Evolution and Wet Dreams

oh my lord... *bangs head on desk*

Lee-ann Dunton

One of the cooler things about being a Reconstrutionist Jew — <a href="https://jewishrecon.org/" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">https://jewishrecon.org/</a> — is that the question of G_d’s existence or otherwise is as on the table as any other question. I’m an atheist for all normative values of the word ‘G_d’. But the narrative and social value of divinity as an idea doesn’t go away just because the idea is wholly imagined. When Leonard Cohen, for example, wrote — Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack, in everything That’s how the light gets in ‘Anthem’, *The Future*, 1992 — he was referencing the Kabbalistic creation myth. The divine had withdraw into itself and then explode outward in order to create the universe (yes, 16th century Jewish mystics were accidentally pre-figuring the Big Bang theory). The process itself ‘broke’ reality, leaving everything slightly broken or cracked. And that brokenness is why the universe exists. And it’s the only way we can apprehend both the creation and the idea of a creator. This same story, BTW, is the source of the idea of ‘tikkun olam’, routinely translated as ‘repair the world’. By doing the right thing — by ourselves, by each other, and by the larger universe — we do the only thing that makes a connection between the real and divine possible. There’s no supernatural reward for ‘being good’, just the knowledge that you’ve made reality a little better for your labour. All of which is a narrative framework that, for me at least, keeps divinity on the ‘useful and worthwhile’ side of things. It’s external reality or otherwise is irrelevant to this story’s social and ethical utility. Also, on the question of pleasure. In the Talmud (Yerushalmi Kiddushin 4:12, to be precise) it says: ר' חזקיה ר' כהן בשם רב עתיד אדם ליתן דין וחשבון על כל מה שראת עינו ולא אכל רבי לעזר חשש להדא שמועתא ומצמית ליה פריטין ואכיל בהון מכל מילה חדא בשתא R Chizkiah R Cohn in the name of Rav: In the future one will be judged for all that their eyes saw and they didn’t eat. R Lazer worried about this opinion and set aside money to eat from every kind once a year. The Korban HaEida and the P’nei Moshe both take the position that Cohn’s larger point is that to make oneself suffer by refusing to enjoy something is forbidden. That is, Cohn is not arguing for indulgence but against asceticism. If you can enjoy something, and you want to do so, it is an active wrong to not, then, enjoy that something. And, yes, this is one of the many sources in Jewish thinking that argue for sexual pleasure being not just a good and worthy thing, but a holy thing. One of the grounds for divorce, for example, is a husband being unable or unwilling to provide his wife with adequate and satisfactory orgasms. And the holiest night of the week — Erev Shabbat — is best marked by couples schtupping. Because, so far as Jewish tradition is concerned, the best way of honouring divinity on the most important night of the week is to make each other cum.

I stopped believing in God at around the same time as I stopped believing in Santa Claus. I have just never been able to wrap my head around belief in God in adults. I'm not trying to sound superior or anything, it is just sincerely perplexing to me.

Eric Christian Berg

I was recently napping on my parents bed while my mom was reading comics in bed a foot away from me when I had a wet dream; if I weren't a full on atheist, I would definitely say that was caused by the devil.

lifeless1

We are part of the system. We were created not in vain.

SexBook _____ ADULT PHOTO AND VIDEO SIGNATURES

Rants like this and subtler versions of it are so often the reason it's hard to take myself seriously as a Christian sometimes or to find a way through to a sex + view of myself that doesn't have to clash with my faith. Why is it that religion and Christianity particularly are such a haven for easily spooked conspiracy theorists with a horror/fascination for sex? I should know the answer, having grown up in a house that would have unironically retweeted this, but constantly having to watch that boundary between Christian and crazy person (and I don't use the term lightly) gets a little bit bloody exhausting let me tell you.

Kay Carmichael

God damn, you figured that stuff out so much earlier than I did. I took forever. Or, at least, anything I considered that went against my religion was swiftly glazed over with Here's Another Possibility That Probably Jives With The Bible icing. I tried to keep it all out of my head for as long as I could!

Danielle Corsetto

@Mark - that's actually the very first commandment in the entire bible!

Matt Cohen

It's funny, I am Christian now, but looking back, there were quite a few harsh comments like that from religious folks that actually made me take considerably *longer* getting here. & of course the people who said those things probably wouldn't think much of the super mouthy queer, evolution-enthusiast, non-Hell-fearing kinda Christian I am today, but fortunately it's between me & Jesus, not me & them.

Emmet L.F. Cameron

"Be fruitful and multiply" is somewhere in those rules. Regardless of their authenticity, if you're supposed to follow them it is very hard to do without sex. Just saying.

Mark Ashworth