True enough.
I wonder if there’s a website for masturbating on a soapbox on a busy street corner? 
Although I have no problem with human beings enacting a simple biological function that tends to relieve stress under certain circumstances, I really just wanted to say I find it *really * interesting just monitoring the responses.
At least for those who have thus far responded, it would seem the boards are really leaning a certain way these days. I’ll not debase this thread with further speculation; just wanted to comment about a certain one-sidedness.
Actually I was thinking more along the lines of how we can’t tickle ourselves. So, he could have made it so, uh, self-manipulation didn’t have any effect.
And to add some TMI, generally I’m not thinking about anything besides yeah… that feels good. But I’m a little screwed up in the head.
Yes. It’s not even that difficult to get most of the way there without even thinking much about the act itself.
If masturbating is spitting on that gift, then so is living for more than a day past the onset of puberty. Millions of sperm die and get replaced with new sperm every day, and if you go for long enough without masturbating, you’re going to release semen in your urine or while you’re sleeping. Lack of orgasm can also temporarily damage your sexual and reproductive abilities, making a refusal to masturbate or have sex more of an insult to the holy gift of reproduction.
In short, the concept that masturbation is immoral is based on a so-called “literal” reading of the Bible; as is the M.O. of the “literalists”, the rules about animal sacrifices, physical contact during menstruation, slavery, a man’s duty to marry his sister-in-law if she becomes a childless widow, the death penalty for wearing two or more different fabrics at the same time, having bowel movements within city limits, leaving all important decisions up to men, etc., are completely ignored in the name of post-industrialism while the restrictions that religious leaders can still hold over ignorant followers’ heads. The appropriate response is to throw the whole damn book out the window.
FTR, AskNott, God wasn’t asking Onan to commit adultery. In fact, God demanded that Onan fulfill a significant part of the Jewish covenant: if you are unmarried and childless, and your brother dies married and childless, it is your (Onan’s) duty to impregnate his widow.
Yeah. We can tell this is a big problem because the world has become underpopulated since masturbation started becoming acceptable.
OH, WAIT.
I don’t think it really matters. There are some Dopers who are bucking the trend, and it’s interesting both to hear their side and to get a chance to present an argument for ours.
How do you feel about nocturnal emissions?
Wouldn’t that be exactly what would say if they were trying to convince you? Doesn’t that sound like a dodge to you?
I googled . . .is masturbation immoral.
I got:
From: Is Masturbation a Sin?
And that pretty much sums up what I’ve read on the subject by other authors that I’ve read that have studied the subject. There’s a lot more in depth discussion in the article about Scripture and how he got to his conclusions.
As for my religion, my google-fu skills work well regardless of my religion. 
Of course it’s immoral!
All those poor kittens…
Why does this remind me of a really sick game of Clue?
But think of all those adorable puppies!
I was raised Catholic and I didn’t get the message masturbation was immoral.
(Maybe I wasn’t listening; too busy masturbating?)
If masturbation transmutes kittens to puppies, why isn’t the world devoid of felines and brimming with canines? Therefore, some mechanism is transmuting them back… what could it be?
No, he never mentions it specifically.
Regards,
Shodan
If masturbation is wrong, then I don’t want to be right…handed.
Actually, it isn’t Paul who was the sex-hater so much as some of the Early Church Fathers. I think that’s where a lot of the anti-sex (and anti-masturbation) attitudes entered Christianity, probably aided by their exposure to Greek ideas, by misunderstandings of biology, and/or by those writers’ own, well, issues. For example,
(cue Monty Python’s “Every Sperm Is Sacred”)
My quote was referring to the experience of sex, not to a man or woman’s ability to engage in it.
If a man can’t unite with a real woman, how can that man get into that real woman’s pants?
Do you honestly believe that marriages have become less loving/unitary since masturbation became acceptable?
I dont understand your first sentence. As for marriages being less loving, I dont know, but I think it’s possible that a marriage can be harmed if masturbation and lustful thoughts interfere with sex, by preferring the shadowy bride over the real one.
A marriage can also be harmed if alcohol, television, or the Dope interferes with sex. Your point?
What about women who do it? They don’t actually have any “Seed” to spill…
Don’t worry, vivalostwages; someone will come up with another absurd rationalization once Joel Osteen figures out that women can masturbate too.
Take a look and you will find many church policies which forbid things that do not result in long term growth of the church and its membership.
Babies among church membership tend to do that.