Sunday Sermonette: Evil Thoughts
I've come to the conclusion that religion is a sexually transmitted disease. You first catch it from your parents. The percentage of people who stray very far from the religion of their childhood is minuscule. As the Jesuits famously said, "Give me the boy until he is seven, and I will give you the man." Someone with no experience of religion in childhood almost never becomes religious as an adult.
It's also a sexually transmitted disease in that one of religion's primary means of control is sex - specifically guilt about sex. Sex is so powerful a human urge that it can cause people to destroy their careers and reputations. Just ask Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Cosby, Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, et cetera ad infinitum. Religion constrains sexuality with doctrines, rules and commandments, and in so doing, creates a disease for which it claims to have the only cure.
If religion had simply stuck with emphasizing common sense social mores, that would be one thing. Thou shalt not treat thy partner as a means to an end is a commandment I'd support in a heartbeat. But religion doesn't do that. It sets up laws that are impossible to obey. I took the following from the rules of a particular religion. See if you can guess which one:
- Thou shalt not dwell on immoral or lascivious thoughts.
- Thou shalt not stare at members of the opposite sex, particularly not at genitalia.
- Thou shalt not wear immodest clothing in public.
- Thou shalt not wear the clothing of the opposite sex.
- Thou shalt not frequent places of sin and depravity.
- Thou shalt not look as sexually arousing pictures or images.
- Thou shalt not masturbate.
- Thou shalt not openly display affection in public.
- Thou shalt not have sex with another member of the same sex.
- Thou shalt not have sex before receiving formal permission from religious authorities.
- Thou shalt not have sex with anyone except your authorized opposite-sex spouse, in private and secret.
The above are taken from Orthodox Judaism, but they're now divinely ordained prohibitions in every Western religion, save possibly the most liberal fringes regarded as apostate by the orthodox, like us Unitarian-Universalists. (We keep a basket of free condoms and dental dams in the rest room.)
The proverbial alien anthropologist observing our civilization might think that, since these commands are backed by the authority of no less than the Almighty Lord God of All Creation, they would be obeyed by the faithful. But of course, they're not. They were never meant to be obeyed. They were intended to create guilt. You're a BAD person, sick and twisted and perverse. It's drilled into our dear little ears as children, and by the time hormones hit around puberty, we've internalized so much guilt we're ready to believe that we're the most sinful creatures who've ever lived. I can tell you from experience that the impure thoughts that flit through an adolescent boy’s mind would make the writer of Penthouse Letters blanch. Lucky thing we're members of our particular religion and can pray for forgiveness within its walls.
Religion has other methods of control, like fear and duty, but guilt is the biggie. Guilt is the handcuffs you put on yourself, the cell you lock yourself in, the scourge you take to your own back.
If you're feeling guilty, ask yourself why. Who have you actually offended against? If it's your lover, that's one thing. If it's the impossible religious rules you were taught as a child, ask yourself if you really believe that God is Mrs. Grundy, just waiting to smite you for harboring lascivious thoughts.
I see no reason to believe that God exists, but if she does, and she really does get angry about human sexuality in all its glorious forms and expressions, I can only conclude that she really needs to get laid.
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