QOTD

[autographedcat]

"Human beings took our animal need for palatable food … and turned it into chocolate souffles with salted caramel cream. We took our ability to co-operate as a social species … and turned it into craft circles and bowling leagues and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We took our capacity to make and use tools … and turned it into the Apollo moon landing. We took our uniquely precise ability to communicate through language … and turned it into King Lear.

None of these things are necessary for survival and reproduction. That is exactly what makes them so splendid. When we take our basic evolutionary wiring and transform it into something far beyond any prosaic matters of survival and reproduction … that’s when humanity is at its best. That’s when we show ourselves to be capable of creating meaning and joy, for ourselves and for one another. That’s when we’re most uniquely human.

And the same is true for sex. Human beings have a deep, hard-wired urge to replicate our DNA, instilled in us by millions of years of evolution. And we’ve turned it into an intense and delightful form of communication, intimacy, creativity, community, personal expression, transcendence, joy, pleasure, and love. Regardless of whether any DNA gets replicated in the process.

Why should we see this as sinful? What makes this any different from chocolate souffles and King Lear?"
--Greta Christina

(via Sex Is Not The Enemy)

Comments

Re: Had much the same reaction

[annonynous.livejournal.com]

"Christians think of sex as inherently sinful. In fact, it is the original sin."

I'm surprised no one else has picked up on this, so maybe I have it wrong. It has been some decades since I lapsed from Catholicism, but my remembrance is that the original sin was *disobedience*, of God's command not to taste the fruit of what I think was called the Tree of Knowledge.

I'm open to correction.
Ann O.

Re: Had much the same reaction

[keristor.livejournal.com]

Depends which version of Christianity. Any statement such as "X think..." is almost certainly false for some value of X (and I know some Christians who certainly don't think that sex per se is a sin, only that it is a sin outside marriage).

But I have certainly met quite a few who seem to ignore the earlier disobedience, or even who conflate the two and think that the "Tree of Knowledge" was in fact the knowledge of sex specifically.