Joshua Harris Kissed Christianity Goodbye

[★ Citsonga ★]

This isn't exactly a testimony, but it is relevant and interesting:

 

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/07/26/one-time-purity-culture-advocate-joshua-harris-now-says-i-am-not-a-christian/

 

[LostinParis]

On 7/28/2019 at 6:32 AM, Citsonga said:

This isn't exactly a testimony, but it is relevant and interesting:

 

https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2019/07/26/one-time-purity-culture-advocate-joshua-harris-now-says-i-am-not-a-christian/

 

 

Wow that’s a bombshell!

 

I too have suffered at the hands of purity culture. Sexual incompatibility contributed to the failure of my marriage.

I was raised a liberal Christian and was not a virgin when I married however I made the mistake of marrying a virgin from a fundamentalist family.

There was physical attraction and much mutual masturbation before marriage however he convinced me that delaying sex until our wedding night was the best thing to do. I was young and naive and I agreed.

Of course his feelings of guilt and layers of shame around sex did not magically disappear after we were married. Sex was infrequent, boring and he was not open to experimentation unless he was drunk, which made him less prudish and paranoid. I longed to make love with abandon, without restrictions, but was left feeling incredibly disappointed and rejected. And resentful.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

A lot of us had/have that issue. The programming runs deep, and is linked to what we think is a survival aspect (not being tossed into hell for indulging in sin). 

[Myrkhoos]

                   Religious reasons aside, I can see the benefit of a strict form of sexual control back in the days where contraception was as non existant, child pregnancy was a difficult issue and deaths at child birth were often, plus the whole issue of inheritance was at stake. And hygiene and personal grooming was not really at its peak. Socially speaking, it seems to strict abstinence before marriage and fidelity has some clear reasons. But to really see it, I think the first issue is to understand that, from what I gather, most ancient people, up until recently , had a very strong collective identity and a weak individual one. That is why I think the whole oppression theory is not really good when analyzing old cultures. Most of them saw themselves more as part of a group, whose stability they wanted to protect at all costs, as an individual protects his own stability now. I think there is enough proof of this in our biology, in that psychiatrists as Besser van der Kolk say that the brain , the nervous system in general, is a social organ. So men were not oppressing women, the whole strict gender role system was at play, and for very serious reasons. You can t survive as a tribe or village when everyone searches for HIS individuality. 

 

So your individual needs were always subjected to the needs of the group harmony and survival. Such a strong individual identity is more a recent product of western civilization. And it is, I think, the reason for its collapse in the near future. Strong groups will ALWAYS conquer weak ones. That is why fanatical tight minorities tend to win out in large nations. Their bonds are super strong. But this just layman s view from afar. Interestingly enough, in Israel, the hyper religious are becoming more and more dominant because of their high natality rates.

 

Again, these are not well studied opinions, just stuff I thought of and mostly gathered reading and hearing specialists.  For now, I do think, however, that strict sexual control has a biological, maybe even evolutionary advantage.  Susan Blackmore and Brett Weinstein have said something of the sort recently., that religions have a biological advantage. Even Robert Sapolsky, Harvard biologist. All three admitted atheist and academic researchers in their domains. Because remember, thriving was NOT an option for most people, barely surviving was already a very good thing, or so it seems. 

[LostinParis]

That’s an interesting viewpoint @Myrkhoos, I will have a think about that idea. It’s likely that religion helped our species to survive in many different ways.

 

I read somewhere that once humans switched from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural-based society, marriage was useful to control the sexual urges of women. A husband could be confident that her offspring were genetically his, and he could pass down his property inheritance.

 

We as a social species have a need for intimacy. Sexual urges are natural, not sinful.

[♦ Fuego ♦]

That is perhaps why the Greeks and Romans had religious brothels, as both an outlet for urges and a way to legitimize it as part of a society. 

 

The orthodox Jews in Israel visit brothels, though I don't know how it is viewed there. The prostitutes are not Jews, maybe Gypsy. I lost track of the article I read interviewing the girls. 

 

 

[Myrkhoos]

5 hours ago, LostinParis said:

That’s an interesting viewpoint @Myrkhoos, I will have a think about that idea. It’s likely that religion helped our species to survive in many different ways.

 

I read somewhere that once humans switched from hunter-gatherers to an agricultural-based society, marriage was useful to control the sexual urges of women. A husband could be confident that her offspring were genetically his, and he could pass down his property inheritance.

 

We as a social species have a need for intimacy. Sexual urges are natural, not sinful.

       Well, MOST christian theology says that yes, the need for intimicy is god given, and existed before the fall and will exist after. Their point, however, from what I know of Orthodox theology that human sexuality, as it is now, is a product of the fall, as in Adam and Eve did not have sex as we do and would not procreate as we do. But their whole idea is that we have, in general , a fallen nature in a fallen world, so badically everything we do is tainted. It is part of the, how Bart Ehrman calls it, the participationist model of salvation.

        The Apostle Paul says in his epistles that martiage is only for those that cannot abstain alltogether from sexual urges. Intimicy and sexual acts are not directly correlated, from I can understand of this view.

           And again, what you said, the desire for sexual experimentation and bliss IS NOT a survival need. It can be nice, but for examples cookies are nice, but not necessary for survival. A minimal social order and hierarchy is, however. If you were a Romanian peasant 100 years ago,  as woman, you would be working a lot physically, have little to no beauty products, no idea of sex therapy or manuals, no contraception, and need the protection of father brother and husband and help for raising children. You were at their mercy. Lots of times religion curtailed extreme agressive behaviour and served as a ideological protection. Maybe hard to see it like that now, but back then, well...And of course people fell in love and had romances and even married, but this fid not disrupt the whole system. I mean religion said he could not kill you and just take another wife. Today that seems atrocious but that is bevause we live in a different world.

       I mean the simple fact is that men are naturally stronger and more agressive than women. Even now. I mean really do women s rights activists realise THAT MEN were those that agreed to cut down on their power. If men really wanted to, even now, they could  subjugate women. High aggression , lower empathy and bigger strength.

 

 

[LostinParis]

2 hours ago, Myrkhoos said:

If men really wanted to, even now, they could  subjugate women. High aggression , lower empathy and bigger strength.

Unfortunately I have experienced this, violence is ultimately what put an end to my marriage.

[Myrkhoos]

3 hours ago, LostinParis said:

Unfortunately I have experienced this, violence is ultimately what put an end to my marriage.

I am sorry and in pain to hear that.