Ranking people’s looks (and sexual prowess) is an age-old human pleasure. I imagine even the cavemen came up with some kind of crude, visual way to rank their cavewomen lady friends.
Apparently, hotness rankings can even get you arrested. A 17-year-old in Chicago created a Facebook list ranking 50 high school girls according to their facial features and body types. He also gave them “fun” names, like “The Designated Drunk” and “The Amazing Bisexual.” The list made the news in January [ http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-inappropriate-school-ranking-020110117,0,1526893.story ], and it sounds like the creative list-maker was expelled. This week, he was arrested, according to the Tribune Local:
The 17-year-old former Oak Park and River Forest High School student, who police and school officials are not identifying because he is a minor, was arrested at his Oak Park home Monday night and was charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct. The charges were levied with cooperation from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and Oak Park police said there will not be any additional charges…
The teenager is believed to be responsible for a list that ranked 50 female students — using racial slurs and ratings of body parts — that circulated around the school and on Facebook, police said. The teen is accused of handing out hard copies of the list Jan. 14 at various lunch periods and posting a copy online, according to police.
I imagine the 17-year-old will present a defense based on his constitutional rights. If he loses and the charges stand, I’d be shocked. Because free speech is usually ranked as hotter than people’s right to privacy.
Atheists have 'better sex lives than followers of religion who are plagued with guilt'
Unrestricted passion: Atheists have better sex lives than followers of religion who are troubled by feelings of guilt, researchers claim (file picture)
The highs and lows: Religious people had as much sex as non-believers but they felt bad afterwards and often prayed for forgiveness (file picture)
By Daily Mail Reporter Last updated at 8:47 AM on 20th May 2011
Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found.
A study discovered that non-believers are more willing to discuss sexual fantasies and are more satisfied with their experiences.
Both groups of people admitted that they carried out the same activities such as masturbation, watching pornography, having oral sex and pursuing affairs.
But followers of religion did not enjoy the experiences as much due to the stigma created by their belief systems, the study found. It left them with intense feelings of regret after they had climaxed.
The findings emerged in the 'Sex and Secularism' survey of more than 14,500 people carried out by psychologist Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown from Kansas University.
All of the people who were questioned were found to have sex around the same number of times a week. They also became sexually active at similar ages.
But devoutly religious people rated their sex lives far lower than atheists. They also admitted to strong feelings of guilt afterwards.
Strict religions such as Mormons ranked highest on the scale of sexual guilt. Their average score was 8.19 out of 10. They were followed closely behind by Jehovah's Witness, Pentecostal, Seventh Day Adventist, and Baptist.
Catholics rated their levels of sexual guilt at 6.34 while Lutherans came slightly lower at 5.88 . In contrast, atheists and agnostics ranked at 4.71 and 4.81 respectively.
The study found that in individuals, the stronger their religious beliefs were the more powerful their feelings of sexual regret.
Of people raised in very religious homes, 22.5 per cent said they were shamed or ridiculed for masturbating compared with only 5.5 percent of people brought up in the least religious homes.
Some 79.9 per cent of people raised in very religious homes said they felt guilty about a specific sexual activity or desire while 26.3 per cent of those raised in secular homes did.
Worryingly, children raised in strongly religious homes were more likely to get their sex education from pornography, as they were not confident enough to talk with their parents.
However, there was some good news for religious groups. People who had lost their belief and became atheists reported a significant improvement in sexual satisfaction.
People who had left their beliefs behind said their sex lives were 'much improved' and rated their new experiences on average as 7.81 out of ten.
The finding dispelled conventional wisdom that feelings of guilt can continue to trouble people after the religion has faded.
'We did think that religion would have residual effects in people after they left but our data did not show this. That was a very pleasant surprise. The vast majority seem to shake it off and get on with their sexual lives pretty well,' Darrel told alternet.org [next below].
He added: 'Our data shows that people feel very guilty about their sexual behaviour 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.'
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.
Faith is a huge force in American life, and it’s common to hear the Bible cited to bolster political and moral positions, especially against same-sex marriage and abortion. So here’s my 2011 religion quiz. Choose the best responses (some questions may have more than one correct answer):
1. The Bible’s position on abortion is:
a. Never mentioned.
b. To forbid it along with all forms of artificial birth control.
c. Condemnatory, except to save the life of the mother.
2. The Bible suggests “marriage” is:
a. The lifelong union of one man and one woman.
b. The union of one man and up to 700 wives.
c. Often undesirable, because it distracts from service to the Lord.
3. The Bible says of homosexuality:
a. Leviticus describes male sexual pairing as an abomination.
b. A lesbian should be stoned at her father’s doorstep.
c. There’s plenty of ambiguity and no indication of physical intimacy, but some readers point to Ruth and Naomi’s love as suspiciously close, or to King David declaring to Jonathan: “Your love to me was wonderful, passing the love of women.” (II Samuel 1:23-26)
4. In the Bible, erotic writing is:
a. Forbidden by Deuteronomy as “adultery of the heart.”
b. Exemplified by “Song of Songs,” which celebrates sex for its own sake.
c. Unmentioned.
5. Jesus says that divorce is permitted:
a. Only after counseling and trial separation.
b. Never.
c. Only to men whose wives have been unfaithful.
6. Among sexual behavior that is forbidden is:
a. Adultery.
b. Incest.
c. Sex with angels.
7. The people of Sodom were condemned principally for:
Professor Knust’s point is that the Bible’s teachings about sexuality are murky and inconsistent and prone to being hijacked by ideologues (this quiz involves some cherry-picking of my own). There’s also lots we just don’t understand: What exactly is the offense of “arsenokoitai” or “man beds” that St. Paul proscribes? It is often translated as a reference to homosexuality, but it more plausibly relates to male prostitution or pimping. Ambiguity is everywhere, which is why some of you will surely harrumph at my quiz answers:
1. A. Abortion is never mentioned as such.
2. A, B and C. The Bible limits women to one husband, but other than that is all over the map. Mark 10 envisions a lifelong marriage of one man and one woman. But King Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines (I Kings 11:3). And Matthew (Matthew 19:10-12) and St. Paul (I Corinthians 7) both seem to suggest that the ideal approach is to remain celibate and avoid marriage if possible, while focusing on serving God. Jesus (Matthew 19:12) even seems to suggest that men make themselves eunuchs, leading the early church to ban enthusiasts from self-castration.
3. A and C. As for stoning on a father’s doorstep, that is the fate not of lesbians but of non-virgin brides (Deuteronomy 22:13).
4. B. Read the “Song of Songs” and blush. It also serves as a metaphor for divine relations with Israel or with humans.
5. B and C. Jesus in Mark 10:11-12 condemns divorce generally, but in Matthew 5:32 and 19:9 suggests that a man can divorce his wife if she is guilty of sexual immorality.
6. A, B and C. We forget that early commentators were very concerned about sex with angels (Genesis 6, interpreted in the Letter of Jude and other places) as an incorrect mixing of two kinds.
7. C. “Sodomy” as a term for gay male sex began to be commonly used only in the 11th century and would have surprised early religious commentators. They attributed Sodom’s problems with God to many different causes, including idolatry, threats toward strangers and general lack of compassion for the downtrodden. Ezekiel 16:49 suggests that Sodomites “had pride, excess of food, and prosperous ease, but did not aid the poor and needy.”
Hmm. “Did not aid the poor and needy.” Who knew that that’s what the Bible condemns as sodomy? At a time of budget cuts that devastate the poor, isn’t that precisely the kind of disgusting immorality that we should all join together in the spirit of the Bible to repudiate?
Animals in the wild will also voluntarily and repeatedly consume psychoactive plants and fungi. Birds, elephants, and monkeys have all been reported to enthusiastically seek out fruits and berries that have fallen to the ground and undergone natural fermentation to produce alcohol. In Gabon, which lies in the western equatorial region of Africa, boars, elephants, porcupines, and gorillas have all been reported to consume the intoxicating, hallucinogenic iboga plant (Tabernanthe iboga). There is even some evidence that young elephants learn to eat iboga from observing the actions of their elders in the social group. In the highlands of Ethiopia, goats cut the middleman out of the Starbucks business model by munching wild coffee berries and catching a caffeine buzz.
But do we really know whether these animals like the psychoactive effects of the drug, or are they just willing to put up with them as a side effect of consuming a valuable food source? After all, fermented fruit is a tasty and nutritious meal. While it's hard to dissociate these motivations in animals, many cases suggest that the psychoactive effect is the primary motivator for consumption. Often, only a tiny amount of plant or fungus is consumed, so while its nutritional effect is minuscule its psychoactive effect is large
Perhaps the most dramatic example of nonnutritive animal intoxication is found among domesticated reindeer. The Chuckchee people of Siberia, who are reindeer herders, consume the bright red hallucinogenic mushroom Amanita muscaria as a ritual sacrament. Their reindeer also indulge. Having discovered the mushrooms growing wild under the birch trees, they gobble them up and then stagger around in a disoriented state, twitching their heads repeatedly as they wander off from the rest of the herd for hours at a time.
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