Like others have said, it's about control.
The urge to have sex is the most natural thing in life, right up there with eating, sleeping, and breathing. Some health scientists even now believe that having regular orgasms is as important to ones health as regularly brushing teeth (which is why I do both twice daily, haha).
That being said, religions teach that sex is a bad thing, down to the very desire. Even having dirty thoughts is abominable and punishable. I remember when I was Christian, being taught that having sexual thoughts was just as much a sin as actually committing a sexual act outside of marriage, even if you never said those thoughts out loud or acted on them in anyway.
Religions take the one thing engrained in our biology that we can actually (on an individual level, mostly) survive without and use it to control their followers. Religion couldn't have done it with eating or sleeping because, unlike sex, you'll die if you don't partake in those activities. If we could survive without eating, then perhaps religions would've targeted that instead. They basically take something that is part of our core, tell us that piece of us will lead to damnation, and then tell us they have the only way out of that damnation.
It's like a company creating a product, then telling everyone they are terrible people doomed to hell if they don't have this product, then revealing that they are the only ones who manufacture said product so that we need them.
The urge to have sex is the most natural thing in life, right up there with eating, sleeping, and breathing. Some health scientists even now believe that having regular orgasms is as important to ones health as regularly brushing teeth (which is why I do both twice daily, haha).
That being said, religions teach that sex is a bad thing, down to the very desire. Even having dirty thoughts is abominable and punishable. I remember when I was Christian, being taught that having sexual thoughts was just as much a sin as actually committing a sexual act outside of marriage, even if you never said those thoughts out loud or acted on them in anyway.
Religions take the one thing engrained in our biology that we can actually (on an individual level, mostly) survive without and use it to control their followers. Religion couldn't have done it with eating or sleeping because, unlike sex, you'll die if you don't partake in those activities. If we could survive without eating, then perhaps religions would've targeted that instead. They basically take something that is part of our core, tell us that piece of us will lead to damnation, and then tell us they have the only way out of that damnation.
It's like a company creating a product, then telling everyone they are terrible people doomed to hell if they don't have this product, then revealing that they are the only ones who manufacture said product so that we need them.
