by Dr. Boyce Watkins, Your Black World.
A new study released by the University of Kansas argues that religious people have less-fulfilling sex lives, in large part because of the guilt associated with their sexual behavior. Atheists, on the other hand, seem to have the fewest issues. Surveying 14,500 people, researchers found that those who don’t believe in God were better able to express their sexual fantasies and experience greater satisfaction.
The researchers, Darrel Ray and Amanda Brown, spoke with 14,500 people in the study. Everyone in the study had become sexually active at around the same age, and they also had sex the same number of times per week. Mormons had the highest guilt factor, going to 8.19 out of 10. The guilt ranking from highest to lowest included: Jehovah’s Witnesses, Pentecostals, Baptists, and Seventh Day Adventists. Agnostics and Atheists had the lowest guilt factors of the group.
The researchers make it clear that they are not saying that those with religious values can’t have enjoyable sex lives. They are simply making the point that religious guilt can sometimes impede the pathways to free expression. I also suspect that researchers are not attempting to endorse Atheism or any other religious viewpoint, at least I hope not.
I am not an atheist. I also do not go to church on a regular basis. My father is a southern Baptist minister and I’ve learned to respect the value that God and Jesus have in determining the parameters and boundaries of human morality. I become deeply disappointed by the hypocrisy that many of us embrace in our religious lives, in large part because religious practice can be more of a function of socialization and ceremony than about truly connecting with a higher power.
Most of us receive our religious values at a time when we are too young to make that decision for ourselves and spend the rest of our lives responding to the brainwashing we were given at the age of three. This creates a world where we have far too many religious leaders and participants living one life and preaching another, become so immune to their own hypocrisy that they hardly even notice it. Most of us are fully aware of the person who hops from one bed to another, lies for a living, and runs from the night club to the church every Sunday morning. Most laughable is that this is also the person who might condemn others for not being equally “sanctified.”
The bottom line as it pertains to this study is that sex is not a bad thing, nor should it be taboo or condemned. Sex is the reason we all exist, so if there is anything we have as human beings that is truly connected to God, life and Mother Nature, it would be our sexuality. Additionally, this study should not be interpreted as one that celebrates Atheism or the desire to live one’s life without accountability to any particular value system. It’s incredibly arrogant to think that you know for sure that no higher power exists. The truth is that you didn’t create yourself.
The video conversation I have with Deborrah Cooper is below. You can also see it by clicking here.
