Read Online Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality by Darrel Ray - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Darrel Ray
Tags: Religión, General, Psychology, Christianity, Atheism, Sexuality & Gender Studies, Human Sexuality
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mind and often continues in adulthood.
Fast forward to today. A child learns that you must pray for forgiveness when you do something bad. If you do not pray or do not confess, god will punish you. This scenario sets up the guilt cycle. 38
When you transgress or sin, you must return to your personal religion for forgiveness. Catholics do not confess their sins to Baptist ministers. Baptists don’t ask forgiveness from Muslim clerics. You must seek forgiveness fromthe place where you learned about sin. It is as if the religion infects you with the disease and then gives you a fake cure.
The former Muslim, now atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives a perfect example of the guilt cycle in her excellent book
Infidel
(2007). A popular local imam, Abshir, began spending time with her. In his sermons, he preached strongly against intimacy before marriage and sinful thoughts, but his behavior was somewhat different. Ali says,
I was having more and more sinful thoughts. When we were alone Abshir would kiss me, and he could really kiss. It was long and gentle and thrilling and therefore sinful. Afterward I would tell him how bad I felt in the eyes of Allah, how much that bothered me. And Abshir would say, “If we were married, then it wouldn’t be sinful. We must exercise willpower and not do it anymore.” So for a day or so we would steel ourselves and refrain, and then the next day we would look at each other and just kiss again. He would say, “I’m too weak, I think of you all day long.”
She concludes,
In hindsight I don’t think of Abshir as a creep at all. He was just as trapped in a mental cage as I was. Abshir and I and all the other young people who joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement wanted to live as much as possible like our beloved Prophet, but the rules of the last Messenger of Allah were too strict, and their very strictness led us to hypocrisy. At the time, though, I could see only that either Abshir or Islam was thoroughly flawed, and of course I assumed it was Abshir.
Sexual drive pushes a person one direction, religion uses the guilt cycle to push back. The internal conflict creates misery and self-blame, leading right back to the religion. An effectively infected person will learn from childhood the things that are sinful and develop an internal moral police force to keep watch on all thoughts and deeds. This is not the same as a conscience. People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don’t need religion to know this. 39
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong.
A simple mental experiment will illustrate this. Mary, a Catholic, was raised from birth to go to mass and pray each week. If she misses mass, she feels guilty. Sally, a Presbyterian from childhood, was taught that church attendance is good but not mandatory. If she misses church, she doesn’t feel too guilty about it as long as she has a good excuse – like visiting her elderly grandmother. Judy, an atheist from birth, wouldn’t dream of wasting a Sunday in church and feels no guilt whatsoever. All three women firmly believe that cheating and murder are wrong and abhor such behavior. This thought experiment shows how each religion imprints a unique guilt pattern on their adherents but has no bearing on whether a person is law abiding or moral.
Of course, there is also non-religious guilt. We usually feel it when we make a bad choice or mistreat someone. But non-religious guilt is directly related to widely held cultural expectations, whereas religious guilt is clearly related to a specific religion. Using this model, it is possible to learn what people feel guilty about and trace it directly back to religious childhood
Fast forward to today. A child learns that you must pray for forgiveness when you do something bad. If you do not pray or do not confess, god will punish you. This scenario sets up the guilt cycle. 38
When you transgress or sin, you must return to your personal religion for forgiveness. Catholics do not confess their sins to Baptist ministers. Baptists don’t ask forgiveness from Muslim clerics. You must seek forgiveness fromthe place where you learned about sin. It is as if the religion infects you with the disease and then gives you a fake cure.
The former Muslim, now atheist, Ayaan Hirsi Ali gives a perfect example of the guilt cycle in her excellent book
Infidel
(2007). A popular local imam, Abshir, began spending time with her. In his sermons, he preached strongly against intimacy before marriage and sinful thoughts, but his behavior was somewhat different. Ali says,
I was having more and more sinful thoughts. When we were alone Abshir would kiss me, and he could really kiss. It was long and gentle and thrilling and therefore sinful. Afterward I would tell him how bad I felt in the eyes of Allah, how much that bothered me. And Abshir would say, “If we were married, then it wouldn’t be sinful. We must exercise willpower and not do it anymore.” So for a day or so we would steel ourselves and refrain, and then the next day we would look at each other and just kiss again. He would say, “I’m too weak, I think of you all day long.”
She concludes,
In hindsight I don’t think of Abshir as a creep at all. He was just as trapped in a mental cage as I was. Abshir and I and all the other young people who joined the Muslim Brotherhood movement wanted to live as much as possible like our beloved Prophet, but the rules of the last Messenger of Allah were too strict, and their very strictness led us to hypocrisy. At the time, though, I could see only that either Abshir or Islam was thoroughly flawed, and of course I assumed it was Abshir.
Sexual drive pushes a person one direction, religion uses the guilt cycle to push back. The internal conflict creates misery and self-blame, leading right back to the religion. An effectively infected person will learn from childhood the things that are sinful and develop an internal moral police force to keep watch on all thoughts and deeds. This is not the same as a conscience. People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don’t need religion to know this. 39
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong.
A simple mental experiment will illustrate this. Mary, a Catholic, was raised from birth to go to mass and pray each week. If she misses mass, she feels guilty. Sally, a Presbyterian from childhood, was taught that church attendance is good but not mandatory. If she misses church, she doesn’t feel too guilty about it as long as she has a good excuse – like visiting her elderly grandmother. Judy, an atheist from birth, wouldn’t dream of wasting a Sunday in church and feels no guilt whatsoever. All three women firmly believe that cheating and murder are wrong and abhor such behavior. This thought experiment shows how each religion imprints a unique guilt pattern on their adherents but has no bearing on whether a person is law abiding or moral.
Of course, there is also non-religious guilt. We usually feel it when we make a bad choice or mistreat someone. But non-religious guilt is directly related to widely held cultural expectations, whereas religious guilt is clearly related to a specific religion. Using this model, it is possible to learn what people feel guilty about and trace it directly back to religious childhood
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