This article seems to be missing important context - prior to the mid 20th century sex had profound implications - it resulted in more babies, STDs (all diseases, really) which were much more threatening and the risks to the womans health in the event of pregnancy and/or abortions must have been a major concern. The workarounds to that were all terrible. And there was nothing in the way of social safety nets and not a lot of productive work for single mothers as I understand it.
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.
> There were real practical concerns that have only recently been worked around.
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.
eh. "Easy access to sexual pleasure lowers the bar for men." if you mean that undesirable men are able to have sex for pleasure (without procreation) and thus don't need to better themselves in the eyes of women (i.e. in a moral and/or social sense), i doubt that's accurate. there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.
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.
> there was always prostitution and sexual violence as an outlet for those unwilling to better themselves.
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.
> 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.
This is definitely something that surprises me when talking to younger people (being fine with their partner talking to people of the opposite sex on social media) despite the pains it seems to often cause. I've talked to multiple men and women who said a relationship ended over online infidelity that started out innocently enough (they're just friends, online conversations mean nothing, I'm just passing the time). Maybe they are afraid of seeming over controlling but it's something that seems to have been normalized as "okay" yet often leads to issues.
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?
The idea that David and Johnathan were having homosexual relations is a fairly recent one and (ironically) is to some extent reflective of the "nohomo bro" culture we currently inhabit. It deserves to be classed along with "Sherlock and Watson" and "Batman and Robin" relationship theories wherein the evidence is "dude look at this that's gay".
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
Not about cold plunges, as I'd expected, but interesting nevertheless. The author of the book reviewed also wrote one of the best (and my personal favourite) books on The Reformation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Reformation:_A_History
> 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.
> paradox of tolerance requires that we love the oppressed more than the oppressor
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.
> pointing out that the Bible ‘is a library, not a book’, full of contrasting views and narratives.
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).
It’s always possible that there is a Vatican Super Secret Archive that has been successfully hidden from the world, but the regular Secret Archive isn’t actually secret (and in fact isn’t called the Secret Archive any more), because it’s now open to researchers.
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.
The truth is simple, yet insidiously difficult to manifest:
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.]
You may claim that this is the purpose of religion, but religious texts have MANY more things to say than this message. For example, where in all of your nice description does the prohibition against eating pork but not beef fit in? Where does the prohibition against same-sex love fit into the universal compassion? Where does the stoning of jews who don't observe the Sabbath fit in?
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?
You forgot the part where some woman's husband dies and God wants his brother to knock her up asap but when he pulls out and cums on the floor God strikes him down immediately. His pull out game was so good that God himself was furious.
Not everything written down and claimed to be from God is, indeed, from God. Unreputable people have managed to insert themselves into "holy" works for ages upon ages now, and, if not in the works themselves, then certainly in our understanding of them.
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.
> where in all of your nice description does the prohibition against eating pork but not beef fit in?
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.
> That is the ENTIRE purpose of religion: to help us create peace and happiness for ALL human beings.
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.
Imagine the difficulty of running a conspiracy to change Biblical texts. You'd have to find and modify every copy of scripture everywhere on the planet. The only people who realistically could've attempted this might've been a Roman Emperor or an early corrupt Pope.
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].
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.