Vortigern99
Sorcerer Supreme
There is no biblical passage that supports the idea that "God hates sex". That would be counter-productive to the purposes of both society, which human beings created, and biology, which from a Judeo-Christian perspective, God created.
From the Genesis exhortation to "Be fruitful and multiply", to the Song of Solomon (included in Catholic Bibles), to the bit from Proverbs which Radrook posted above, sex within the context of marriage is consistently described or addressed in all the various books of the Bible as necessary and pleasurable.
Extra-marital sex and licentious behavior is as consistently rebuked, punished and proscribed against. The reasons for this are multiple, some of which have been brought up in this thread, but they boil down to 1) social cohesion and 2) protecting the human heart from distress.
In the ancient world, religious law was a necessary underpinning to secular law; without the former the latter had no provenance or rationale. Before the advent of science, there were only guesses in the dark, and it was more efficient and effective to tell the masses: "God said you should be nice to each other and not rape your neighbors" rather than explaining the complex realities behind such a pronouncement. Those realities -- unwanted pregnancies, venereal diseases, marital dissolutions, etc. -- might not even have been understood by those making the pronouncement, except insofar as such behavior was clearly, in the long run, destructive to society.
My point is that the OP and some of the thinking in this thread have been unreasonably polarized. "God hates sex, and theists are stupid for obeying an imaginary sky-daddy" seems to be the gist of much skeptical and atheistic thought. That oversimplified position ignores the ancient societal (and sometimes, personal) need for the idea of "God" to inspire human beings to follow the law and to be kind to one another.
Ultimately, the facts and the texts speak for themselves: "God", as that thought-form is conceptualized in the pages of the Bible, does not "hate sex". "He" expressly tells us to have it. But "He" also forbids any act or behavior, including sexual acts and behavior, that might lead to a dissolution of social fabric, or that will harm or distress an innocent.
We might not need such rules today, but in the ancient world they provided a necessary normative force.
From the Genesis exhortation to "Be fruitful and multiply", to the Song of Solomon (included in Catholic Bibles), to the bit from Proverbs which Radrook posted above, sex within the context of marriage is consistently described or addressed in all the various books of the Bible as necessary and pleasurable.
Extra-marital sex and licentious behavior is as consistently rebuked, punished and proscribed against. The reasons for this are multiple, some of which have been brought up in this thread, but they boil down to 1) social cohesion and 2) protecting the human heart from distress.
In the ancient world, religious law was a necessary underpinning to secular law; without the former the latter had no provenance or rationale. Before the advent of science, there were only guesses in the dark, and it was more efficient and effective to tell the masses: "God said you should be nice to each other and not rape your neighbors" rather than explaining the complex realities behind such a pronouncement. Those realities -- unwanted pregnancies, venereal diseases, marital dissolutions, etc. -- might not even have been understood by those making the pronouncement, except insofar as such behavior was clearly, in the long run, destructive to society.
My point is that the OP and some of the thinking in this thread have been unreasonably polarized. "God hates sex, and theists are stupid for obeying an imaginary sky-daddy" seems to be the gist of much skeptical and atheistic thought. That oversimplified position ignores the ancient societal (and sometimes, personal) need for the idea of "God" to inspire human beings to follow the law and to be kind to one another.
Ultimately, the facts and the texts speak for themselves: "God", as that thought-form is conceptualized in the pages of the Bible, does not "hate sex". "He" expressly tells us to have it. But "He" also forbids any act or behavior, including sexual acts and behavior, that might lead to a dissolution of social fabric, or that will harm or distress an innocent.
We might not need such rules today, but in the ancient world they provided a necessary normative force.
