hinduwoman

A great deal of God's laws seem to be obsessed with how to have sex, with whom to have sex. Disobey that and the punishment specially for women is terrible. But Why would God care what we get upto in the privacy of our bedrooms?

Since Jehovah preferred virgin birth for his son, it is obvious he does not swing either way. If he is not a hetero himself, why is he so bent out of shape about gays? And he did not marry Mary either when she became pregnant. So why all this fuss about unwed mothers?

Allah is even more abstract; never even cared to have a son. So why should someone who is formless and asexual have such interest? Maybe he is impotent in reality and this is the way he gets his jollies?
One surah even speaks of how if a wife refuses to have sex with her husband, the angels sit up all night cursing her. They don't have anything to do except peep in at bedrooms? Maybe they curse the wife because they missed the free show?

So why would the Omnipotent Ineffable Lord of the universe bother about sexlife of his humble subjects? And I have noticed apparently he does not care about the sexuality of animals who are his creations too. So why does he get all hot and bothered about human sex?
Or O shocking thought! HE does not care, but those who write the books in his name do since they are human themselves.

Ojuice5001

Several comments:

1. First of all, the gods care about everything that happens on Earth. Until you get down to something as unimportant as the fact that you'll get to your destination two minutes earlier with a good parking spot. Don't get me started on how much of a strawman that one is. Anyway:

2. Sex is important because it originates human lives. Unmarried parenthood is quite different from a two-parent family. Likewise, non-reproductive sexual practices like abortion, contraception and homosexuality change things a lot when widely practiced, and apparently Yahweh and Allah prefer the way things are when they are not practiced.

3. Usually I'm pretty willing to believe that Yahweh's will can be learned by listening to the Catholic Church and, to a lesser extent, fundies. But in this case, I think that the Yahweh-as-hardcore-homophobe concept is an exaggeration. Yes, Yahweh must care, for the two reasons above. But it's half demagoguery. The Christians just need something to rally around, and it happens to be homosexuality.

4. Finally, entailed by point 1, the gods do care about animals' sex lives. But there are two obvious reasons why it wouldn't seem that way. First, revelations are intended to tell us about the gods' dealings with humans, and not about everything the gods want for the world. When a god wants to influence the reproductive rate of crows, or cause a stallion he likes personally to get lucky, he does something about it himself. He does not bother his human followers with orders to do it for him.

Second, a particular species of animal doesn't change its sexual patterns (except in zoos and the like, but only a tiny minority of individual animals live in a zoo). Animals just do whatever their species does, and no one, god or human, has a problem with the status quo. Human sexuality does change, and not all the changes are equally congenial to a particular god's vision of the way things should be.

meritocrat

I'm only an agnosic, but I think SOME of the prohibitions that Allah made in the Koran makes at least SOME sense.

Take alcohol. Everyone knows that too much alcohol is harmful and it can be easy to become hooked in some cases. The same applies to narcotics. So it may be a preventative measure by telling Muslims NOT to consume such things.

case

What does that have to do with people's sex lives?

mjbeam

Dude, you need to party more...

McDiggy

I thought about it for a few seconds while imagining I was a Christian. This is all I got.

Sex produces children. Children have souls. Souls require God to do a whole bunch of paperwork concerning such things as who goes where after they die, whom to smite when, choosing which pop warner team gets to win their county championship, and so on.

It's really just an act to avoid bureaucracy as much as possible via downsizing the workforce.

Therefore, God is a capitalist. No....wait...what were we talking about again?

Ojuice5001

But then why forbid things like contraception? Shouldn't Yahweh be for contraception, late marriage, and so on? His social program clearly isn't pro-population control, or else it would be more like Malthus's. Now, if you go back to the early, pre-Constantinian days, things were different. The orthodox were big on celibacy, and the Gnostic heretics were all in favor of non-reproductive sex acts. (Of course, it's an open question whether the Gnostic sects were furthered by the Christian god or the pagan gods. Even the Gnostics themselves didn't agree on this. But that's another issue.)

Of course, if polytheism is true, there's an easy solution to this problem. Yahweh can just allow other gods to take up the slack--there's no shortage of gods who are eager for this. The high population of modern society is therefore one reason why Yahweh doesn't monopolize the rule of humanity as much as he used to. Of course, I still say the main reason is the influence of the non-revealed post-Enlightenment pantheon, and humans like Descartes, Alexander Hamilton, Marx, Gerald Gardner, etc.

mrmoderate

Biblically speaking, God's will for sexuality seems to be mostly for procreation. I think some of the fundies have gotten their panties in a bunch over some of the particulars but at the same time are still on the right track.

For instance, homosexuality. Why is there condemnation for a man to sleep with another man "as he would sleep with a woman" and no mention of a woman sleeping with another woman? Since there are references to it being against God's will for women to practice sodomy, it would seem that the issue here is sodomy, not homosexuality in particular.

Why pick on sodomy? It's a practice that is non-productive with the potential of doing bodily harm and spreading disease. So, in this case, God seems to be simply looking out for our best interest.

There are references to God wanting us to be sexually content. Paul (Saul of Tarsus) makes it a point that if you can, be celebate as he is in order to put all of your attention to the Lord's work. If you have sexual desires though, Paul says that you should marry in order to satisfy those desires so you will not be distracted by them. We must remember that Paul and the other Apostles believed that Jesus was returning in their lifetime and so Paul seems to not have felt he had time to indulge in sex. Of course, Paul is also described as one who may have always had issues in that regard. Just a side note; if I thought the end of time was near, I'd be having sex every oportunity that arose

So, does God really want to so much control our sex lives or has God simply given us guidelines for things that could do us harm?

Ellis14

This would be a good explanation if God didn't have so many other rules regarding sex; sex that doesn't involve sodomy.

For instance, God also condemns fornication, incest, adultery etc. So if his only "problem" with sexuality was sodomy, why would he not allow any other kind of sex?

Also, there is one clear reference to lesbianism in Romans, but it is the only one in the bible.

Naruto

[fundy]
God cares about you, and sometimes sex is a sin. God hates sin, but he loves you so much that he gave his only begotten Son to you. Have you accepted Him into your life? You need His love to defeat the Enemy of Our Souls. Only through Him can you get eternal life in heaven.
[/fundy]

Ugh, I felt dirty just typing that. What the hell does "begotten" mean anyway?