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<H2 style="MARGIN: 20px 0px 0px">Atheists Do It Better: Why Leaving Religion
Leads to Better Sex</H2>
<H5 style="MARGIN: 0px 0px 20px">By Greta Christina, AlterNet<BR>Posted on May
17, 2011, Printed on May 18,
2011<BR>http://www.alternet.org/story/150978/atheists_do_it_better%3A_why_leaving_religion_leads_to_better_sex</H5>
<P></P>
<P>Do atheists have better sex? Yes. According to science, that is -- and more
specifically, according to the recently released "Sex and Secularism" study.</P>
<P>In January 2011, organizational psychologist Darrel Ray, Ed.D. (psychologist
for 30 years and author of <I>The God Virus</I> 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 <A href="http://www.ipcpress.com/"
target=_blank>download it free</A> (you just need to <A
href="http://ipcpress.com/index.php?id=42" target=" _blank">register</A> on the
site).</P>
<P>But if you just want to know the gist?</P>
<P>Leaving religion improves people's sex lives.</P>
<P>A <I><B>lot</B></I>. </P>
<P>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.</P>
<P><FONT color=#ffff00><FONT color=#0000ff>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. </FONT><FONT color=#ff0000><STRONG>All it's
doing is making people feel crummy about it.</STRONG></FONT> </FONT>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.</P>
<P>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, <A
href="http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/" target=" _blank">Pharyngula</A>. (In
fact, in several places throughout the report, the researchers themselves freely
acknowledge the limitations of their research.)</P>
<P>But that being said: The results of this report that <I>aren't</I> 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 <A
href="http://www.ipcpress.com/" target=" _blank">in the report</A>.) 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.</P>
<P>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.)</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>So what is going on here?</P>
<P>What, specifically, does this report say?</P>
<P>And what is its take-home message -- both for believers and
atheists? </P>
<P><B>Atheism Is for Lovers</B></P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.)</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>But with only two exceptions -- Unitarianism and Judaism -- atheists
experience less sexual guilt than religious believers of <I>any</I>
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), <I>all</I> 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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P></P>
<P>But one of the most surprising conclusions of this research? Sexual guilt
from religion doesn't wreck people's sex lives forever.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>Now, some hardcore religious believers might argue this isn't a good thing.
"People <EM>should</EM> feel sexual guilt!" they'd argue. "These kinds of sex
are bad, mmmkay? God doesn't like them. People <I>should</I> feel guilty about
them."</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P></P>
<P>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."</P>
<P></P>
<P>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. </P>
<P></P>
<P>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 <A
href="http://www.siecus.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.viewPage&pageId=515&grandparentID=477&parentID=514"
target=" _blank">consistently shown</A> to be one of the cornerstones of a
happy, satisfying sex life.</P>
<P>Which, again, atheists are a lot more likely to have. </P>
<P><B>Happy Endings</B></P>
<P>So what should this research say to believers?</P>
<P>Well, the most obvious message should be: "Come on in -- the water's
fine."</P>
<P>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.)</P>
<P>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 <A
href="http://www.powells.com/biblio?PID=28543&cgi=product&isbn=0814797237"
target=" _blank">higher levels of happiness and social functioning</A> than more
religious countries. But I digress.)</P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>And what does report this say to atheists?</P>
<P>This report, people, is our sales pitch.</P>
<P>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. </P>
<P>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.</P>
<P>A satisfied smile. </P>
<P></P>
<P><I>Read more of Greta Christina at her <A
href="http://gretachristina.typepad.com/">blog</A>. </I></P></FONT></DIV><FONT
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