http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1388827/Atheists-better-sex-religious-followers-plagued-guilt.html

"Atheists have far better sex lives than religious people who are plagued with guilt during intercourse and for weeks afterwards, researchers have found."

Well, I have to say, if atheists sex live sucked even worse than that of people plagued with guilt, I'd have to be really ****ty indeed.

Now, any substantive point you wish to make?

That religious people have, on average, more sexual guilt than atheists, and this will cause them to be less satisfied, on average, with their sex lives.

While I'm skeptical that this study is very meaningful, you are misreading the claim in the article. It is not claiming that atheists have better sex lives than guilty religious people, but that atheists have better sex lives than religious people, because those religious people are more likely to feel guilty about sex.

fwiw, this will probably hold true for most christian denominations, but I'd be genuinely curious (and not sure which side to bet on) to see the results of atheists vs. buddhists/hindi.

ty. I am aware of that. It just seemed a ******ed enough way to delineate a topic of discussion that it merited an immediate prevent-troll. Which, of course is the universally accepted equivalent of block-betting a conversation.

...or I could have just said this.

When I google "Sex and Secularism survey" I get various articles such as the following:

http://www.atheismresource.com/2011/...d-amanda-brown

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/atheist...ry?id=13679076

Edit: Found a better quote:

and LOL

...

It seems that the population that was surveyed is not a good choice for anything that would remotely resemble a meaningful sample if one is to make comparative statements about religious and non-religious people.

I'm doubtful it even says that much.

It says it right there in the article.

Good thing nobody asked me. I'm bringing the curve way down for team atheist. But I'm married, so that's my excuse

The article may say that, but I'm not sure that the actual study does.

This is like saying "Atheists live longer lives than religious people who become suicide martyrs." Not only is it an obvious statement but without qualifying the percentage of religious people, it makes it a religiously bigoted statement.

Ive never felt guilty for the sex that Ive had.

It's not like saying that at all.

As has been noted that study has methodological problems.

The most noteworthy is that it only surveys secular respondents, or claimed secular respondents. Though one should be aware that when it comes to sex, directly comparing answers from two different groups can be even less interesting than surveying report in changes like this study does (something as simple as comparing men to women is almost impossible in survey research regarding sex, because there is so much social pressure in how to answer. So this isn't necessarily the study's biggest method problem).

The reliance on self-selection however, is a very big problem. Especially when it comes to sex. Secular people who feel guilty about sex would likely not seek out an online survey about sex.

-

Regardless of criticism about this study, it bears mention however that the link between "religion" and "sexual guilt" is hardly something new. That religion is at least an moderating variable for sexual guilt is fairly well known, and something you can make a strong case for without this study.

The study's core question however, if this phenomena carries over to people who leave religion is very interesting: We can make an analogy to obese people who eat fast food... we know there is a link between obesity and fast food, but it would be very interesting to see if overweight people lost weight if they stopped eating fast food, or if they continued being just as obese. Either way, it would indicate something fairly interesting about the potential role of fast food in obesity. However, such a study would face the exact same problem as this one, if based on self-selection; People who had lost weight might be more inclined to seek out surveys and report on this.

Once again showing the ineffectiveness of block-betting.

It's the sex you've NOT had that you'd feel guilty about

Indeed, if you asked many of the progenitors and exponents of various religious doctrines concerning sexuality, they would likely state that guilt is the entire point. You make people feel guilty and they don't "sin" as much. Certainly, for instance, that's the traditional view of religious conservatives regarding homosexuality.

Given that, it would be shocking if guilt were found NOT to impact the pleasurability of sexual activities.

There could be quite a few people who get off on the guilt aspect. I mean isn't that kinda what domination does a bit? Shaming? Shame and guilt go hand in hand.

The only people who feel guilty about sex are those who have sex outside of some sort of "sanctioned" context. It's reasonable to suggest that the people participating in this particular survey were having sex outside of that context, and hence the existence of the feelings of guilt, which probably led to them leaving their particular religious tradition.

This does not address anything in particular about those who have sex WITHIN the sanctioned contexts. There is no reason to expect that those people would feel guilt as there isn't anything for them to be guilty of.

I don't know... it seems a little bit roundabout and somewhat empty. People who have sex in contexts that they're told they're not supposed to feel guilty because they've violated some sort of rule. People who then reject those rules no longer have reason to feel guilty and (probably) the persistence within that behavior becomes like any other time behavioral expectations change. I think we see this in virtually every other type of behavior that has some level of cultural baggage.

Isn't this the only sex worth feeling guilty about?

People who felt guilty about sex because or anachronistic religious sexual morals end up having better sex when they toss side said anachronistic nonsense and are relieved of the guilt it brought? Shocker! Kind of sad that undoutably there are large numbers of people having sex yet feeling guilty about it for pretty terrible reasons.

People can get sexually attracted to pretty much anything, all it requires is a neural link between some stimuli and sexual gratification. A phenomena comically made apparent by the sheer number of "non sexual" google searches which will reveal some kind of paraphilic content. So what you say here is of course both plausible and perhaps even likely.

I also think however, that the big mainstream religions go out so broadly against sexual activity that it is almost impossible for any adherent not to bump into these moral barriers. And while Christianity is often a bit more liberal in scope than Judaism on many subjects (if we compare OT vs NT), the New Testament is actually particularly harsh on sexual matters, quotes like...
...make it clear that even arousal is sin, and no human being past adolescence (barring some kind of brain defect) has ever been able to stop sexual arousal. Thus the irony of this quote is that it is pretty much only possible to not sin this way if you are not heterosexual.

Catch-22?

Yeah, its pretty easy to take a quote out of context. You'd actually learn something if you pulled a commentary on Mt 5 off a shelf and read a bit.

If you want a debate on some claimed "actual message" of Matthew 5, I'm sure it will make an interesting thread. Especially given how straightforward Matthew 5 is when read superficially.

In this context, this is uninteresting however - we're only interested in people's perception of their religion and sex. This is not theology, but social science.