Why is sex a sin?

It does not make sense since nearly all Christians breed and have kids, but yet sex is one of the worst sins according to the Bible.

According to the bible....exactly...just about everything is a 'sin'

IMO it is because organised religion is usually used to subjugate people and keep them obedient, deny someone sex in this life, while promising paradise (presumably including all the bonking one can perform in an eternity and then some) in the net, IF you do as your damn well told and remember to bung the vicar at least a tenner on the collection plate.

The abrahamic religions generally believe that to be pure in spirit and mind, one must be 'pure' of body.

Personally, I am not  religious in the slightest, I am interested in theology, and reading religious myth, but believing in a god/ess(s) is completely incompatible with the way my autie lil mind works, not to say I don't have a spiritual side, but its completely my own personal interpretation, and I really don't believe that making love to a woman..well....how can it be 'wrong'

If god , imagining for a moment it exists is infinate in love, and infinate in compassion, then logically speaking it could not create something that required to mate in order to continue the existence of the species, why create a creation that has a sex drive, and reproduces sexually, if sex is detestable in its eyes.

Also, Elucidating further on the infinate compassion theme, it would not surely, create such an organism, and also love it, yet create it in such a way that comitting a whopping great sin is unavoidable, therfore the supposedly loving, merciful and compassionate deity, Ex Pre Facto, damning it's beloved creations to an eternal torment (another concept I find abominable, claim to love someone? well hey there baby, I love you to bits, lets get married, have kids, then I'll lock you up in a pit of molten sulfur for the rest of your life and blowtorch your family jewels, how loving, how merciful)

The sheer unmitigated morass of contradictions, hypocrisy and outright  physical impossibilities portrayed as divine truth, makes me want to reach down my throat, pull my stomach up through my mouth, and turn it inside out on the floor, just so I can vomit so thoroughly, that my stomach lining is washed shiny clean enough to shave by.

And the ther things that bug me about religion:

The fanatical, absolute dogged certainty that THEY are right, no other religion, no other  atheist, humanist, agnostic or what have you, will escape the torment of hell fire, assuming they are right, hey, how many religions are there, thousands at least? how many gods?

Whatgives one christian, muslim, jew (this isn't directed at a group, a single religion and is not intended to attack or refer to any individual person, my GF is xtian actually, and I love her to bits ) the right to think THEY are right? and that once they die, they won't wind up in a circle of really PISSED egyptian, norse, zoroastrian, mayan, aztec...gods packing brass knucks, bike chains and bricks muttering something along the lines of 'you picked yer deity, sorry mate, you crapped out and worshipped a translation of a translation of a translation of a bastardised translation of a deity from some old dead sea scrolls,  the conceit! now its payback time puny mortal noob '

That and way it closes the doors to peoples minds and does a fairly thorough job of superglueing the locks behind it, once you get sucked in, its exceedingly difficult for someone to be freed, or even to be pursuaded gently just to look at another persons point of view and not dismissive out of hand as 'ungodly' etc.

what he said.

And hey, if there is a hell, I am for absolute 5000% certainty, headed there express shipping on a one way ticket when I cark it, reserve me the best seats, hey we have all the best music (come on, can you really imagine Cradle of Filth or the Haunted playing on a fluffy cloud?)

And full of sinners fornicating like nymphomaniac rabbits on a crack binge? bring it on baby, bring it f****g well on!

Who is up for a post-life AFF mass meetup down there? do a bit of buttkicking and carve out a nice 'autie quarter' in some warm tropical region of hell.

Keep in mind the people who wrote the Bible were also under the impression the the earth was flat.

They also were using mercury and lead in paint or cooking utensils and used poisons, like arsenic, to medicate.

Perhaps a little too much opium or hash on the side. Wine to drink. They must have been a little loopy back then.  I am sure burning bushes and hearing voices was quite common...

I don't think it's sex per-se that is 'sinful', as it is fine after marriage. Adultery, cheating on your wife, sleeping around, homosexuality, basically indulging too much in it or breaking one of the many limitations on it is the sin. Basically what Lestat said, religion becomes more about population control than true spirituality. Anyway sinning doesn't matter at all if you believe it  anyway, as all (and only) christians go automatically to heaven. How convenient and comforting..

I have a rather spiritual side, but I cannot see any way to justify living life as though the afterlife is of greater importance than life itself. If you are happy with your life and how you live it, and you end up getting punished, so be it. I too would be happy to burn in hell for being happy with my life and not selling my soul to god.

My question about christianity is if christ 'saved' all our souls (by damning the majority of people for simply not believing), what happens to all the people in the ~60,000 years before christ? Were their souls weighed on the actual merits of their lives? Oh thats right the world was only made 6000 years ago so they simply didn't exist. Problem solved!

You know, I have never ever understood where people got the idea that sex was a sin. (sex with an animal, not good)

I study the bible and do not think sex is a sin.

(Also, many religious folks realize that some of the passages in the new testament, i.e; those "letters" written  letters to the romans, corinthians, etc., from St. Paul- they were written to and for people of that time - like when the bible says women should always have long hair and women shouldn't preach - he just meant for them to not rock the boat of the current mores/culture- that doesn't mean that if one has short hair today they are a sinner...does it? )

A big sin - is adultery - wanting or being with someones else spouse is a big no no. (SIN)
( I think that is a good rule after all - the family unit and peoples promise to each other should be respected)

Because a holy book we presume to have been written on the authority of God says so. It's that simple. The only exception according to the book is what a married man does with his woman wife/vice versia.

We live in reasonably free countries, not theocratic states. You can take it or leave it.

Atypical is right.  Sex is not a sin.  Although adultery is a sin,  many Christians today are accepting of couples, hetereosexual and homosexual, who live together in a faithful relationship and are not married.  Promiscuity is condemned.

Christianity really is not particularly concerned about people's sex lives, although of course anything to do with sex seems to be of tremendous interest to the mass media and the general public.  

Much of what has been written in this thread about Christianity, Judaism and religion and religious people in general, relies on and perpetuates crude and innaccurate stereotypes.

It really in the end only applies to disciples of Jesus/Christians. What difference does it make if an unsaved person follows along or not?
Besides it is a free country. It has to be a free country, God gave us freedom, it is the only way He could be sure we would have the capability to love Him (or anyone and anything else).

It might make some Christians feel better if everyone plays along, but it is not their free will.  People who won't play along 99% of the time are not the monsters Chick Tracts* make them out to be.



* those little pamphlets (colorful) you might see in the elevators, in public places, also available online at http://www.chick.com

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...=18975616 

...just gotta make sure ya pray about it first...

Sorry the link wont work. It was about a Christian couple and their Christain toys. They pray about it before they add it...

Theology fascinates me. But the more I study it, the more I am content to live without organized religion.

You are so mistaken about what you said there, that things only apply to christians or those saved.  I don't get your interpretation.  The priests that I know do not interpret that way.  Christianlity is meant to be inclusive and accepting and NON-judgemental. ONLY God will judge.

Marcia, so true- I've yet to see any fuss made about sex in the bible. (major puritanical (american) misinterpretation with extremist support)

For pity sakes men had multiple wives, routinely married their brothers widows.... Jesus wouldn't stone a prostitute and He spoke with a 3 times married Samaritan woman, and on and on. People make mistakes, it doesn't make them unsaved or anything - it makes them human.  Any way we act is part of the human condidtion and we are loved, by my G*d anyway, we are all loved.  We are supposed to just be the best we can be and when we are not, we should learn from our mistakes.