Atheist Meditations

(But the content, the pros of premarital sex, is still going to offend the evags. . . oh, bother.)


Of all the tolls which theism imposes on its faithful, the willing surrender of sexuality has to be the most grievous. While a church like the Mormons might only demand 10% of your income as tithe, these same organizations demand 95% of your potential sexual partners.

Of the dozen or so evags I've met, all of them were married at age twenty or so. There is a simple reason for this. As they are completely convinced that sex before marriage is a horrible sin, they literally do not want to have sex before they are married. For a lot of us that just seems unbelievable, but they can be surprisingly committed to that delusion. They cannot extinguish the natural sexual needs of a twenty-year old, however, so the sex drive becomes the drive to find a suitable wife - and they settle. They settle for a girl from their same religious denomination and local area, youthful puppy love becomes 'God's Will', and the preachers win. What might be the greatest opportunity to grow as a human being, hooking up with a partner from a much different background than your own - bringing families and cultures together - is bypassed in the immature need to relieve the blueness of one's testicles.

Obviously, much of the taboos and rules of modern religion held useful roles back in the days of chariots and evil spirits who caused infection. From a biological point of view, the drive to reproduce (i.e. sex) should be the most powerful motive force in a lifeform. The modern world is a lot different from the jungle, and for a religion to be at all useful, it must have been able to tame that powerful urge to a certain degree. And, for a good deal of time the regulation of sex that the church was able to impose was probably a good thing.

Like take Islam and booze, a scenario that I've often thought about. Muslim's do not drink. Their culture has absolutely nothing to do with alcohol. I personally like beer quite a bit, and feel that it is a major component of our culture, but if I was some muslim Ayatollah a few hundred years ago, and I had the power to exclude alcohol - and all the domestic abuse, violence, and early death that such a substance inflicted upon my society - what would I choose? Young muslim men don't care too much anymore, they have no Idea what they are missing, and from the outside looking in, the perils of hooch far outweight the benefits. It's an interesting conundrum.

Sex often leads to pregnancy. In simple societies, where a daughter was a valuable commodity to be married off for gains in social status and personal wealth, accidental pregnancies would be really bad. We all are plenty familiar with the labels and punishments used to keep young women away from the high-risk behaviour of premarital sex. Plus, even before the AIDS, there were plenty of 'french diseases' out there. Conditioning children to avoid premarital sex did work like a tourniquet to slow their spread.

Then came the great lioness of Feminism, Margaret Sanger. She felt that women would never be able to achieve equality with men as long as they had little control over their pregnancies. 'The Pill', was born, and a generation was able to engage in sexual activity without the lurking fear of unwanted pregnancy and social shame. Women were changing in their position in the world, from being property into actual human beings. Dispite the outrage of the 'conservatives' of the day, they eventually won the rights to own property and get paid the same as a man for a day's work.

Beware the lies of the preachers! Feminism, like Liberalism, is a little more than a satanic urge to kill babies. It is a good and right thing, that has made our world better. Every condom does not break, a responsible couple using birth control has only a very slight chance of having an unwanted pregnancy. There are no guarantees, but you have some powerful technology at your fingertips, and to ignore it is stupid.

A common analogy that 'motivational speakers' use is to compare all the minutes that you will have in your life to money in a bank. Many of us squander the time we will have on this earth, but if you thought about it as something valuable - duh, money - then you might be loathe to waste four hours a night watching re-runs of 'Friends.'

This analogy works well for sex. Take porno for example. There are not a lot of 'actors' in porn that are over 35. Not that people in their forties and fifties aren't having sex, just that not too many people want to see it anymore. You will only be in your twenties for three thousand six hundred and fifty days. That's it, that a lot of days, but it is not infinite. They will come to an end, and you will enter the next decade. Most of us will have our best bodies, our most sensitive nervous systems, and our greatest thrill at the novel during that time. If your sexual peak is within those first two decades, why waste any of them - throwing away potential pleasure and friendship building - because you want to fulfil some dogmatic rule structure from thousands of years ago?

There is another reason for premarital sex that seems so obvious yet flys in the face of evag rules. Sex is fun. Sex is a powerful bonding experience. Sure, you can cling to a religious world-view where a woman is commanded to submit to your sexual advances, or you can grasp some of the basics of female sexuality and allow her to enjoy it. If you are in a religion that talks crap about 'every time you are with your wife it is a threesome with the Holy Spirit', and condemns as pornography anything involving the rudimentary mechanics of sex - you probably ain't gonna be very good at it. There is no better way to learn about something than some real world experience. Each lover you have will bring to the bed a whole new set of expectations, abilities, and skills. Explore them, explore sex. Grow as a lover.

They say that women most often cheat emotionally, because their husband is distant emotionally. They say that women most often cheat sexually when they are unsatisfied. Evags have the highest divorce rate in the country.

Not having sex before marriage is the dumbest thing I have ever heard. Some people have hang-ups, sexual acts that they just don't enjoy. Some people have fetishes - acts that have to be part of sex in order for it to trigger a release. I'm not a expert on why this is, but I'm pretty damn sure that you can have combinations of people who just ain't gonna work sexually. I've had lovers who just refused to do certain things. Certain things that I really like; it's a deal breaker. Imagine having a fetish for a certain sexual act, and a wife who refuses to even discuss it. That's a life of sexual frustration.

The great evag lie machine is trying to convince you that you are either in a wholesome marriage, or you are using women like objects - throw them in the gutter, and go score another. That's not the only two options. Many of us had girlfriends who we genuinely cared about, but who we only expected to spend about a year or two with. She gets that job offer in Dallas, 'good for you, damn I'm gonna miss ya, you're the best go get 'em!' We're just growing up in our twenties, if life deals you a pair of pocket aces, take you chances - I'm not holding you back.

Enh, I'm out of steam. Stay groovy,