Take a Cold Bath
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It doesn't make sense to look at pre-1950s attitudes to sex as a religious phenomenon - or if it does it has to be acknowledged that religion wasn't working with the world we've built for ourselves today. There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around. It does seem fair to trace religious traditions on the subject but that really isn't the elephant in the room; sex had to be looked at through a different lens 100 years ago.
I would add the caveat that things have not been completely worked out yet. I agree that religious customs around sex served a practical purpose.
However, easier access to sexual pleasure seems to have unintended consequences. Traditionally, a woman and her family should be damn sure that a particular man is worthy of female costs of pregnancy. So there was more pressure exerted on men to be worthy of sex. Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men.
if you mean that in a biological, evolutionary sexual selection sense, then easier access to sexual pleasure _with birth control_ doesn't change the big picture at all either.
of course, if a man wants to start a family - for love, stable companionship, socially/culturally accepted and probably easily accessible sex and, finally, passing on his genes - the need for bettering himself still applies now as it did then.
bar for that is higher than ever. My ex had a entire stream of guys in her DMs trying to chat her up on instagram. its nice being top of the hill but no one stays on top forever when there's never a break from that kind of competition. thats why Im happy my current gf is not on social media at all.
People see social media as a disconnect from real life but in my eyes looking at it within the context of what it's replacing it seems like incredibly inappropriate behavior. No one would ever be happy knowing their partner (of either sex) is having private meetings or conversations in person at all hours of the day/night with strangers of their own opposite gender. So why do private online interactions (keeping your social media door "open" to strangers who may have romantic intent and engaging with them at all?) not raise similar red flags among people?
Prostitution and rape are not perfect substitutes for consensual sex. The risks are much greater, so on the margin, there are men who are not willing to partake in these, and instead choose to better themselves when faced with a lack of partners.
Male-Male homosexual relations are expressly forbidden in Pauline Christianity and it is not necessary to utilize Levitical law or Sodom to make this argument. Right wrong or indifferent, this is the case.
Please do not use this information to behave hatefully
Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality
by Malcolm Potts and Roger Short, 1999
> MacCulloch’s unspoken conclusion might well be that religion should begin again from scratch.
The Great(est) Command(ment) is to love our Creator with all our being, and then love our neighbor as ourself.
As Jesus was of the House of David, and the Quran states that the Gospels were sent by God just as it was, there is the single foundation upon which religion rests.
Now, if only people earnestly sought to live their lives according to that greatest of commandments, to thus love their enemies and to treat others like they were treating Jesus, himself.
Of course, the paradox of tolerance requires that we love the oppressed more than the oppressor, so if we have to deal with folks with Nazi-like tendencies, we must love them (in our hearts) while we strip them of their power to harm others.
As with all things human, our having free will means it is completely our choice whether we seek to obey any of God's commands. Just know that we all reap what we sow, for good or ill, so I suggest you act on behalf of others' happiness whenever possible.
You can't retrofit this onto biblical commands to love everyone equally. The Paradox demands nothing, and certainly doesn't have primacy over core religious tenets.
We are to fill our hearts with love, so that even if we have to protect the oppressed, we are not to be filled with hate or rage or take any pleasure in vanquishing the aggressor.
We are to treat people according to what the society needs, for God's Will is peace and happiness for all human beings.
With the risk of sounding blasphemous, yes it is a library. It is a buffet. You get fish, you get meat, you get salad, you get fruits. There is something for everyone. Pick what you want, ignore the rest, and we're all happy.
I also wonder 'when', if ever, we will learn the truth about 'the Bible' (or other similar documents of 'holy' value). I wonder if in those bookshelves that the Vatican or in the Holy Mountain (Athos) store all the previous versions that show the evolution of the document.
And I wonder if they would ever release the evolution of the document with numbers of pages, chapters, authors, years, so we can see the 'timeline' (kinda like a changelog in a Policy document).
We are to self-evolve ourselves such that we are completely compassionate.
Our love for our fellow human beings leads us to understand how we sometimes act selfishly with them, causing them unhappiness. Love for them then dictates that we need to be better people, so we turn to our Creator to help us overcome our selfish impulses, that are borne of our animal nature and cultures' pack-mentalities.
By sending love to our Creator (who needs nothing of the sort), the universe resonates that love back into our heart. That reflective compassion gives us the strength to make better choices, which leads us to actually becoming better.
Love is powerfully transformative. First, we must transform ourselves towards greater love, then we must help transform our societies to compassionately care for all our fellow human beings.
That is the ENTIRE purpose of religion: to help us create peace and happiness for ALL human beings.
And this absolutely is kindof selfish on my part, because helping others learn this greatest of all truths is a benefit to my own happiness. But the purity of my purpose here requires this message to have no material benefit for me, only karmic benefit.
Peace be with you all. Compassion is the way, and, as Rumi said, "The Way goes in."
[As to the Vatican, they traded their souls for a small price when they covered up their mass child rape (and are now declaring bankruptcy instead of paying their victims). A Catholic person can connect with God and become consumed by love, but the power organization that is the Catholic Church has damned themselves to hell, because they chose money over truth and compassion. Jesus says precisely what will happen to those who harm children.]
And these are just some of the major laws of Judaism and Christianity that I'm most familiar with. Similar prohibitions and encouragements can be found in a leach and every religious practice on Earth, and they have literally 0 to do with universal love. So why believe that religion is all about universal love when religious practices insist on so many other things?
That is why everything is weighed against love. And the vast majority of human beings -- especially so-called religious authorities -- utterly fail in that regard. Selfishness for money and power corrupt most everyone, and religion is rife for abuse by the unscrupulous.
Also, God's rules vary over the eons for different cultures and epochs.
Help people help themselves.
Then help those who can't.
Just listen.
Thanks for sharing your views. I'm going to chew on it for a while.
I love rotisserie chicken, and tandoori chicken even more. You know why none of us eat rotisserie vulture? Because they're scavengers, and we should only eat scavengers if we're starving. Look up pigs in wikipedia and you'll learn that they are absolute scavengers who love to eat poop (learned that from comedian Daniel Tosh, who has a pet pig).
God's laws are always for our happiness. We are not to commit adultery because of disease and trust and love and the fact that jealously gets people killed, or at least causes strife and misery.
> Where does the prohibition against same-sex love fit into the universal compassion?
I understand that to be the result of human persecution of gay folks since time immemorial. I don't agree with persecuting gay folks, myself, and understand that we rightfully can do nothing against what people do in the privacy of their own home, not that I would intrude on another person's relationship anyway.
Certain sexual practices are certainly bad for our physical well-being, so God says we shouldn't do it, but only for our happiness.
Whom we choose for our best friend is a person's business, but that's just my reading of how love works for me. And I have found that gay folks are the least of our problems, except for Peter Thiel, but he's just a power-hungry asshole.
> and they have literally 0 to do with universal love. So why believe that religion is all about universal love when religious practices insist on so many other things?
What those supposed 'authorities' are doing is truly sad and WRONG, but we are free to be as hyprocritical as we wish, to be as willfully ignorant as we wish. A Jewish person can choose to be a Nazi, and anyone can choose to be an asshole.
That has nothing to do with what we SHOULD do, though, my friend.
You are bang-on correct: the vast majority of the world's understanding of religion is nothing less than fucked-up. And God is not happy with it, but It gave us this free will to be whatever we want, and so it is.
And, believe me, trying to explain love to the willfully ignorant, self-righteous, prideful, lying oppressors is walking uphill. But, I wouldn't trade it for the world. We are only responsible for our own ideals, attitudes, and behaviors.
We love you. I feel your pain, but love will help you transcend it, even if we can't transcend others' hateful idiocy; they have to choose to do that for themself.
Namaste.
This is a very Abrahamic take. The ancient "God Kings" like the Roman Emperors or followers of Marduk like Nebuchadnezzar didn't place much value on peace and happiness. If anything they actively despised it.
Then they are not of God. It is that simple.
Happiness is within our potential, but we must choose it, first by learning how and then by using our will to become compassionate.
It's our choice, each and every one of us.
Same for Mount Athos, where materials are being catalogued by various projects.
Further knowledge about the origins of the bible are more likely to come from archeological finds, like the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Spoiler alert: there are some differences, but many more similarities.
But even those people wouldn't have been unable to modify the Dead Sea Scrolls, as those weren't discovered until well after the Roman empire ended / Papal authority of all Christians faded. There are also many other ancient manuscripts, some discovered relatively recently (i.e post reformation) and a couple dating back into the first millennium BCE [1].