Well, after Ben’s amazing list, my comment may seem trivial…
One pleasure that fundamentalists deny themselves and their children is the reading of most imaginitive fiction. If it’s bible-based, you can read it, but Harry Potter is off limits.
True enough. Also true (sorry if it’s been mentioned here before and I missed it) is that some couples really are more sexually compatible than others. Abstention can doom a person to a lifetime of sleeping with someone with whom they don’t really communicate well sexually. I never had a bad partner, but I’ve had some that I wouldn’t want to sleep with forever.
If that seems trivial to some, then the belief that abstinence is the only good choice often leads to the neglect of sexual education. This has been touched on here.
Another fair point (I posted a question a while back asking if sexual compatability was a meaningful phrase), but I’d have to say that in a religious framework, where both partners were virgins until marriage (and therefore have few preconceptions) and were prepared to communicate openly, there would be less of a problem.
Well, to answer the question in the way it was posited, well you’d have to figure out what was the one true religion, if there was one. Every response to this would have to assume that they know the answer. (And why is your bullshit detector better than everybody elses?)
It’s all matters of belief based on faith, which you can’t argue with, because it’s faith. And to boot to that, it’s faith about things you can never prove.
But if you wanted to take the humanist view, and that this world was generally worth paying attention to, you could find several faults.
Almost every religous adherence has people considering certain activities wrong, and others right. (Yes, even Buddhism. Adherence to this world, well, maybe not wrong, but certainly not desired. In fact, why are you desiring?) This always leads to a prejudice against the people who act this way. Is this wrong? Doesn’t it prevent you from actually seeing these people?
Other beliefs posit that this world we live in is nothing more than a test, or a veil keeping us from realizing the truth of reality. Does that mean that the people you seem from day to day are nothing but illusions? Are they only there for your benefit?
And how do you know that your beliefs are correct? Didn’t Jesus say “they have eyes but they cannot see”?
To understand harm, you have to understand what is the truth. To claim you know the truth would seem to be another sort of religion. It boils down to what is the true religion, and if religion is the truth. Answer that, you’ve got the answer to your query.
To be fair to Ben, he’s talking about what fundies say, not whether there’s any sound biblical support for it; this thread is about the effects of religion, not the reasons.
Excellent point - as I was reading through some of the comments above relating to Christianity (my own faith), I was thinking “I don’t support any of this, and I don’t believe my understanding of Christianity does either!!”. As I prepared to write a contradictory response, it occured to me that I knew people and groups who did hold the beliefs and attitudes that Ben (and others) had spoken about.
Someone earlier commented (I couldn’t find it again to quote) that it is people who hurt other people, and religion is just one of the sticks that we use to beat each other with. I agree - many people use religious beliefs to justify attitudes and prejudices that they already hold. This means that they no longer need to examine the “rightness” or “wrongness” of their attitudes, as they have been justified by their religious beliefs.
Take the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland as an example; killing each other is is not {IMO) something that can reasonably be argued to be part of either the Catholic or the Protestant faith and yet religion seems to be to blame.
Sure. That’s the right decision for some people. The point is that, having made that choice, if things change they can decide for themselves to break it, rather than being bound to it by unyielding religious restrictions.
The passage that has been quoted to me was the story of Onan, Genesis 38. Onan’s brother, Er, was struck down by the LORD, and Onan and Er’s father, Judah, commanded Onan to take Er’s wife, and to give her children. Onan didn’t want to, because the kids would technically be his brother’s kids. Onan had sex with her, but practiced the withdrawl method (a dubious means of birth control, but be that as it may . . .) and “spilled his seed upon the ground.” This was displeasing to the LORD, so He struck Onan down, just like Er.
A more liberal reading is that the LORD was displeased with the whole situation (Onan’s failure to obey his father, do his duty to his dead brother, but still wanting to take pleasure from his wife) but the stricter reading is that God was mad about the waste of Onan’s semen–“every sperm is sacred,” in the words of Monty Python.
Matthew 5:27-28, the words of JC himself: “You have heard that it was said, `You shall not commit adultery.’ But I say to you that every one who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”
What “look[ing] at a woman lustfully” entails, and whether this is a blanket condemnation of sexual fantasy, I leave to you.
–Proving that the devil (or Podkayne) can quote scriptures.–
Personally, I don’t think sexual fantasy is forbidden by God. OTOH, my experience has been that fundies generally forbid it. In general, the fundies I speak to will make very limited allowances for sexual fantasy (ie, you can fantasise about your spouse.)
Of course I don’t believe that. I was talking about what fundamentalist Christians typically believe.
It is very difficult to quantify hurt, and also, it is very difficult to seperate religion from the culture that it inspires/is inspired by. So, someone already mentioned premarital sex – you could certainly make an argument that the high percentage of fundamentalists who oppose sex education in school(1) has at least some vague effect on the high unwed mother rate in the US. But, of course, you could argue that maybe it has a lowering effect – probably, it does both. And, we could (2) get into an entire thread, but never really qualify that as a harm/benefit.
So, if someone had an ax to grind, I’m sure they could come up with reasons why the following weren’t actually hurtful – even though I would assume many people would.
The catholic stance on birth control, which has lead to many catholics either a: having more children than they’d like, b: feeling guilty for “abandoning their faith”, or c: The spread of AIDS. (3)
“Cults of Personalities” which can center around unusual/controlling s_x. An example of this can be found in the “Heaven’s Harlots” book by Miriam Williams – where her cult mandated s_x as an “outreach” event. (4)
Abortion Doctor bombings. Clearly, this is not mainstream, and the people doing this are in NO way Christians, but they do believe they are religious.
However, from what I can tell of the OP, he was really looking for more emotional damage than physical damage. And, if attempting to prove physical pain was a trial, then imagine trying to prove emotional damage.
He mentions Close Mindedness, and frankly, I think that in general, he’s reasonably justified to say that. Fundamental religions tend to attract close minded people, and groups of people who share one attribute tend to reinforce that, so there tends to be a large group of close minded people in Fundamentalist religions. To be fair, I should say the same thing about close minded people and SMDB. =:> And, frankly, I’ve always seen a parallel between fundamentalists attitude to closemindedness and software geeks attitude toward bad hygene.
I would add the following tentative list(5).
Guilt. Do not take this as overgeneralizing – but many atheists who were religious talk about the joy of not being ruled by guilt. Clearly, this is not the case for all people, but many christians (or now ex-christians) feel a large amount of turmoil/pain/guilt.
Shame. Shame is a useful way of controlling all groups, and so it in general is no worse in a religious group than any secular group. However, many cults do intentionally increase the shame of the group to instill fear, and that can be damaging.
Isolationism. Although there will be people arguing with me about whether this is truly bad, I think that many religions take this WAY too far.
Maybe these help?
(BTW, a first time poster. Please excuse any mistakes I make – especially social blunders. )
Me’Corva
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(1) Or to be precise, S_x Ed that isn’t abstinance only.
(2) This is a good example of the difficulty of quantifying harm. Maybe 10 people after the s_x ed decide not to have s_x – but 2 people decide to try abstinance, and fail, and they get pregnant. So, it does work and it also doesn’t. Whether you like it or not will depend on how you rank unintentionaly pregnancies vs having s_x.
(3) Let us not overreact here, of course. There are strong cultural taboos/financial barriers to condoms even ignoring the religious facet. I leave people to draw their own conclusions, and the small message of hope:
(4) Before any jokes are made about this topic, please read the book. It is a very tragic tale, and very little of the tragedy has to do with the s_x directly. Much more is the completely stunted emotional development, which is clearly the greater evil.
(5) If anyone really wants to wrangle about these as “generally bad principals”, have fun. Frankly, I think getting hooked up in the details is missing the point. I mean, you could put forth the argument that my friend who didn’t believe in dating before marriage was not being harmed because she was avoiding the emotional damage of being dumped – but … whatever. That’s just totally missing the point.
Why do you insist on typing “s_x”? You said “sex” earlier in your post and it seemed really bizarre to see the incomplete word throughout the rest of it… This sorta seems like people who are opposed to saying “God Damnit” but in the same situation say “Gosh Dangit”… it’s the exact same sentiment being expressed and any omnipotent being would see that… not trying to criticize… it just caught my attention
I don’t think the Bible forbids masturbation – but people have been claiming that it does for ages. The anti-masturbation Christians keep harping on the biblical story of Onan. It’s always seemed to me that they’re misinterpreting the story. On purpose, I have to suspect.
Here’s the deal: Onan’s brother died childless. God appeared to Onan and ordered him to lie with his brother’s widow and get her with child. This child would be counted as Onan’s brother’s child, not Onan’s.
Well, Onan must’ve had some unresolved issues with his late brother. He didn’t want to father a child that would officially be his brother’s child. So he went to his sister-in-law’s tent, but instead of following instructions, he (as the Bible puts it) spilled his seed upon the ground.
Three points.
It is not clear what Onan actually did: masturbation or premature withdrawal?
In any case, seems to me that Onan’s sin had nothing to do with any specific sex act; his sin was that he disobeyed God.
If that’s all they can come up with to back up their claim that God forbids masturbation, I’d say the fundies are really grasping at straws.
Well, the orthodox Jews, who know the Bible as well as anyone, do think it forbids masturbation. I’m not sure if the justification of this is from the story of Onan alone, or if there is other support, but I don’t think the fundamentalists just came (no pun intended) up with it on a whim.
Another part of the OT that is supposed to cover masturbation is the subject of idolatry. Putting something (in this case, yourself) before God.
In the New Testament there are a bunch of places that say any sexual acts, or even thoughts, outside of marriage is a no-no. Jesus said that if you have lustful thoughts about another woman, then it is the same as adultery. People extended this to non-married people and say that any lustful thoughts (of course, it is tough to masturbate sans lustful thoughts) are the same premarital sex. Masturbation is equal to fornication and therefore a sin. Although I don’t think Paul ever specifically mentioned masturbation, the spirit of his writings imply that it would be right out as well.
No, Onan’s father told him to do it, not God. “Then Judah said to Onan, ‘Go in to your brother’s wife, and perform the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise up offspring for your brother.’” (Genesis 38:8) Those who don’t have a Bible handy might see the link I posted above to the RSV online.
Withdrawl, it would seem. “. . . when he went in to his brother’s wife he spilled the semen on the ground, lest he should give offspring to his brother.” (Genesis 38:9) [The bolding, of course, is mine, not the Lord’s.]
Nonetheless, if the simple act of spilling semen outside the female body is a sin, then male masturbation would qualify.
Rather, his father, but it’s still a sin, I suppose: “Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.” (Exodus 20:12)
Here, we are in perfect agreement. Don’t forget that it’s not just the fundies. The Catholic Church also used this passage to forbid masturbation, and it was used to bolster the case against contraception, IIRC.