Atheists: No grasp of the basics
January 22, 2007
Over at the Martian Anthropologist, Vast Left asks:
…does the Church, especially the Catholic Church, frown upon sex after menopause (or in any case of incurable sterility), because like masturbation, sodomy, sex with birth control, etc., it is not intended to lead to procreation? Sex and the Sexagenarian
After this was posted, I left a comment but it appears to have either been deleted or moderated away. I suppose that’s what I get for providing links to support my position — I get marked as spam.
When I say that confrontational atheists like the folks at MA make judgments about religion without having a basic grasp of the issues, this is what I’m talking about. And it’s not as though the answer is hard to find; it took me about three minutes of prayer to Google to be hit in the head with the answer.
First, the Catholic Church is not opposed to recreational sex between married couples. It is opposed to recreational sex that uses artificial means to prevent conception:
The Church has never taught that couples must have as many children as possible. Rather, it means that interference with fertility both arises out of spousal selfishness and increases it. The Church approves natural family planning, in which couples abstain during fertile periods when they prayerfully have determined that there is a need to avoid pregnancy. In these cases the spouses are not separating the unitive and procreative aspects of a sexual act; they are simply refraining from performing the act. Similarly, sex after menopause or when suffering from other forms of infertility do not divide the unitive from the procreative. The couple’s act is still ordered toward procreation; it is simply that procreation will not occur. Gay Marriage
As I said in my (now disappeared) comment, they’re arguably splitting hairs over at Vatican City. And I’m sure you’ll find Catholics on both the more conservative and more liberal sides of this argument. Oh, look: here’s Catholics for a Free Choice.
Anyway, the premise is faulty. The Eastern Orthodox Church — they split from the Roman Catholics in the 11th century — does not condemn artificial birth control methods. And protestants, having no Pope, are not nearly as doctrinaire. See here the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, which features Episcopalian, Methodist, and Presbyterian member organizations. When I was a member of the Methodist Church, I remember the official position on _abortion_ was “not good, but occasionally better than the alternatives.”
The image of Christianity as being anti-sex except for procreation is caricature. Almost all Christian faiths with a developed theology describe sex as being a gift to humanity, and most treat it as such, with only the Roman Catholics and fringe fundamentalist groups taking a more strict line. But here our guardians of rationalism and reason slap each other on the back for finding yet another excuse to chortle at the silly stupid Christians without even taking the minimal step of making sure their basic assumption is correct. And all it would take to do so is some quality time with a search engine over a cup of coffee.
Hell, I even did it for them. But do you see my comment there? Not likely. Not that I’m bitter or anything.
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January 22nd, 2007 at 11:37 am
Excellent points. Too often atheists attack a straw-man version of Christianity. You could also point out that Paul’s writings are very clear about the importance of the physical body (not just the spirit), which flew in the phase of popular beliefs of the time that sought to deny the body in preference to the spirit. That’s not to say there wasn’t some serious tension in his writings between the spirit and the flesh, but Christianity has never characterized the body or sexuality as inherently evil or undesirable.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:24 pm
To the contrary, it is possible to find references from the church fathers of the early Chirstian church (usually before 1200 CE) that prohibit sexual pleasure. I will have to locate the source, but I recall one assertion that even in marriage it is sinful to experiences pleasure in sexual intercourse. This attitude is sometimes traced to the Stoics, who were an influential philosophical group at the time the early church was creating its definitions. Also, it was not uncommon for the church doctrine at the time to view as sin any act that a woman took to limit the number of children that she could produce. This idea is sometimes seen as a Christian reaction to the many practices of abortion and contraception current among Roman women of the time. Contraceptive practices by men (generally less gross, since they don’t involve things like ground up aligators or animal dung)have been and still are considered sinful (ref: Onan in the Old Testament, and later comentary during the early days of Christianity on the sin of wasting sperm. In older literature there is a debate regarding whether or not sex or procreation would have been a part of human experience if Adam and Eve had remained in the garden and not “fallen” from grace, with some influential voices associating sexual intercourse and procreation clearly with the fallen nature.
Modern Catholic doctrine allows natural birth control methods, but there is a history of actual proscription of any and all attempts to limit the number of children that can be produced within a marriage context.
January 22nd, 2007 at 7:43 pm
Firstly, as an atheist, I take umbrage at your title. :)
More seriously, I read the same post and thought basically the same things you mentioned: straw-man. Marrying a Catholic will do a lot your desire to understand Catholic doctrine.
January 23rd, 2007 at 6:38 am
Thanks, Diesel, but as Sarah points out below, I think you overstate the case a bit. Christian theology — even Catholic theology — has definitely liberalized as the need for rapid reproduction has lessened. And there has always been, and continues to be, a segment of the religion that is very ascetic and looks down on those who aren’t.
But it’s important to note that not all Christians were ascetics — even historically.
GLS: of course you do, and rightly so. Hopefully the context of the post helped clarify who I was discussing, the title bar is a poor place to write “know-it-all confrontational atheists who wouldn’t know the scientific method if it bit them on the ass,” so I had to make some edits.
January 23rd, 2007 at 8:43 am
The real point is not that they didn’t bother to check Google for answers to the question, but that it’s possible to come up with answers just as arbitrary as the church’s with virtually no real thought. If atheists slap each other on the back, it’s only because it’s such sport! Why let the theologians have all the fun drawing lines in the sand?
Sure, sure. The dogma and interpretation of the scripture have changed throughout the centuries, keeping up with the changing moral climate, or the prevailing attitudes, and sometimes even the latest scientific discoveries. But that’s just it! Amongst all those made of straw, is there a real man?
January 23rd, 2007 at 9:11 am
Brian:
Because the atheists lay claim to greater intellectual rigor than that.
This has been simple answers to simple questions.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:06 am
Not all atheists are created equal, or with a sense of humor. I am not defending the cited blog’s poor judgment.
Your jab at the claim to greater intellectual rigor may land against the particular post in question, but your writing broadens its swings to include atheists as a whole group; ridiculing the arbitrariness of dogma is considered great fun, with intellectual rigor standing alongside quite nicely. The Flying Spaghetti Monster comes to mind.
My comment still stands.
January 23rd, 2007 at 10:47 am
Agreed again that “the title is more broad than my actual target”:http://www.thudfactor.com/wordpress/2007/01/22/atheists-no-grasp-of-the-basics/#comment-9661, and looking over it I see I’ve specified “confrontational atheists like the folks at MA.” Now, if you want to broaden that argument to include all atheists, be my guest — but I wouldn’t.
And if you’re going to ridicule the arbitrariness of dogma, you ought to make sure the dogma you’re ridiculing is extant.
January 26th, 2007 at 8:38 am
Thud,
I’m not a moderator at Martian Anthropologist, so I don’t know why your post never appeared or was deleted. Unfortunately, whatever the circumstances (spam-filtering, human or heavenly intervention), I didn’t get the opportunity to read it.
I feel my question was eminently reasonable, and it was a question, not an assertion.
I’m not claiming that there are no Christians who have liberated views about sex.
But there surely is much sex-phobia in fundamentalist/orthodox Christian circles. A great deal of it centers around various forms on non-procreative sex. At at the extreme end, we see the growing Quiverfull movement that is very much about non-stop baby production.
It’s whitewashing to pretend that anti-birth control sentiments aren’t still a significant factor in Christian doctrine. Bush’s faith-based, abstinence-focused initiatives have hampered international AIDS prevention efforts and sex education in general, and the official position of the Vatican, the religious authority for one billion Catholics, is still opposition to birth control. In fact, the second story in your linked Catholics for Free Choice article is titled: “Catholics around the Globe Urge Pope Benedict XVI to Lift the Ban on Condoms.” They seem to be aware that this continues to be an issue.
But, as usual, atheists must be bashed if they question the superstitious, illogical, and sometimes destructive habits and policies of True Believers.
January 26th, 2007 at 9:53 am
VL, I think the argument you put forward here is much more nuanced and considered than the discussion — here I’m including the comment thread as well — over at MA. And in my original comment I took it to be a fair question that exposed an unawareness the diversity of official opinion and theological thought around sex and procreation inside the Christian church.
Catholic and Dominionist theology is particularly regressive on this issue but — as the links I offer help demonstrate — many churches take official theological positions in support of artificial and family planning methods. And some, while expressing dislike of abortion, officially state that the decision is complex enough it should be left up to the involved parents.
So the original question:
bq. …does the Church, especially the Catholic Church, frown upon sex after menopause (or in any case of incurable sterility), because like masturbation, sodomy, sex with birth control, etc., it is not intended to lead to procreation?”
is false in its premise, because Christianity comes no-where near universality it’s condemnation of family planning and occasionally when it does, the reason offered is not “because sex not intended for procreation is sinful.”
bq. But, as usual, atheists must be bashed if they question the superstitious, illogical, and sometimes destructive habits and policies of True Believers.
Actually, VL, I’m squawking about the same thing I always do — assigning beliefs and attitudes to people who don’t have them, then mocking them for it.
January 26th, 2007 at 11:06 am
One might consider pretending that someone who asks a question focused on the Catholic Church leadership and its like-minded brethren is alleging that all Christians are procreation fetishists — and then making broad and derisive claims about his and all other atheists’ intentions and knowledgeability — is a pretty good example of “assigning beliefs and attitudes to people who don’t have them, then mocking them for it.”
January 26th, 2007 at 11:18 am
But then one would be misrepresenting both arguments, wouldn’t one?