Why Are Almost All Pleasures Considered Sins?

[AnimatedDirt]

Because guilt is religion's lever of control.

Are you claiming, Thumpalupacus, that guilt is bad?  It is actually good.  It keeps us from doing things we shouldn't, morally and civily. (sp?)

[Sophus]

Because guilt is religion's lever of control.

Are you claiming, Thumpalupacus, that guilt is bad?  It is actually good.  It keeps us from doing things we shouldn't, morally and civily. (sp?)

Why does psychology, then, seek to overcome guilt? Guilt and remorse is stupid and pointless.

[The Magic Pudding]

1. luxuria (extravagance)
   2. gula (gluttony)
   3. avaritia (avarice/greed)
   4. acedia (acedia/discouragement)
   5. ira (wrath)
   6. invidia (envy)
   7. superbia (pride)

 * Lust was substituted for luxuria in all but name

I'd say it is common sense that an excess of any of these things would be a bad thing, no divine revelation required.

[DJAkuma]

The best things in life are illegal

[Kylyssa]

Christians:  If God is anti-sin, then why did God create humans whose pleasures are almost all sins?

Before commenting, I think I'd rather ask for a list, not necessarily complete because that might not be possible, but a list to begin with.  I see sex is already on the list, but define that which you want to do that is sin or you think is sin.  Sex is not a sin as by the Christian reckoning, God created man and woman and sex as a means for both pleasure and procreation.

I suppose on that line, what specifically are the sins within sex (as one on the list) that are being missed out on if we abstain from the sinful parts of sex?

That would help me.

Where did I write sex?

I was thinking more of taking credit for the things one accomplishes when I wrote the post.  For example: if you do something good, all credit goes to God and if you do something bad all credit goes to you.  To credit yourself is committing the sin of pride, isn't it?  If you take pleasure in doing good or even believe you are doing good on your own it's a sin, right?  So, no matter how hard you work, you are only allowed to get credit for evil and never for good.  How can you take pleasure in life if you can never feel a sense of accomplishment without sinning?  You miss out on feeling good about yourself or anything you do.  If you take pride in your work, you are sinning.

What about loving your family more than you love God - another sin, right?  Isn't loving anything more than God a sin?  So you've got to curb your love of your family.  

Since you must love God more than you love yourself as well, you must believe you are a piece of crap because the Bible says you are.  How can you enjoy anything if you believe you are a worthless piece of crap?  Where is the pleasure in that?

Since most Christians go straight to sex when it comes to discussions of sin, then I'll go there.  Masturbation is considered a sin yet the majority of women require stimulation of the clitoris to orgasm.  The most effective way for that to happen is for the woman to stimulate her clitoris during intercourse.  So, in order to experience orgasm many women must either masturbate or have their spouses do it for them.  Why not put the clitoris closer to the vaginal opening rather than creating a frustrating anatomical difficulty which requires a sin for the sex act to be enjoyable?  Other effective methods of stimulating the clitoris during sex require the woman to be on top.  Such positions are not allowed in multiple Christian sects.

Some sects of Christianity don't even give married, heterosexual couples the freedom to have sex with each other in any way they want.  They may not have oral sex, anal sex, or masturbate.  They may not have sex in any position but facing each other with the man on top.  (I guess paraplegic men are just shit out of luck, eh?  Don't want to go to Hell for "mouthing" your wife, now do you?)

Then there is the sin of lust.  If a man looks at a beautiful woman who isn't his wife and feels a tingle in his genitals he is sinning even he doesn't want to feel any tingles.  It's a sin to look at a person and take pleasure in their sexiness even if you would never approach them because the thought is exactly equal to acting inappropriately.  So, before you marry your wife-to-be you are sinning if you have sexual thoughts about her.  

And then we have the problem of homosexuality.  Yeah, great, it's not a sin to have sex with a person of the opposite sex to whom you are married as long as you were married in a Christian church.  What pleasure does that give a homosexual person?  Everything they desire sexually is a sin in Christian eyes.  They can't even masturbate to curb their desire for the sex Christians consider sinful.  I was married to a gay man who was following those assertions that he's a useless, deviant piece of shit if he has any sexual feelings for anyone he isn't married to.  He's not.  He's a loving, beautiful man who made both our lives miserable by trying to be a good Christian.  And no, he didn't choose homosexuality, he fought it tooth and nail and hates himself with as great a depth as any good Christian homosexual is supposed to.  Why make a person who can't get pleasure from sex with women and then tell him he can have all the sex he wants so long as it's with someone he doesn't have any desire for?  

It seems to me that to be a good Christian you have to hate yourself and fight every natural urge and desire you have, many of which you have no conscious control over.

[Thumpalumpacus]

Because guilt is religion's lever of control.

Are you claiming, Thumpalupacus, that guilt is bad?  It is actually good.  It keeps us from doing things we shouldn't, morally and civily. (sp?)

Why don't you re-read my post, Dirt, to see what I am claiming, and don't stuff words into my posts that aren't actually there, okay?

As far as your claim that guilt is good, I'd disagree; it's not intrinsically good or bad.  It merely is.  I know of many instances where guilt has been a deeply negative factor in a person's life, but at this point we're derailing from the OP.  If you're that riled up about it, start another thread.

[Kylyssa]

Because guilt is religion's lever of control.

Are you claiming, Thumpalupacus, that guilt is bad?  It is actually good.  It keeps us from doing things we shouldn't, morally and civily. (sp?)

What about people driven to commit suicide or other self-harm due to guilt?  For instance: Christianity teaches homosexual people to hate themselves deeply because every sexual desire they have, whether they act on it or not, is considered a sin.  The homosexual person then hates themselves as deeply as Christianity teaches them to.  When they find they can't stop having sexual urges or desires they may resort to harming themselves to make the urges and desires stop.  What's good about that?

And, do you think it's better for a gay person to live his life in quiet self-hatred than it is for him to look for love and pleasure as other human beings are allowed to?

[Whitney]

The Young Turks did a video on, if not that study, one similar, where they basically debunked it from my perspective. I can't remember all their points, but the major one that I can remember is that people who wait until marriage to have sex don't have any benchmark or standard to go by -- besides their spouse, of course. Obviously they're going to think it's great, because it's sex...duh.

Are you purposely lobbing me a softball?

...What?

I think he was trying to say your response sucked...a lobbed softball falls slowly and is easy to catch (an easy out).

I think that both sides being not only being somewhat close to the same percentage but also both under 50% indicates that there is something wrong with how society prepares people for marriage...since western society still shuns sex education I think I'll assume that's what is wrong

I could go find that study that showed atheists are less likely to divorce and use it to prove waiting till marriage is a horrible idea.

[LegendarySandwich]

With regard to masturbation, I lean towards this idea.  Is Masturbation Wrong? - Matt Slick but there may be more to it than JUST this.

We can say this for sure.  If masturbation involves sexual fantasies and/or pornography, then it is certainly not pure and is very sinful.

I stopped reading after I saw this.

EDIT: But yeah, the article you linked just looks like one giant facepalm to me. "Yeah, masturbation may be okay if you have a wife and she's in the hospitable and you're thinking about her the entire time you're doing the act. Maybe."

On pornography...define what you count as "sinless" pornography.  There are many articles on pornography and its effect on society, women, men and children.  A quick g00gle check brings up many studies, cases, and heart-wrenching accounts.

Yeah yeah yeah, "the pornography industry hurts women and society and blah blah blah". As far as my understanding goes, most people in the pornography industry choose to be there and are perfectly happy with their job. Of course you can always find stories where somebody was forced into the industry and such, but you can find incidences like that with a lot of other things.

And what about things like hentai, where it's not real people but drawings/animations?

There's no (more) sin in BEING homosexual (vs heterosexual) or gay (considering the newest thread suggesting the word homosexual is now not PC) the sin is the act of sex between two same gender individuals.  The mere fact that you cite this as "nontraditional" says something.

"Yeah, you can be gay, you just can't have gay sex."

I said it was "nontraditional" because I didn't know of a better word to use, and most Christians say they want "traditional" marriage, so I'm using their terms.

Monogamous sex is good.  Would you want your GF/BF/spouse/daughter/son/granddaughter/grandson out and about engaging in sex at their whim?

...Seriously? This is your counter-argument against polygamy?

 

Your list is a list of ONE...sex as sin.  Are there no more (important enough) pleasurable "sins"?

Well, Christians can have very different views. Something that one Christian says is a sin, another might say is perfectly fine. Tell me what you regard as sin and I'll show you where I disagree.

EDIT again: Another problem I have with the morality of sex according to Christians is that their view of nudity.

[Recusant]

Heheh, LegendarySandwich covered most of what I was intending to write about that gasbag Slick and his opinions on masturbation.  Ah well, forging ahead...

We can say this for sure.  If masturbation involves sexual fantasies and/or pornography, then it is certainly not pure and is very sinful.  The Bible clearly teaches that our minds are as important to God as our bodies are and that we are to remain pure in both.

This is simply laughable.  I don't think I've ever in my life masturbated without some kind of mental imagery of a sexual nature.  I'm not saying that it's impossible, but I doubt that it's normal for a human being to get themselves off without some form of sexual fantasy playing out in their head.  Even if they could, why would they do such a thing?  Sexuality is at least as much about what's going on in a person's head as it is about what's happening physically.  This little gem from Slick is typical of his weaseling style: "Yeah you can rub one out, BUT KEEP YOUR MIND A BLANK OR IT'S A SIN!"  lol

[LegendarySandwich]

Because guilt is religion's lever of control.

Are you claiming, Thumpalupacus, that guilt is bad?  It is actually good.  It keeps us from doing things we shouldn't, morally and civily. (sp?)

No, that's your conscious, and common sense/rational thinking/reasoning/yeah. Guilt is feeling bad about prior events, and a lot of the time it's completely unnecessary. In fact, I would say that it's always unnecessary. The past is gone. Feeling bad about it isn't going to help, it's just going to make things worse.

[LegendarySandwich]

Thanks for elaborating, Recusant.

Saying that something might be acceptable only under very specific and unlikely circumstances is, for all practical purposes, saying that it's not acceptable. I don't know why he wouldn't just come out and say "masturbation is wrong".

[The Magic Pudding]

And what about things like hentai, where it's not real people but drawings/animations?

Does that stuff really work?
I still maintain my fondness for tomb raiding was based on the cool temples, mostly.

Maybe the condemnation of anal sex made more sense before the invention of modern lubricants.

[LegendarySandwich]

And what about things like hentai, where it's not real people but drawings/animations?

Does that stuff really work?

Yep.

I still maintain my fondness for tomb raiding was based on the cool temples, mostly.

Surrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Wow, that would sound really annoying in real life.

Maybe the condemnation of anal sex made more sense before the invention of modern lubricants.

"Hey, maybe this thing isn't so good for people. So we shall declare it evil!"

[Thumpalumpacus]

There's no (more) sin in BEING homosexual (vs heterosexual) or gay (considering the newest thread suggesting the word homosexual is now not PC) the sin is the act of sex between two same gender individuals. The mere fact that you cite this as "nontraditional" says something.

Not according to Matthew's quoting of Jesus:

But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

According to this passage, the sin is in the heart, not the genitalia.  You cannot eat your cake and have it, too.

Also, the only reason it is "nontraditional" is because theists of all stripes have bitterly, and often brutally, repressed alternative sexualities such as homosexuality or polyamory.