Hacker News Reader

Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

> Not allowing any kind of escape, even temporarily, from hell on earth.

It may read like harmful advice now, but I can imagine that "don't fuck too much" might have been meant well back then (as I believe it is usually meant well today). Certainly lust has caused much suffering in the world, on scales large and small, and this looks like a rather ham-fisted attempt to blunt the worst of effects of lust.

What I find fascinating is that the people would even permit the Church to comment on such intimate matters and in such agonizing detail. Of all the myriad human issues dealt with in the Bible, sexual misconduct isn't particularly important (the one counter example is Jesus mentioning divorce in his sermon on the mount).

This intersection between religion and sexuality is interesting and someone should look into it.

View on HN

Restricting sex to strict monogamy would definitely limit the spread of STDs and prevent some socially disruptive things like a divorce with children, parents rejecting illegitimate children, etc. Of course in real life none of that ever actually worked, and things like condoms and economic equality might work better. Or not. We haven't exactly solved these issues yet.

But yeah, if people actually cared about what Jesus said about anything, poverty would have been solved a long time ago.

I think what you said about condoms highlights a key historical difference. Throughout most of humanity's moral development, there was no such thing as protection, against STDs or pregnancy, other than the rhythm method or induced abortion. Definitely, there was wisdom in limiting the number of partners and orifices in much of that time.

Edit: which is to say, technology can affect morality and there's a good reason for these attitudes to change now.

Also, what you said about Jesus and poverty is spot-on. I really wish more Christians would embrace the truly good and radical parts of Christianity instead of fixating on arcane moral rules.

>Of all the myriad human issues dealt with in the Bible, sexual misconduct isn't particularly important

I'd say the opposite is true. Jesus didn't have a lot to say because he's speaking to an audience that's very Old Testament in its sexual ethic. Once Christianity spreads to the broader Roman/Greek world, Peter and Paul and others have a lot to say about it.

> to an audience that's very Old Testament in its sexual ethic.

Meaning very positive about it? The Old Testament hold sex between a married couple to be a positive and holy thing, to be encouraged.

> Once Christianity spreads to the broader Roman/Greek world

So you're saying Christianity's discouragement of sex (which is not from the bible) actually came from the Roman/Greek world?

> So you're saying Christianity's discouragement of sex (which is not from the bible) actually came from the Roman/Greek world?

No, not at all.

The original link was about a hermeneutic developed in the 7th century. The post I replied to was speaking about what's in the Bible itself. My reply concerns the latter.

I read it again a couple times, and your reply is super confusing, I don't understand what you are saying.

> about what's in the Bible itself. My reply concerns the latter.

Which is what?

In particular what do you mean by "very Old Testament in its sexual ethic"?

The Old Testament is positive towards sex, but Christianity is not.

Ha, when I went to break this down I saw why my reply is confusing. Thanks for pushing back.

Original claim: "Of all the myriad human issues dealt with in the Bible, sexual misconduct isn't particularly important"

That claim is followed by a parenthetical that hints at an argument I hear often: "<<issue>> isn't all that important because Jesus didn't talk about it". The poster is heavily implying[0] that apart from some talk about divorce, Jesus didn't talk about sexuality all that much, therefore sexual misconduct isn't particularly important. Then from there, you usually hear something along the lines of "Paul ruined Christianity" or "The Old Testament God is way different than the New Testament God".

My response was to disagree with all that and say that the Bible treats sexual conduct and misconduct as very important, and to state that Jesus's relative quietness on these issues is a tacit endorsement of most of the Old Testament sexual ethic.

> The Old Testament is positive towards sex, but Christianity is not.

Depends on who you're learning from, I guess, as well as how you'd define sex positivity. Christian theologians have struggled with Song of Solomon for centuries, but most of the people I listen to have no problem saying that it's actually about a romantic relationship instead of exclusively some allegory about Christ and the church.

This original link is pretty weird to me, very much out of step with how Christians understand marital sex today.

[0]: To be clear, I could be reading this implication wrong. But I don't think I am.

You don't need Song of Songs, Exodus 21:10 tells you that the Bible is positive toward sex in marriage.

I don't understand how the twitter thread can claim a requirement to minimize sex in light of that.

(And thanks for clarifying.)

In this connection I am reminded of the famous 1 Corinthians 7:9 and if they have not continence -- let them marry, for it is better to marry than to burn;. Scanning back to the beginning of 1 Corinthians 7 for context, and reading the commentaries at [1] it seems that St. Paul recommended celibacy but recognized that sex was a major distraction, as did many other authorities of the time. As a bonus we see here that Paul says that in this matter the spouses each yield to each other (1 C 7:4) [2] and that Paul is not speaking from the law from his own opinion [3].

I can understand why people would say that the New Testament says, "Don't do it" but it only took a little effort on my part to see nuances.

And in the commentaries I've linked to, I think I see some support for GP's comment.

[1] https://biblehub.com/niv/1_corinthians/7-9.htm

[2] https://biblehub.com/niv/1_corinthians/7-4.htm

[3] https://biblehub.com/niv/1_corinthians/7-6.htm

Christianity's discouragement of sex is a puritan invention. All the ebjdence you need is the reputation of lovers from majority catholic countries.

> It may read like harmful advice now, but I can imagine that "don't fuck too much" might have been meant well back then

It may not be "politically correct" as we've got a culture obsessed with promiscuity and decadence (it seems), but it's definitely not harmful advice.

I can't think of a downside to reducing sexual partners to a minimum. On the other hand, there's a lot of research that promiscuity/increased number of sexual partners are causing a lot of problems. I'll share a few.

It awfully feels like we are rediscovering some things that many, if not all civilizations knew before us.

A book that touches upon this topic is "The Fate of Empires". There's a section about causality between decadence and societal collapse, and the author is of the opinion (based on his research) that civilizations go through very similar steps.

Once a society gets to be "wealthy" enough, sexual perversion and promiscuity is on the rise, fertility drops, shortly followed by general decadence and apathy. Inevitable, it leads to a collapse (or being occupied by a culture that still keeps doing what the (now) decadent society used to do).

In a way, it's an organism. That's how I like to think about it.

Some societies collapse over a span of period, so it's not instantaneous. Therefore, probably, it's difficult to tell that it is happening. The average was found to be around 250 years.

[0] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1741-3737....

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3752789/

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Fate-Empires-Search-Survival/dp/B00...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com