[Vision2020] How to have more satisfying sex

Wed May 18 16:37:12 PDT 2011

Oh, great. Now my wife thinks I'm an atheist!

On Wed, May 18, 2011 at 8:47 AM, Art Deco <deco at moscow.com> wrote:

>  Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion Leads to Better Sex By Greta
> Christina, AlterNet
> Posted on May 17, 2011, Printed on May 18, 2011
>
> http://www.alternet.org/story/150978/atheists_do_it_better%3A_why_leaving_religion_leads_to_better_sex
>
> Do atheists have better sex? Yes. According to science, that is -- and more
> specifically, according to the recently released "Sex and Secularism" study.
>
> In January 2011, organizational psychologist Darrel Ray, Ed.D.
> (psychologist for 30 years and author of *The God Virus* as well as two
> books on psychology) and Amanda Brown (undergraduate at Kansas University,
> focused on sexuality and sex therapy) conducted a sex survey of over 14,500
> people -- atheists, agnostics, and other people in the secular community.
> The survey was looking at religion, atheism, and sex: how religion affects
> sex, how leaving religion affects sex, whether lifelong atheists feel
> differently about sex than people who have recently deconverted, and so on.
> The report -- "Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion?" --
> is on the Internet, and if you want all 46 pages of the naughty details,
> including the charts and graphs and personal stories, you can download it
> free <http://www.ipcpress.com/> (you just need to register<http://ipcpress.com/index.php?id=42>on the site).
>
> But if you just want to know the gist?
>
> Leaving religion improves people's sex lives.
>
> A *lot*.
>
> Atheists and other non-believers, as a whole, experience a lot more
> satisfaction in their sex lives than they did when they were believers. They
> feel much less guilt about their sex lives and their sexuality. The sexual
> guilt instilled by so many religions tends to fade, and indeed disappear,
> when people leave religion -- much more thoroughly than you might expect.
> And according to the respondents of this study, non-believers give
> significantly better sex education to their kids than believers do.
>
> Now, when it comes to people's actual sexual behavior, religion doesn't
> have nearly as much impact as you might think. Religious and non-religious
> people have pretty much the same kinds of sex, at pretty much the same age
> of onset, and at pretty much the same rate. Believers are just as likely to
> masturbate, watch porn, have oral sex, have sex outside marriage, and so on,
> as non-believers are, and they start at about the same ages. So it's not
> like religious sexual guilt is actually making people abstain from forbidden
> sexual activity. *All it's doing is making people feel crummy about it.* And
> when people leave religion, this crumminess decreases -- at a dramatic rate.
> Believers and atheists are having pretty much the same kinds of sex... but
> when it comes to the pleasure and satisfaction experienced during this sex,
> it's like night and day.
>
> Okay. Before anyone squawks, I'll start the squawking myself: There are
> some demographic problems with this study, and it shouldn't be relied on as
> the absolute final word on this topic. In particular, the participants in
> the study aren't statistically representative of the population: they're
> statistically representative of whoever heard about it on the Internet, and
> they're disproportionately represented by readers of the hugely popular
> atheist blog, Pharyngula <http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/>. (In fact,
> in several places throughout the report, the researchers themselves freely
> acknowledge the limitations of their research.)
>
> But that being said: The results of this report that *aren't* new? They're
> entirely consistent with the results of other research. Lots of other
> research, both on human sexuality and on religion/ atheism. And that makes
> those results a whole lot more plausible. As researcher Darrel Ray told me,
> "Our data is virtually identical to other national surveys on the basics of
> when and how people start sexual behavior." (Citations of those studies are in
> the report <http://www.ipcpress.com/>.) Yes, it's virtually impossible to
> get completely accurate, statistically representative information about
> human sexuality under any circumstances: there's not really any ethical way
> to get information about sex other than relying on people's self-reporting,
> and it's a topic that people tend to, you know, lie about. But on the
> reliability scale of human sex research, this report seems to rank on the
> higher end.
>
> You might also argue -- as I myself did when I first saw this research --
> that atheists are often pretty hostile to religion, and aren't going to give
> a fair assessment of their sex lives when they were religious. I think this
> is a valid question, and one that's worth investigating: in fact, I
> sincerely hope this report is the beginning of research into this topic
> instead of the end of it, and I'd be very interested to see studies of
> people who are currently religious and how they see their sex lives. (I'd be
> especially interested to compare the "Sex and Secularism" results to people
> who have converted from one religion to another, and whether they view their
> sex lives differently with the new religion.)
>
> But I'd also point out that the atheists who responded to this survey
> didn't give homogenous answers. Not by a long shot. Their responses varied a
> fair amount, depending on which religion they used to belong to, and how
> intensely religious their upbringing was. Their responses ranged from "ZOMG,
> my sex life totally sucked and now it's beyond awesome, I was blind but now
> I see"... to, "Meh, it's a little better, but it's really not all that
> different." So the idea that this report simply reflects a knee-jerk atheist
> hostility to religion... it's worth considering, but it's probably not
> what's going on here.
>
> So what is going on here?
>
> What, specifically, does this report say?
>
> And what is its take-home message -- both for believers and atheists?
>
> *Atheism Is for Lovers*
>
> If there's one take-home message from the "Sex and Secularism" report, it's
> this: Atheists fuck better. Or rather: Atheists have a better time fucking.
> They feel less guilt about it; they experience more satisfaction with it;
> and the effect on their sex lives of leaving religion is almost universally
> positive.
>
> These differences do vary based on the religion. According to the "Sex and
> Secularism" report, some religions have a harsher impact on people's sex
> lives than others. People raised as Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, for
> instance, ranked much higher on the sexual guilt scale than people raised
> as, say, Buddhists and Episcopalians. (And no, we shouldn't just assume that
> Catholicism is the guiltiest party. In fact, when it comes to which
> religions make its practitioners feel guiltiest about sex, Catholicism lands
> pretty much smack in the middle. The top of the list is Mormonism, Jehovah's
> Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist. One of many
> results from this report that run counter to conventional wisdom.)
>
> And a similar pattern shows up again and again throughout the report.
> Conservative religions have a much more harmful effect on people's sex lives
> than more moderate or progressive ones -- in terms of guilt, sexual
> education and information, the ability to experience pleasure, the ability
> to accept one's sexual identity, and more.
>
> But with only two exceptions -- Unitarianism and Judaism -- atheists
> experience less sexual guilt than religious believers of *any*denomination. On a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being no sexual guilt and 10
> being extreme sexual guilt, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81
> respectively... and except for Unitarianism and Judaism (which ranked
> slightly lower, 4.14 and 4.48 respectively), *all* other religions ranked
> higher in sexual guilt: from 5.88 for Lutherans, to 6.34 for Catholics, all
> the way up to a whopping 8.19 for Mormons.
>
> And sexual guilt doesn't just go up with more conservative religions. It
> goes up with more religiosity, period. The more religious your upbringing
> is, the worse your sexual guilt is likely to be. Of people raised in very
> religious homes, 22.5 percent said they were shamed or ridiculed for
> masturbating (to give just one example)... compared to only 5.5 percent of
> people brought up in the least religious homes. And of people raised in very
> religious homes, 79.9 percent felt guilty about a specific sexual activity
> or desire... while among people raised in the least religious and most
> secular homes, that number drops to 26.3 percent. That's a huge, huge
> difference.
>
> But one of the most surprising conclusions of this research? Sexual guilt
> from religion doesn't wreck people's sex lives forever.
>
> According to conventional wisdom -- and I will freely admit that I held
> this conventional wisdom myself -- religious guilt about sex continues to
> torment people long after the religion itself has lost its hold. But
> according to "Sex and Secularism," that's rarely the case. Once people let
> go of religion, people's positive experiences of sex, and their relative
> lack of guilt, happen at about the same rate as people who were never
> religious in the first place.
>
> Ray was surprised by this result as well. (Surprising results -- a sign of
> good science!) "We did think that religion would have residual effects in
> people after they left," he told me, "but our data did not show this. That
> was a very pleasant surprise. That is not to say that some people don't
> continue to experience problems, but the vast majority seem to shake it off
> and get on with their sexual lives pretty well." So letting go of religion
> means a rebound to a sex life that's as satisfying, and as guilt-free, as a
> sex life that was never touched by religion in the first place.
>
> Now, some hardcore religious believers might argue this isn't a good thing.
> "People *should* feel sexual guilt!" they'd argue. "These kinds of sex are
> bad, mmmkay? God doesn't like them. People *should* feel guilty about
> them."
>
> But it's worth pointing out two things. First of all, the activities being
> studied in this research are, from any rational perspective, morally
> neutral. This report isn't looking at rape, or non-consensual voyeurism, or
> groping people on the subway. It's looking at masturbation, oral sex,
> non-marital sex, homosexuality, etc.: sex acts and sexualities that are
> consensual, egalitarian, reasonably safe, and harmless to society. The
> taboos against them are just that: taboos. If there were ever any solid
> practical or moral reasons behind them, they're buried in the mists of
> history. And different religions have entirely different sets of these
> sexual taboos: some religions denounce some sex acts and accept others,
> while other religions accept Column A and denounce Column B. Without any
> apparent rhyme or reason. If God has a message for us about who and how he
> wants us to boff, he's not being very clear about it.
>
> And maybe more to the point: According to the report, religion has
> essentially no effect on people's actual sexual behavior. Atheists and
> believers engage in the same practices, at basically the same rate, starting
> at essentially the same age. We're all doing pretty much the same stuff.
> Believers just feel worse about it. As Ray told me, "Our data shows that
> people feel very guilty about their sexual behavior when they are religious,
> but that does not stop them: it just makes them feel bad. Of course, they
> have to return to their religion to get forgiveness. It's like the church
> gives you the disease, then offers you a fake cure." So the argument that
> religious sexual guilt is good because it polices immoral sexual behavior
> falls down on two fronts. The sexual behavior it's policing isn't actually
> immoral... and the policing is almost entirely ineffective.
>
> Oh, by the way? This improvement in people's sex lives when they leave
> religion? It isn't just about sexual guilt. It shows up in many aspects of
> people's sex lives, such as (to give just one example) their willingness to
> share sex fantasies with a partner. And, most importantly, it shows up in
> people's assessments of their sex lives overall. This is primarily true of
> people who had been heavily religious before their deconversion. On a scale
> of 1 to 10 -- 1 being a sex life that was much worse after leaving religion,
> 10 being a sex life that was much improved -- people who'd had the most
> religious lives averaged at the very high number of 7.81, and
> 61.6 percent gave an answer of 8, 9 or 10 -- greatly improved. People with
> little or no religion in their life before they became atheists mostly
> report that their sex lives didn't change that much.
>
> In fact, for the handful of atheists who reported that their sex lives
> worsened when they left religion -- 2.2 percent of participants -- almost
> all tell the exact same story: Their sex lives got worse because... well, to
> put it bluntly, their partners or potential partners were still religious,
> and now that they were atheists, they weren't getting any. Their spouses got
> upset because they'd become atheists; their pool of potential sex partners
> dried up. As one respondent commented, "My wife said to me, 'How can I sleep
> with someone who doesn't share my faith?'" And another, somewhat more
> waggishly: "When I was a Christian I could lay any girl in church, now that
> I am an atheist, they won't even talk to me."
>
> And perhaps one of the most powerful messages in this report -- if one of
> the least surprising -- is the decidedly negative effect of religion on
> sexual education and information. People raised in more strongly religious
> homes ranked the quality of their sex education as significantly worse than
> people raised in less religious homes: 2.4 on a five-point scale, as opposed
> to 3.2 from the less religious folks. And more religious kids were less
> likely to get sex information from their parents than the less religious
> ones -- 13.5 percent, as opposed to 38.2 percent -- and more likely to get
> it from personal sexual experience and pornography.
>
> In case the irony of this is escaping anyone, I'm going to hammer it in:
> The highly religious, "family values" crowd are more likely to get their
> sexual information from porn and fooling around... while the less religious
> folks are more likely to talk to their parents. And in case anyone's
> wondering why sex information is being included in this study on sexual
> happiness: Accurate sex education and information has been consistently
> shown<http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=515&grandparentID=477&parentID=514>to be one of the cornerstones of a happy, satisfying sex life.
>
> Which, again, atheists are a lot more likely to have.
>
> *Happy Endings*
>
> So what should this research say to believers?
>
> Well, the most obvious message should be: "Come on in -- the water's fine."
>
> In debates with atheists, many believers will argue for religion on the
> basis of how good it makes them feel. They'll argue that religion is
> emotionally useful, psychologically useful, socially useful: that religion
> gives people a sense of meaning, moral guidance, comfort in hard times, etc.
> It's an argument that drives many atheists up a tree -- myself included --
> since it has absolutely nothing to do with whether religion is, you know,
> true. (Believing in Santa Claus might make kids happy and better-behaved,
> but you wouldn't argue that people should keep putting cookies by the
> fireplace on Christmas Eve well into their adult years.)
>
> But if this report is to be believed, then this argument is conclusively
> shown to be bogus... even on its own terms. At least when it comes to sex.
> (It's probably bogus when it comes to the rest of our lives as well -- or
> rather, it would be bogus if our society didn't privilege religious belief
> and treat atheism with bigotry and contempt. Countries with higher rates of
> atheism actually have higher levels of happiness and social functioning<http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28543&cgi=product&isbn=0814797237>than more religious countries. But I digress.)
>
> Religion doesn't make people happier. Not in the sack, anyway. Religion
> makes people less happy. Leaving religion makes people happier. There's no
> reason to hang on to beliefs you don't actually believe in and that don't
> actually make sense to you, just because you can't imagine a happy and
> fulfilling life without them. We know that leaving religion can be a scary
> and painful process... but once it's behind you, life is good. And the sex
> is great. Come on in. The water's fine.
>
> And what does report this say to atheists?
>
> This report, people, is our sales pitch.
>
> Again, I will make this very clear: The fact that atheists fuck better has
> no bearing whatsoever on whether atheism is correct. And atheists should not
> pretend that it does.
>
> But when believers make the argument from utility -- when they argue that
> religion is important and necessary because it makes people happy -- we
> don't have to just tear our hair out and say, "Does not! Does not!" We can
> print out this report, and hand it to them with a smile.
>
> A satisfied smile.
>
> *Read more of Greta Christina at her blog<http://gretachristina.typepad.com/>.
> *
> _______________________________
> Wayne A. Fox
> 1009 Karen Lane
> PO Box 9421
> Moscow, ID  83843
>
> waf at moscow.com
> 208 882-7975
>
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