get married shouldn't be more likely to include a discussion about sex than telling them that a man is going to marry a woman.

I have asked people who are against abortions why they don't ask the government to supply free birth control to men and women. The response is that they don't feel that they should be forced to pay for someone else's sexual choices. But if they want to save fetuses, it would make sense to prevent pregnancies in the first place. That is why I think that the abortion discussion is ultimately about sexual freedom and not about saving the lives of brainless mass of cells. Ultimately, they want women to feel afraid to have premarital sex.

South African doctors performed the first successful penis transplant and it resulted in a pregnancy.  How does religion regard that?