Survival and Sex - perhaps the two most important forces directing/underpinning human behavior. Survival I know we rehash this often, but, again, I was thinking about the "Why do people believe in God" thread and one of the main, if not THE main reason, people believe in God is because they don't want to accept eventual oblivion. It's not so much about a belief in Gods. It's about ANY belief that offers life after death. In order to be a successful religious meme you MUST offer some form of life after death. - Polytheisms usually have some sort of Heaven/Hell. - Monotheism have Heaven/Hell. - Buddhism has reincarnation. - Scientology has another planet (so does JW if I remember correctly). etc... No life after death, No "religious" meme. BUT, what about Sex? Sex USED to be an important element in religion. Can you find a Pyramid without a big penis etched or painted into it? It used to be so important for humans to express sex in their religion. This changed over time, I have my ideas why, but, I was wondering what you guys think?
I think that you are right, in a way. People believe in God because they believe in causality and eternity. And they believe they are a part of this eternity.
I was hoping we could focus more on the SEX Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! now about feelings of eternity, you were saying.....
I beleive in causality and eternity and I believe I am a part of eternity. I don't believe in Gods, Goddesses, Buddha, Buddhas, Xenu, Xemu, etc... I also believe consciousness is produced in the brain and once the brain is damaged or dies, there is no more consciousness. Actually, that's the truth of the matter. Now, about SEX.... Why did humans stop worshiping fertility Goddesses? We went from a penis as good and godly symbol in mighty Egypt to a negative symbol for mighty Christiandom? Why do you think this happened? What about in India?
Yes, it is. Maybe that's the whole point? Did ancient people have a different view of eternity and that's why sex was important? Perhaps children were their immortality? With the advent of eternity in Heaven - no more need of :Sex: At least Sex as means of eternity..... So? Why did it become such a stigma? When was it divorced from religion? Patriarchy? Did Sex get a bad rap because Sex was associated with the mother Goddess? By getting rid of Sex, Patriarchs would promote the One God? Which raises the question: What about for polytheists or Buddhists?
I don't think "monks" (of any sort) have sex. That's the whole thing about being a monk isn't it? Free of the cycle of life? What does that mean? Some monks have had children and turn to the monastic life at an advanced age. Its seems, to be a successful religion, you MUST offer your members a life after they die, of some sort or another. BUT, whereas Sex and Fertility Goddesses used to be an important aspect of religion, they somehow were lost. At least in the monotheistic faiths. As for Buddhists, well, Asia would suggest that outside of monastic life most people have a lot of sex. Maybe this is the way it went. As human's settled down into civilization, females, who were probably keepers of the knowledge when humans were more nomadic, were supplanted by men. Of course men always rise to rule over women. I'm guessing it wasn't long before men used religion to get sex. This probably led to a view that religious people shouldn't have sex. Kind of like: You shouldn't have your cake and eat it to. Maybe that's why there was a shift away from Fertility Goddesses? I mean, I've never heard of a fertility God. Men, they don't the who "fertility" thing all that well. They're usually the Gods of War and the like. Over time Fertility Goddesses went the way of women in general? Second class Gods? Then God no more? Through all of these evolutions of religion - they always kept one meme: Life after Death. Perhaps it's because we do a pretty good job of reproducing? I suppose if we stopped having children Fertility Goddesses would make a big come back? An women in power along with them? That'd be an interesting experiment to run. :shrug:
Fertility wasn't just about people having sex. It was about the harvest too. Having new babies and new food was important and since they didn't have the Farmer's Almanac and Dr. Spock to teach them whats what they had to come up with their own theories.
But in Buddhism, going to either heaven OR hell means you failed, doesn't it? And neither the Norse guys nor the ancient greeks had anything closely resembling a heaven/hell divide. They both had a more "here is a generic lame place everyone goes, and here is the hyper exclusive place that's only meant for over-the-top warrior guys" kind of arrangement.
The Buddha's Teaching shows us that there are heavens and hells not only beyond this world, but in this very world itself. Thus the Buddhist conception of heaven and hell is very reasonable. For instance, the Buddha once said, 'When the average ignorant person makes an assertion to the effect that there is a Hell (patala) under the ocean he is making a statement which is false and without basis. The word 'Hell' is a term for painful sensations. 'The idea of one particular ready-made place or a place created by god as heaven and hell is not acceptable to the Buddhist concept.
If a man wants lots of sex (and who doesn't?), one way to get it is through sheer force of personality, so as to get the gals lined up. This is one outcome of being a successful evangelist. Just think of all the charismatic evangelists who end up in some sex scandal or another. Joseph Smith who founded Mormonism is an extreme example. Not only did he have his female followers lined up, but he passed an edict to permit himself to have lots of wives. (He also passed an edict requiring his followers to pay him money. Who says you can't have your cake and eat it too. Pity about the lynching.) So, yeah. Religion is also about sex.
Importance of sex directly relates to progression of complexity of consciousness toward which universe is evolving, with self importance and thus individual survivability decreasing in favor of importance and survivability of majority. Assumption: In future our belief in God will become parallel to belief of government, so powerful our government will be over us. To the point that we as a the government of ourselves will become God.
simple, in a world where sex rules women have power. When you make sex "dirty" you can take that power away.
************* M*W: Without giving this topic much thought up to now, the last line of your post jumped out and slapped me awake this morning! I tend to agree. If we go back to the ancient religions, say to the Egyptian, Canaanite and Roman cultic periods, sex was indeed an important part of religion. Lynn Picknett states in Chapter I, Satan: An Unnatural History, begins: "All cultures have their creation myths -- the ancient Egyptians believed that the god Atum, diety of the solar disk and the sun itself, masturbated himself, exploding a life-giving burst of energy that seeded the dark unformed void with countless galaxies. In the land of the pyramids, there was no impropriety in the concept that 'self abuse' created the universe, although millennia later Victorian archeologists were predictably shocked to the core by the ancient Egyptians' melding of sex and divinity." "In the first act of creation," Picknett states, "Atum was perceived as an androgynous figure, the hand that made the world being the female aspect, while his phallus represented the equal and opposite male principle." This literally describes the 'Big Bang Theory', in which all matter explodes from a point of singularity and then becomes the expanding universe. Professor Karl Luckert writes: "The entire system can be visualized as a flow of creative vitality, emanating outward from the godhead, thinning out as it flows further from its source." Lucifer, also known as "Aster" or star is identified as "bright Morning Star" in the ancient world. Plato, and others in the ancient world, referred to the Morning Star that moves around in the heavens as the "Evening Star." In his classic, The Golden Bough, (1922), J.G. Frazier states: "Sirius was the star of Isis, just as the Babylonians deemed the planet Venus the star of Astarte. To both peoples apparently the brilliant luminary in the morning sky seemed the goddess of life and love come to mourn her departed lover or spouse and wake him from the dead." Pinknett writes of the lesser known goddess "Astraea" or the "Starry One," who "dispensed the fates of man, the beauty and truth of the deity Venus was believed to be visible in the Evening Star, the opposite and equal to the Morning Star, Lucifer. However, this distinction was too subtle for the pagans' new Christian enemies, and a great blurring between the Feminine Principle and the tendency of the Romans to refer to Venus as 'Lucifera', the enlightener. Venus, the archetypal goddess of the arts of love and women's secrets, an unashamedly sexual diety, gave her name not only to 'veneral disease' and 'venery', but perhaps, some claim, also more courteously to Venice, the city of her element as 'Stella Maris' ('Star of the Sea', a title she shared wtih Isis, and much later, the Virgin Mary). In early meanings, like that of Diana, Venus was a huntress or the 'Lady of Animals', whose horned consort Adonis -- both the hunter and sacrificial stag -- became 'venison', which meant "Venus's son." Once again the line becomes blurred between horned gods and their consorts. And once again the goddess is associated with animality, sexual secrets, lust -- and Lucifer. Walker explains that the "early Christian fathers denounced th etemples dedicated to the foul devil who goes by the name of Venus -- a school of wickedness for all the votaries of unchasteness." This describes what were known as schools of instruction in sexual techniques and were under the tutelage of "the venerii or harlot-priestesses" who taught an approach to spiritual grace, called venia through sexual exercises like those of Trantrism, the eastern cult of sacred sex. Venis-worship was not uncommon among the goddess cults. God's wife, Asherath, represented both male and female temple prostitutes, but Victorian scholars disapproved of the teaching of these sacred sexual rituals, so these dieties became known simply as temple servants, a role that even today is honored with reverence among priestly males, female saints, and altar boys. In these male dominated religions, sex became synonymous with evil, because women "enticed men to lust after them." From Genesis onward, women were inherently believed to be evil because of Eve, the woman who let Satan into the world and got mankind expelled from Paradise. Goddesses were forever associated with serpents -- "indeed, teh Egyptial uraeus snake, worn in pharaonic headdresses, was a hieroglyph for 'goddess.' Picknett states, "It must not be forgotten that women, whether accused of witchcraft or not, were widely believed -- and certainly by the Church patriarchy -- to be naturally polluted and unclean." Jewish Rabbinical tradition also claimed Eve first menustrated only after she fornicated with the snake." Her firstborn son, Cain, has been widely believed to be the child of the serpent, not Adam. Even today orthodox Jews refuse to shake hands with a woman in the event she is menstruating. Rural communities across Europe still believe that a woman who is menstruating will turn milk and wine sour and blunt their knives! That great Church teache, St. Jerome, taught that 'nothing is so unclean as a woman in her periods; what she touches she causes to become unclean.' Picknett quotes a rhyme from the twentieth century Scottish medical textbook: "'Oh! Menstruating woman, thou'rt a fiend From which all nature should be closely screened.'" Barbara Walker stresses that historically women have been ordered to detest their own bodies. She cites: "The Rule for Anchoresses: "'Art thous not formed of foul slime? Art thou not always full of uncleanness?'" That old-time religious 'uncleanliness' is also found in the history of male circumcision as a symbol of sex worship. Jordan Maxwell, in That Old-Time Religion: The Story of Religious Foundations, Chapter: The Solar Cult, states that: "In Genesis 17:10 we are told that God demanded circumcision of all males as a symbol of His covenant with His people. However, circumcision was practiced by almost all ancient cultures thousands of years before Genesis was written. The actual historical purpose for the ancient ritual of circumcision was to promote sex worship. There was never anything holy about circumcising the male penis. It was purely sex worship!" It is not surprising to learn that sex worship goes back thousands of years before the foundations of modern Judaism and Christianity. Needless to say, modern Christianity as shown in the symbols of the Roman Catholic Church reflect sex worship at its peak. These symbols include: The Fish and the Virgin, Hathor: The Divine Mother, Horus: The Divine Son, The Sun: The Light of the World, The Alpha and the Omega: The Twelve Signs of the Zodiac. References: Briffault, Robert Stephen: Sin and Sex, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1931, p.228. (With an introduction by Bertrand Russell) Budge, Sir E.A. Wallis: Gods of the Egyptians, London, 1969, vol.1, pg.24. Frazier, Sir James G.: The Golden Bough: A Study in Magic and Religion, Macmillan, London, 1922. Luckert, Karl W. Egyptian Light and Hebrew Fire, State University of New York Press, New York, 1991. Maxwell, Jordan, Tice, Paul, and Snow, Alan: That Old-Time Religion: The Story of Religious Foundations, The Book Tree, Escondido, CA, 2000. Picknett, Lynn: The Secret History of Lucifer, Carroll & Graf Publishers, New York, 2005. Waite, Arthur Edward, The Book of Ceremonial Magic, New York, 1977, pp. 186-7. Walker, Babara G.: The Women's Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, New York, 1983, p.9.
Oh crap, that's funny... So to empower women we need a world where "SEX rules"? That sounds a bit backwards to the traditional approach to women's rights, Asguard. lol.
you think so? look at female sexuality. sure now its exploited but go back a few years to the victorian era ect. Sex was seen as something shameful, it still is to an extent. Even now women are ridiculed and abused if they express there sexuality through names such as "slut" "whore" "skank" ect. Why is it a criminal offense in almost every country to walk around without pants if your a guy and without a bra and pants if a girl? because sex thought of as something natural? give me a break. Why was it the evil witch in medievil stories who was portraided as permiscuas? Why is the devil an almost exact replica of the greek god pan? (the origional "horny little devil")
I dont see how considering all the people that were produced. Its amazing how past times get so exaggerated, not by you necessarily but every time someone writes a damn book they make another outrageous claim just to sell the damn book. Why people believe all that crap is something i can never understand.
I said wayyyy exaggerated. There are many complications that come along with sex too and living a promiscuous life is not so easy to do. People get attached to the other person, you hurt people and they take revenge on you or you get hurt yourself and call the woman a slut etc. when she doesnt love you back and just had sex with you, you get diseases that can kill you.
