Why are most religions anti-masturbation?

[John_Bredin]

@Rigamarole

Negative - he shouldn’t be having sex at all according to doctrine. If he’s still able-bodied, then he should be using that energy to work the fields instead.

ETA: misread you for a second and thought you said the man was infertile also - if his wife is infertile and he’s not then he would normally get a new wife.

Umm, whose doctrine?! I don’t know of any Christian or Jewish sect that says that. The “sex is only for marriage” rule doesn’t reverse or back-translate into “marriage is only for sex.” In any Judeo-Christian doctrine I’ve heard of, married couples that are infertile by age, injury or illness aren’t required to divorce/seek an annulment, nor (as far as I can recall) are they expected to refrain from sex.

Isn’t that point – that church doctrine accepts that marriage isn’t just for procreation – one of the issues that supporters of same-sex marriage try to turn back against churches that oppose it?

[Rigamarole]

@John_Bredin

Isn’t that point – that church doctrine accepts that marriage isn’t just for procreation – one of the issues that supporters of same-sex marriage try to turn back against churches that oppose it?

It’s primarily for procreation though. Again, it’s about an overall breeding strategy here over thousands of years. There will always be cases that don’t quite work out ideally, because that’s just the way it goes. Doesn’t change the basic premise.

[Annie-Xmas]

Jehovah’s Witnesses book Questions Young People Ask - Answers That Work denounces masturbation because sex is not supposed to be about pleasuring yourself, but pleasuring your partner. Apparently the act is considered too selfish for Jehovah to approve of.

The section on how to avoid the activity by reading the Bible was a laff riot.

[gatorslap]

@Annie-Xmas

Jehovah’s Witnesses book Questions Young People Ask - Answers That Work denounces masturbation because sex is not supposed to be about pleasuring yourself, but pleasuring your partner. Apparently the act is considered too selfish for Jehovah to approve of.

So mutual masturbation is preferred?

[yelimS]

A lot of the posts here assume that masturbation’s frowned upon because it’s bad for the individual performing it (opportunity costs, &c), but if that was the case, we wouldn’t have evolved the propensity to do so in the first place.
I can’t recall masturbation specifically mentioned in any of my literature, but the closest I can think of is Pascal Boyer (Religion Explained, 2001) who argues that religion tries to limit different forms of recreation, because then the only available stimuli comes from religious services and rituals. In other words, those religions who happen to forbid such things, get the most devoted members, because then they will be preoccupied with ritual to entertain themselves. So it’s a kind of cultural selection going on.