Archive for the ‘Religion And Sex’ Category
Everybody Finds Somebody, Somehow
A striking feature of the Christian doctrine of marriage is that it appears totally to ignore the brute fact of competition for partners. All animals compete for mates; some fail, which means that their genes do not go forward. (Even if you do not believe in evolution, it seems peculiar not to have noticed that […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
What I Learned From Thomas Mofolo
Early on in his fictionalised biography of Shaka Zulu, this author tells us that Shaka was conceived when his father, meeting a pretty girl bathing, let the accepted foreplay called “the fun of the road” get out of hand and went for full penetration. In those days, says Mofolo, pre-marital intercourse should have led to […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
Maimonides And The Agarthyrsians
Among the Agathyrsians, says Herodotus, that first and greatest imitator of Douglas Adams, “any woman is available to any man for sex to ensure that the men are all brothers and that they are on amicable and good terms with each other.” Well, that ought to work! Moses Maimonides, however, seems to start from the […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
Let Not A Sperm Be Wasted
Sigrid Undset complained of women who did not want to become human beings and work, just be females. “What the devil is the use of producing a horde of kids,” she asked, “when they won’t grow up into human beings themselves, but just reproduce themselves further, without the raw materials having being processed?” This Gnostic […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
Don’t Get The Ball, Get The Man Who’s Got It – To Feel Guilty!
My generation was fond of inveighing against religious inculcation of guilt, without ever really explaining why anyone would want to do this. So here is a possible explanation. They say that confidence makes us sexually more attractive. Now, one route to confidence is the innocence of not having anything to feel guilty about, and another […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
“Of All Permitted Things The Most Hateful To God”
In some circles, high-minded opposition to Muslim treatment of women led progressive women to support the war in Afghanistan. Seems to be turning out really well. There are enough horror-stories; but then again, we invented German atrocities in 1914, and during the Napoleonic Wars a shipwrecked monkey was solemnly hanged as a French spy. If […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
The Stopped Clock And The Sanhaja
The stopped clock is right twice a day. Sophomoric feminists claim at the drop of a hat that religion is all about restricting female reproductive freedom; they generally have an airline-magazine level of actual knowledge of the world religions, but this does not mean that they are always wrong. It is, for example, interesting to […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
The Double Standard
Those who blame Christianity for the “double standard” should first reflect that the medieval canonists opposed it, prescribing penalties not only for female but also for male adultery and fornication. Such canonists must have been aware of the argument that the double standard reflected Nature – namely that biology makes the consequences of female adultery […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
Caught Both Ways
One Jewish or Christian take on Eden was that Adam disobeyed God so as not to sadden Eve; his “sin” thus came through love of his helpmeet, which has otherwise been thought to be a Good Idea. In other words, the lesson of Eden was not, as certain monastic misogynists used to hold, that Woman […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
The Sacrality Of Sex
Religious people are particularly bad at distinguishing between “is” and “ought to be”. They are constantly attributing their own value judgments to the universe itself and their own choices to the nature of things in themselves. Let us take for example the claim that “sex is something sacred”. What are the religious actually saying here? […]
In: THE LONGEST CON, Religion And Sex
