Religion is bad for your sex life. I don’t mean it doesn’t help, I mean it’s actively destructive.
There are exceptions. I had a good friend in grad school who was a religious conservative. Her faith community strongly supporter her decisions around her sexuality and everything seems to have worked out fine for her. No irreparable harm done, to my knowledge.
But globally speaking, religion is bad both at the individual level and at the cultural level. Individually, it results in inhibitions, shame, fear, guilt, bias against others, and acceptance of gender-based stereotypes. Culturally it results in the oppression of women and sexual minorities, the spread of disease (stigma is as much a vehicle of transmission as any bodily fluid), and the obstruction of the scientific study of sexuality.
There I said it.
Go ahead and comment about how some religion or other isn’t like that. Tell me all about how your faith tells you to celebrate god’s gift of the body. I know. Whatever. You’re trying to make your religion work for you. Good luck with that.
But the worst thing about religion is that it makes it okay to just believe shit because you want to. No religion, no matter how liberal, escapes that.
I acknowledge a basic bias. For a variety of reasons not immediately relevant to this blog, I think faith/religiosity is an innate part of human psychology. I think human belief in an invisible family in the sky is either product or byproduct of evolution. However, it is, for no apparent reason, NOT an innate part of MY psychology. I had the capacity for faith (in the absence of any particular religion) when I was an adolescent, but the more my prefrontal cortex developed, the more impossible it became for me to believe in ghosts, fairies, invisible friends, etc. It was utterly gone by the time I was 25.
So I’m biased.
I know that the experience of faith is both real and important for lots of people, and I know it offends them when I discuss faith as a form of self-delusion, but I genuinely don’t understand, plain old don’t understand (like, imagine a terrier watching its owners have sex), how a person can CHOOSE to believe in something.
They choose to believe it because it makes them feel good. And I think this characterizes MOST people. I think MOST people are able to believe more or less anything they like the sound of. Indeed we’ve made a virtue of it. Just BELIEVE. It’s The Secret, ya know.
Well, shit, dude. If I could choose to believe whatever I wanted, I too would stop believing in global warming and start believing in angels. But I can’t. I can’t choose to believe anything; I believe what appears to be, given evidence and experience, true. As evidence and experience change, so does what I believe.
But just as bad – maybe even worse – are people who attend church and identify with a religion but don’t have any opinion about the particular faith or dogma with which they ally themselves. Isn’t that like voting for a candidate without knowing or caring what they stand for? Which I’m sure some people do, but can’t we agree that it’s dumb to participate in a system without having any opinion about what effect your participation has?
Take catholics (- please!). The catholics I know are nice people who go to church for “the community,” and they cherrypick the doctrines they believe in. All that stuff about gays, abortion, and women, well, that’s all sort of outdated and irrelevant, right? And they want their kids to grow up with a faith. That’s, ya know, that’s nice.
But if you put money in the basket during the offertory, you’re giving your money to an institution that, among a great deal else, supports the sexual abuse of children. At what cost are you getting your “community”?
The institution of the catholic church is WRONG with a Capital WRONG. I kind of think the pope should be put in prison for the rest of his life; I think the catholic church should be dismantled and its disjecta membra sold to fund rape prevention projects, AIDS orphan support, and women’s educational and economic opportunities – especially in Africa.
None of this is aided by the fact that most of the work I do related to religion involves trying to untangle the knots religion has knit into a person’s sexuality. In my experience, in 90% or more cases religion has caused some form of damage to a person’s sexuality. Sometimes it’s indirect – like, a person has to learn that in fact gay people are completely fine – and sometimes it’s as direct as it gets – like the person is in recovery from child sexual abuse perpetrated by their church leader.
To say nothing of the systematic oppression of women, the violence justified by the fairy tales of idiots and madmen (teams of virgins in heaven, awaiting the arrival of a suicide bomber), and the devastating public health consequences of “morality.”
Is there a way for people to have their invisible family in the sky without the crimes against humanity and the ignorant rejection of evidence-based public health policy (itself a crime against humanity)?
Unitarian Universalists come pretty close. They explicitly say you can believe pretty much whatever you like, as long as you let everybody else believe what they like, which might be the only remotely workable solution (except for the knotty little problem of not accepting destructive, discriminatory beliefs…). It’s still people believing whatever they like, which I object to on principle, but at least they require that people tolerate others’ views. Because the deepest problem with religion is that it, by design, rejects evidence. And without evidence, how do you resolve conflict? By compromise or by force. And when faith uses force, that’s when things get REALLY bad.
I don’t know. I don’t know. We will never, as a species, be free of religion; can we be free of its evils? I don’t know. I don’t know.
I’ve often heard people say “they believe in the afterlife because they’re afraid of death,” or whatever. But this has always seemed like bullshit to me. Because I’m terrified of death, but like you I can’t *make* myself believe something. Do you really think other people can? (not rhetorical!) I can see how fear might cause people to not examine the beliefs they were raised with – I’m sure I have some unexamined ideas about the world myself – but I can’t see how you could start with no religion, and actively, consciously choose to believe something just because you want to. Not, How can you?? but literally, physically I don’t think people can.
Some people certainly can’t help believing, in the same way that I can’t help NOT believing. But people have literally TOLD me that they simply prefer to believe there’s something up there looking out for them. So they do. But you’re right, mostly (not always) they’re sticking with some form of the tradition they were raised in.
CS Lewis is an example of no-faith to faith; he quite literally logicked himself into it.
That answers that then! I still can’t get my head around it though, I think I am officially in the terrier position… as it were.
It is extremely comforting to see these thoughts and words. The destruction to sexuality aside, I’ve struggled a lot with “finding a personal religion” for a long time. Mainly, I’ve thought, because I am extremely scientific minded and I believe what you can prove to me is believable and real.
SO I just wanted to say that while the title of your post reflects your expectation that many will disagree with your thoughts, I am glad for this post. Thank you, sincerely, for laying it out there.
Well you know me, advocate for godless heathens throughout New England.
)
Oh, goody! Something I can agree with you about instead of that last argument!
Religion (and lots of other human institutions) are about belonging. And people who belong (to almost anything except armies) are healthier, happier and live longer.
But then there are all the downsides you cite. Is religion a net positive at this point in time for humans, or a net negative? That’s a research-based question, but we share the same guess (informed by OUR group membership, as is, he says with a mischievous grin, your opinion about flibanserin).
It’s FAITH that utterly puzzles me. How did it become a positive to believe things in the absence of, or in the face of, evidence?
There probably are socio-biological reasons for religions being as they are, or as they were, but lemme tell ya as a witnessing Californian, belief has become utterly random. Somewhere between thumbsucking and a hobby. Just plain goofy.
Good read, lady!
Yes, it’s nicer to agree with people than otherwise.
I was thinking on my little jog just now, *is* the net effect of religion an empirical question? How would you measure it? What variables, at what level of analysis, what analytical technique? It’s like trying to measure the economy – you can get rough indicators, but it seems like we’re a long way from really understanding a system that big, with that many mutually interacting factors.
Courageous and excellent post. An easy favorite for the ages.
Random question. Is there a smiley face at top right of your blog?
Yeah. It’s part of the template. It puzzles me but I like it.
The smiley face is a WordPress thing, on WordPress-hosted sites and on many of the free templates for self-hosted blogs.
Nice post, by the way. I don’t know how anyone who is capable of rational thought can disagree.
Part of the WordPress Stats plug-in. There are other plug-ins that remove it, if you’re interested.
In addition to the whole “believe-whatever-you-want” thing, Unitarian Universalists have lifelong sex ed built into their religious education, starting at kindergarten (maybe it’s second grade or something? I’m not sure) through adulthood. I think that’s pretty cool.
(But yeah, I agree with you.)
So glad to see this post! To me, religious belief has always seemed like a form of denial or cowardice that it is ultimately self-destructive — if you believe in life after death, you can never live this life to the fullest. On top of that, as you point out, it almost always makes you feel bad about sex, somehow.
That said, there’s actually some literature that suggests that religiosity is associated with the parietal, not prefrontal, cortex. Spirituality is not inversely correlated with the size/developmental state of your prefrontal cortex. For more info see the cool (surprisingly well-controlled) clinical study by Urgesi et al. in the February issue of Neuron. Basically, lesions in parietal cortex can make you more spiritual. This area is important for locating the body in space, so it could be that your ability to have religious experiences depends on your ability to dissociate your inner world from current bodily perceptions.
It is hard for me to reconcile this idea with my own negative feelings about spirituality, but perhaps if I had a stronger ability to ‘transcend’ my physical self, my negative perceptions about religion would be overcome by strong feelings of spirituality … feelings that I would explain with reference to a higher power.
Your comment sent me scurrying to the research, which relates “self-transcendence” to inferior posterior parietal functioning. So of course I investigated WTF “self-transcendence” is, and it’s not the thing I mean; the thing I mean is more along the lines of “religiosity,” so I went looking for the relationship between those two constructs. It looks like there’s an overlap – the constructs are related, but far from identical. Religiosity is more about conformity, tradition, and security.
I was feeling slightly smug about this until a search for religiosity and brain functioning revealed that there, too, one finds it’s mostly parietotemporal cortex. ah well.
http://www.ucl.be/cps/ucl/doc/psyreli/documents/2004.ValuesReliMA.pdf
http://ww3.psy.cuhk.edu.hk/en/people/mbond/publication/Combining%20Social%20Axioms%20with%20Values%20in%20Predicting%20Social%20Beahviours%20(2004).pdf
Amen! In a completely secular way
I wholeheartedly agree with and applaud your observations regarding the danger of religion to our sexuality. Funny (in a sick, twisted, morbid sort of way) how something that claims to be so central to your existance can so easily @#&% up your life in ways that really are truly important.
When I was growing up I was actively involved in organized religion. Although I walked away about 3 or 4 years ago it certainly wasn’t soon enough. I would desperately like to meet someone to settle down with but, at the age of 40-something, it’s kind of uncomfortable thinking about explaining how when I was in college my girlfriend and I decided that we didn’t want to have sex until we were married (not necessairly to each other – to whomever…) because we were both religious and yaddah, yaddah, yaddah I’m a virgin.
Greg,
Hang in there. You’ll find someone special. It’ll be good. (Besides there is great “how to” material out there these days.) Someone will love you and care about you and not be concerned with your sexual history.
I do hope that you’re right but, at the age of 42, it’s hard to hold out a lot of hope!
Are you still surrounded by people “of faith”? You can’t expect much to change if you don’t get out of that environment. Yes, this might mean having to move away from family and friends, but wrt your personal needs, they might be more of a drag than support.
Nope. My family still goes to church but we’ve never been a family that talked about deeply personal things so religion/faith doesn’t really come up. I realized a very, very long time ago that if I wanted to do or be anything significant in this world it could not be done in partnership with the religious.
A great post! As someone who had Catholicism forced on him as a youngster, I, too, am fairly soured on religion. Look at how many religions demean women. Ugh!
An old saying: “Good people do good things. Bad people do bad things. But for good people to do bad things, you need religion.”
My god is better than your god and I’ll kill you to prove it. Northern Ireland. Iraq. Bosnia. Israel. Enough with the killing in the name of god.
The Catholic Church should be prosecuted under the RICO statues! The bishops who protected pedophile priests should be in jail!
Use your *own* mind, don’t follow someone else’s dogma.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. Many times I’ve wondered why it’s called “child sexual abuse” if it happens in the church but everywhere else it’s rape? I wonder why aiding the Nazis in WWII is criminal unless you’re religious at what time it becomes excusable. I’ve asked myself why xtians expect evidence in a court of law but cannot produce it themselves in the court of day to day living.
But the problem does not stop with xtianity. Look around and see how everything that religion touches eventually either becomes corrupt, bloodied or dead. Athiests didn’t fly airplanes into buildings but since I’ve pointed that out, I’m intolerant. Athiests don’t strap bombs to themselves and blow things up because they’re angry with world but, since I’ve pointed that out, I’m racist. Athiests don’t want to build a mosque within spitting distance of Ground Zero but, since I’ve pointed that out, I guess I just don’t understand the religion of peace. And, btw, as an athiest I’m also immoral, unethical, evil and, according to W’s daddy, not worthy to be called an American.
Let’s try the church like the church tried heretics and witches. Who knows if they’ll float or sink, burn or withstand the flames of public scrutiny but I’ll bet I can guess. Gee, is that intolerant of me?
Wow. I agree with you, but that’s quite a post.
From the responses, it sounds like it needed to be said though… with the exception of a couple of responses that drift into dogma themselves…
I just have to say that as much as I will advocate for the right to think religion is illogical and dangerous, both yours and mine, I also think that this world is big enough for both types. I even think, based on my experience, that it is possible to benefit from religion and that “faith” can be considered a strength. I don’t want to eradicate religion, despite it’s risks, just as I wouldn’t want to start eradicating _anything_ unwise that people enjoy doing anyway.
I also know that in certain twisted environments, a person can honestly believe that there faith is the most logical thing they know. Who is to say how much contrary evidence a person as ever really encountered in their religious life and community? And at the point when such a person is finally faced with conflicting evidence, it may be that the cost of this dissonance is just too great to handle.
People believe things for no good reason all the time. It is no mystery. There are many motivators behind our various psychological delusions.
To add some clarity, when I referred to “both yours and mine,” I meant that we both have the right to believe that religion is negative in general. Heh.
I could not agree with you more, Emily. I still struggle every day to overcome my Catholic sex education, and I’m 40 freaking years old!
It’s so interesting how much you think you are immune from the metaphorical formation of rationality.
I don’t even know what “the metaphorical formation of reality” is, much less whether or not i’m immune to it.
I had metaphorical rationality formation years ago as a kid, so I’m stuck with uniformatarian empiricism now.
It’s like getting the mumps.
Emily,
Whatever its etiology, religious belief is not going away any time soon. It’s too useful.
Life has three unavoidable aspects that just plain suck. These three things are the S.U.M. of human unhappiness.
(S)uffering… Into a every life a little shit must fall. Maybe you’ll get a little, maybe a lot. Some people drown in it. Whatever the case, it will happen. You will suffer.
(U)ncertainty… You don’t know what’s going to hit you next. You never will, and there’s not a thing you can do about it. Life is full of surprises, they say, and most surprises are bad.
(M)ortality… Even if you DO manage a relatively shit-free life, with a minimum of bad surprises, in the end you get the same parting gift as the rest of us: You get to die. In fact, there’s a high likelihood that your death will be preceded by years of physical and mental decay.
Now, keep the S.U.M. in mind and check out the world’s religions, past and present. Notice how they seem tailor-made to counter the despair of the three things listed above? This is no accident.
Suffering? Sure, you’ll suffer – but it’s okay. There’s a reason. Something knows the reason and keeps a handle on it.
Uncertainty? Yes, there is uncertainty – but it’s okay, because Something knows what’s going on and what is to come.
Mortality? Well, you are mortal – but it’s okay, because Something will not let you just cease to be.
We are unhappy and we want to be happy. So we invent ways to make ourselves happy. To soothe our troubled minds. That’s it, Emily. From the neolithic shaman to the most intellectually sophisticated modern theologian, that’s all religion is: people telling themselves, “It’s not as bad as it seems.”
I’ll buy that, but different religions have vastly different takes on that trio, to say nothing of different sects of different religions.
Isn’t there at least one poster/t-shirt in the world that phrases different religious views into snarky one-liners?
Buddhism, for the record, begins by asking its practitioners to accept suffering as a fact. It doesn’t do much to ease uncertainty. Mortality, yes, I concede, it does attempt to ease.
But to return to the post above, the question seems to be, can’t we have belief without having all this poisonous body hatred and sexual damage? Or does belief come with those no matter what? (I’m willing to ask the first question but not quite pessimistic enough to make the assumptions of the second one)
Patrick,
Sorry for the belated reply.
You’re right that as to there being significant doctrinal difference between the various religions re the S.U.M. matter.
Still, at the risk of being reductionist, I think we see the underlying mechanism still at work.
Buddhism, like the others, serves as a palliative explanation for our problematic existence. Like the others, it tells you this vale of tears is not what really matters. This earthly, mortal life is not the main event – rather, it’s simply part of something larger, better and more enduring.
You can escape the trap and be part of (or one with, in Buddhism’s case) the Big Picture by doing X, Y and Z.
Alas, you discover that X, Y and Z are not really doable for us lowly primates. Such carrot-on-a-stick rewards are to be expected, of course.
As for the second matter… avoiding the poisonous bits… I suppose so. But whither “beliefs” themselves then? I’m all for going through Religion X and excising the various affronts to good health and positive sexuality, but why keep any of it then?
Interesting post, and I take your basic point. But you feel a but coming. Well, not a but, but two questions.
Isn’t there something in most/many people that craves for some kind of spiritual belief – which is why there’s so much of it about?
Sikhs seem fairly normal about things, freer from many of the organised religion hang-ups. They’re probably not up there with Universal Unitarians, but they’ve got to be higher up than Catholics. Where do they feature in your ranking?
Yes, I think most people do crave for some kind of spiritual belief. I’m inclined to think there’s something different about me (and apparently with most of the people who read this blog) that I don’t have it, rather than that there’s something different about the believers out there.
And I don’t know anything about Sihkism – all I know is that the family who run the package store down the road from my apartment are Sikhs. They’re perfectly friendly, but not so friendly that I’d ask them about their sex lives! Why, what’s that belief system go to say about sex?
I suppose we all Sikh the truth in our own way.
Ahem.
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Good post Emily, but it leaves things hanging. What I mean by this is that in most reasoned arguments against religion, the conclusion should be clear to anyone capable of rational thought. The problem is that the position taken by stating the (known) facts and letting people come to their own conclusion is not a very effective method of educating others.
Where is the “evangelism” in atheism? IMO, it is a battle that we are fighting, and a battle warrants at least a certain amount of militancy. Institutions which teach the scientific approach are a good start, but more is needed if we are to fill the “god shaped hole” (I believe it was Richard Dawkins’ expression) that exists in all of us. I want to take away your religion, but not in a brutal way that leaves you wanting. I should be able to offer something to replace what I take away.
I do think that life and the universe, presented in the proper way, have enough to offer even to those so unfortunate as to be born in poverty, with handicaps, disease or any other hardship that typically steers one (or better said, suck one) into religious beliefs.
My wife, a research scientist, is somewhat on the fence about the subject of religion. She does not want to be very vocal and definitive in any statements against religion because it might upset her mother (who has plenty of reasons to seek some comfort due to various health problems). We often have arguments on this topic because I don’t like to just let things stay as they are when it comes to ignorance of the facts – and my expectations from her, due to her field, are doubly high.
As I said above, deliberate action must be taken to move things forward towards rational though at a faster pace than we’ve seen historically. The consequence of not doing so are obvious all around us. Tolerance, of ignorance, should not be tolerated, whatever moderates will say. We’ve had centuries of allowing “faith” as one of the top drivers shaping world politics, and events.
Before these moderates jump around and say that this response is no better than what is seen from the religious fringes, I’d like to clarify that the approach should involve a very sincere effort to understand why someone would adopt religion and to speak to each cause in particular by offering an alternative.
Cheers
So, if it turns out that the non-equilibrium atmospheric stuff we’re seeing on Saturn’s moon Titan is caused by living systems swimming in liquid methane, breathing hydrogen and eating acetylene, would we have to wonder if God was . . . um . . . Smog? Or Tar Balls? And given that this is Saturnian, would that make Him Lord of the Rings?
(Sorry.)
Insert the sound of my eyes closing and my head shaking very, very slowly here.
It’s Saturn for the worse, Bill.
Despite your professed atheism your emphasis on faith/belief reveals a generally Christian and specifically Protestant view of religion. Faith/belief is not nearly as important in other religions including non-theistic religions such as Theravedic Buddhism and Confucianism. In theistic non-Christian religions faith/belief is not the sine qua non that it is in Protestant Christianity. In Islam faith/belief matters a lot, but humility/curbing pride are more important; likewise in Judaism community, kinship, and ethical conduct are far more important than faith/belief (which is pretty much optional and nearly beside the point). Moreover, to avoid anachronism we should bear in mind that for the most part at the times and in the places when/where the major religions’ were founded atheism was close to inconceivable.
When it comes to sex the world’s religions are a mix of both sex positivity and negativity, but none of the non-Christian religions has as sex-phobic a figure as St. Paul, in none of them is found the doctrine of original sin, and in most of the non-Christian religions women’s sexuality and right to sexual gratification are givens.
I’m going to put in a plug for Unitarian Universalism.
For one thing, we take in the refugees from all the other religions. And it’s not quite as wishy-washy as “you can believe pretty much whatever you like”. From http://www.uua.org:
Unitarian Universalist congregations affirm and promote…A free and responsible search for truth and meaning.
I stand on the word “responsible” as meaning that you can *not* just believe whatever you like.
Both our kids went through the UU sex ed program (Our Whole Lives). We think they were well served by it.
David wrote…
“Despite your professed atheism your emphasis on faith/belief reveals a generally Christian and specifically Protestant view of religion.”
And how is this a problem? Atheism is the disbelief in god(s). Skepticism towards various religions and their teachings is a related and consequent matter but not the basis of atheism.
“Faith/belief is not nearly as important in other religions including non-theistic religions such as Theravedic Buddhism and Confucianism.”
Theravada Buddhists don’t believe in the supernatural? Unless you can actually prove the reality of Karma, the cycle of rebirth, Nirvana, etc. then we are indeed talking about belief and, yes, faith.
By what reckoning is Confucianism a religion, non-theistic or otherwise? Including it would seem to stretch the definition of religion so broadly as to make it useless.
“In theistic non-Christian religions faith/belief is not the sine qua non that it is in Protestant Christianity. In Islam faith/belief matters a lot, but humility/curbing pride are more important;”
No.
Islam is at least as faith-oriented and doctrinal as the previous Abrahamic monotheisms from which it arose.
Ask any cleric or scholar of Islam “Who is a Muslim?” and you will promptly get a list of articles of faith which must be sincerely affirmed: The unitary nature of God, the reality of angels and prophets, the truth of revelation, life after death, etc.
You could be the most humble, pride-curbing man who ever walked the earth but if you don’t profess the shahada and mean it… you’re not a Muslim.
“likewise in Judaism community, kinship, and ethical conduct are far more important than faith/belief (which is pretty much optional and nearly beside the point).”
So I can be Jewish and believe in Poseidon? Or Osiris? How about Wotan and Thor? You might want to run that by next rabbi you meet.
“Moreover, to avoid anachronism we should bear in mind that for the most part at the times and in the places when/where the major religions’ were founded atheism was close to inconceivable.”
Agreed. But today it’s these Bronze Age superstitions which are the anachronism. We shouldn’t judge our ancestors harshly for not knowing what they could not possibly have known… but now we DO know better.
“When it comes to sex the world’s religions are a mix of both sex positivity and negativity, but none of the non-Christian religions has as sex-phobic a figure as St. Paul, in none of them is found the doctrine of original sin, and in most of the non-Christian religions women’s sexuality and right to sexual gratification are givens.”
Original Sin isn’t found in non-Christian religions? Where do you imagine Augustine got the idea? He just made it up? This toxin goes right back to the source… to pre-Christian creation, corruption and exile myths.
I’ll leave the religion and women’s sexuality thing for others to pick up. Enough for now; WoW is calling.
GeorgeFromNY wrote:
“And how is this a problem? Atheism is the disbelief in god(s). Skepticism towards various religions and their teachings is a related and consequent matter but not the basis of atheism.”
How well an atheist critique of a spiritual community does or does not apply depends on the extent to which that community’s belief in god(s) is central or peripheral, literal or symbolic, absolute or relativist, required or optional. Applying a critique of Protestant Fundamentalism to other religions is likely to result in a poor fit.
“Theravada Buddhists don’t believe in the supernatural? Unless you can actually prove the reality of Karma, the cycle of rebirth, Nirvana, etc. then we are indeed talking about belief and, yes, faith.”
By that definition atheism’s core, literal, absolute, and mandatory refutation of the existence of god(s) constitutes a belief system as well.
“By what reckoning is Confucianism a religion, non-theistic or otherwise? Including it would seem to stretch the definition of religion so broadly as to make it useless.”
Confucianism’s insistence on social order and conformity as well as its veneration and indeed worship of ancestors makes it a belief system, one that meets many if not most definitions of a religion.
“Islam is at least as faith-oriented and doctrinal as the previous Abrahamic monotheisms from which it arose.
Ask any cleric or scholar of Islam “Who is a Muslim?” and you will promptly get a list of articles of faith which must be sincerely affirmed: The unitary nature of God, the reality of angels and prophets, the truth of revelation, life after death, etc.
You could be the most humble, pride-curbing man who ever walked the earth but if you don’t profess the shahada and mean it… you’re not a Muslim.”
Different schools of Islamic thought have different emphases; some are rigidly literal and other take a more symbolic approach. Some Muslims, for example, view Mohamed’s night ride literally while others view it symbolically as an insight that came to him in a dream.
“So I can be Jewish and believe in Poseidon? Or Osiris? How about Wotan and Thor? You might want to run that by next rabbi you meet.”
The 16th century Kabbalist Rabbi Moshe Cordovero identified the Shekhina (the feminine presence of God) with the Canaanite/Israelite goddess Ashera (YHVH’s wife/co-god). Among contemporary rabbis Rabbi Jill Hammer’s earth-based Judaism encompasses divine duality, and the liturgy she and her students in the Jewish Priestess program create draw heavily on pagan sources.
“Agreed. But today it’s these Bronze Age superstitions which are the anachronism. We shouldn’t judge our ancestors harshly for not knowing what they could not possibly have known… but now we DO know better.”
We know and do better by rejecting literal belief in mythology in favor of symbolic interpretations of imaginative tribal narratives that no less an atheist than Freud found psychologically insightful and meaningful. Rather than dismissing them as anachronisms we reinterpret them to find still deeper meanings.
“Original Sin isn’t found in non-Christian religions? Where do you imagine Augustine got the idea? He just made it up? This toxin goes right back to the source… to pre-Christian creation, corruption and exile myths.”
Yes, he made it up; his interpretation of the initial chapters of Genesis are unique to Christianity. Ask any Imam or Rabbi. Rabbinic views of these same chapters view the departure from Eden as an emergence from a state of irresponsible childish dependence to one of adult self-reliance and responsibility. Eating from the fruit of knowledge isn’t corruption but rather an eye opening awakening. Adam and Eve didn’t leave Eden as exiles but as pioneers. This is but one example of one of the basic differences between Christianity and Judaism: Christianity wants people to return to a state of childlike innocence, while Judaism wants people to behave like responsible adults (for which they earn the right to enjoy adult pleasures in moderation).
The great divide is not between skeptics and believers but rather between literal absolutists (both religious and atheist) and symbolic relativists (who don’t care whether or not a text is literally true but rather whether it is meaningful and can teach us life lessons).
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Emily,
As a pastor who has spent more than a decade trying to help couples have better sex, I have to say your third paragraph is dead on; including what you said about obstructing the scientific study of sexuality.
The couples my bride and I deal with have been hurt by a lot of things, with society (non-religious society) being high on the list, but damage done in the name of Jesus is also a huge problem.
I would say that the majority of what is taught about sex by “Christians” is not to be found in the Bible, and much of the rest is grossly distorted. Yes, there is that limit of an opposite gender, human, spouse, but beyond that there are actually very, very, few limits.
Fortunately, some are starting to read and think for themselves, with impressive results. I know some followers of Jesus who have sex lives that would make virtually anyone jealous.
BTW, I found your blog because of a link to this post. After reading a month worth of posts, I am signing up for the new RSS feed (thanks for that). I appreciate that you are willing to go where science takes you, even when it’s not PC. I especially like what I am seeing you say about the difference between male and female sex motivation. Keep up the good work!
(Rev) Paul