Sex and Values: Spirituality, Religion, and sex - Research Paper Example

? Running Head: SEX AND VALUES: SPIRTUALITY, RELIGION AND SEX Sex and Values: Spirituality, Religion, and Sex Sex and Values: Spirituality, Religion, and Sex Sex is a problem in most religions. The body has the motivation to engage in sex, but the mind is in conflict with this urge due to the development of beliefs about the morality of sexual contact. Animals do not have this urge to regulate the morality of sex. They have sex under instinct, creating relationships like some animals such as wolves and eagles that mate for life or others who have sex indiscriminately for the purpose of procreation. Human beings, however, are the only creatures that are known to apply the concept of morality to sexual contact. The concept of belief lies outside the scope of natural instinct, but human beings apply morality and belief in ways that are not imaginable to other creatures. The mind of the human being is far more complex, which has left human beings vulnerable to their own imaginings, developing constructions of the world in which morality places restrictions in ways that no other animal endures. Sexual intercourse is a means through which procreation occurs. The desire and pleasure that accompanies the idea of the sexual experience is in conflict with the asceticism with which most religions place morality and values into the sexuality of human existence. However, it is through these beliefs that control was placed on procreation, creating structures through which human beings developed patterns of creating progeny. Patriarchal systems came into play so that males could own the procreative powers of women. Women were bought and sold because of their value as procreating vessels. The system became viable because in the past the value of procreation was based on the knowledge of who had fathered a child. One of the first places to have the discussion about the psychology of belief as it relates to controls that come from assigned values and religious construction is within philosophy. Thomas Aquinas discusses the teleological value of the parts of the human body. It was his use of Aristotelian teleological ethics through which he came up with a number of consequences that are related to the telos of genitalia. This breaks down to the following: contraception is against the natural purpose of sex, masturbation is a misuse of the genitalia as it is outside of the scope of its purpose, homosexuality is evil because it uses the genitalia for a purpose that cannot result in procreation, and sex cannot be engaged in for the purpose of expressing an emotion because this is not the purpose for which genitalia were created (Vardy, 1998). Aquinas took the natural use of sex organs and placed them into an ethical framework which extracted the unique properties of human sexuality from the biological purpose. The fascinating problem with these assumptions is that it controverts the nature of human sexuality as nature designed it to exist. It would seem a simple process in which the reward for seeking to procreate is pleasure, and that seeking that pleasure is a natural occurrence. However, psychological approaches to sexuality show that it may not be quite that simple. There are two basic approaches to sexuality that should be discussed before looking at the problem of religion as it applies to sexual activity. The first approach is through the social construction of reality. This approach suggests that sexuality is constructed through the rituals that are applied to sexual behavior as well as the language that is used to define it. Baumeister (2008) writes that “Applied to sex, this approach has emphasized that sexuality is largely something that is learned and shaped by culture, socialization, and situational influences” (p. 2). This approach uses the idea that there are differences in sexual practices in different cultures, thus it is a constructed rather than an instinctual act which has exploded importance in human life due to the way in which language and social behaviors have emphasized its existence. The second approach is the essentialist approach. This approach suggests that “human beings are descended from ancestors who were most successful in passing on their genes in reproducing” (Baumeister, 2008, p. 3). Sexual desire is a reflection of the success with which procreation in the past has occurred, thus giving shape to attraction and to how genders have been designed. Women are naturally more nurturing and caregivers because this was successful in the genetic past. Men have no real substantive contribution other than in the first five minutes of the life that is created. Essentialist, in other words, believe that nature has a hand in the entire process of sexual conduct and therefore the beliefs that men and women develop about sex are immaterial. Oddly enough, Aquinas wins in terms of both approaches. His views on sex as purely a procreative device works with the viewpoint that it is socially constructed as well as the perspective that it is a purely essentialist problem. His constraints on sexuality look at it from the point of view that socially it has been constructed so that children can be the product of sex, but also from the perspective that it is a natural function with a specific purpose. However, although he mentions homosexuality, masturbation, and sex for the purpose of passionate release, he does not discuss the idea that they are based on natural urges human beings possess. If they have these urges, then where are they originated and how would this be unnatural if human beings were created by a greater being? The construction of a deity that gave human beings the drive to procreate through the motivation of pleasure and then denied His creatures that pleasure because it did not serve the purpose for which he created sex would suggest that God’s plan is to confound mankind and create the capacity for pleasure without the ability to use it. The further question that must be asked is whether or not God understood his creation and if so, why test his children with such a difficult and almost impossible task? Religion does have a role in preventing the increased use of sex in ways that have not been socially accepted as a means to increase the population. Hood, Hill, and Spilka (2009) write that when people attend religious rituals more frequently they tend to lower the engagement in sex for other than procreative reasons. Those who attend less frequently tend to have a more liberated view of sex. Going to church is directly associated with decreased permissiveness, although this does not apply in all cases. Where religion is associated with personal comfort and security, people will associate their sexuality and security with personal comfort. This will lead to a higher level of permissiveness. The theories of Thomas Aquinas can be directly associated with the perspective on sex that most religious institutions have about how people should conduct their sexual behaviors. Most religious belief is based on the idea that people should have sex only for the purpose of procreation and that it is unnecessary for any other purpose, including pleasure. This puts even the most traditional style of relationship, a marriage between a man and woman, under a terrible strain in which they should refrain from sex unless it is for the purpose of creating a child. The social constructionist approach takes precedence here because since the time of Aquinas the purpose of marriage has changed dramatically, meaning that people marry more often for love than for a financial and procreative purpose. This means that sexual behaviors within the confines of marriage have been deemed socially acceptable, even when the purpose of having a child is not the goal of the interaction. This would suggest then that the social constructivist theory on sex is more predominant than the essentialist theory which is associated with the idea that people have sex based purely on their instinctual drives. Values are assigned through the development of ideals that people have about how sexuality should be expressed. Where there was a time when sex was primarily for the purpose of procreation, modern contexts have evolved to the point where sexual pleasure is a valued objective for engaging in sexual intercourse. Religion serves as a means for controlling sexual expression, but this does not fully curb the drives that put men and women into sexual desires for one another. Although this paper did not address the issue of homosexual sex, the behaviors that allow for same sex sexual interaction also can be both naturally created and socially defined so that how people interact is a matter of constructing it through defining terms, emotions, and drives. This would be the argument for the idea that sexual behavior is naturally driven and that people cannot put an end to some form of sexual behavior because they would choose to do so. They can only accept that nature is a plan that is not definable on human terms, thus sex is something that can only be constructed from the beliefs that one chooses. Where philosophy and religious study have defined sex as something with one purpose, the natural inclination towards sexual experience suggests that there are more purposes than religious structure frames for social interaction. Sexuality is a part of nature and being part of a natural existence means that it must be constrained in order to fit into modern contexts of how human beings behave in terms of instinctual drives. The constraint of religion is one way in which human beings have defined this aspect of their lives. References Baumeister, R. F. (2008). Social psychology and human sexuality: Essential readings. New York: Routledge. Hood, R. W., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The psychology of religion: An empirical approach. New York: Guilford Press. Vardy, P. (1998). The puzzle of sex. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe. Read More