Every religion has its "messengers" who supposedly got "the Word of God" from God. The bottom line is that a mere mortal man/men started stories, wrote stories, improvised stories, perpetuated stories, etc.
History shows that most of these men were sexually prudish (or, at least, wanted their followers to be).
You are free to believe that if you want to because we all have free will.
My belief is that every religion has its Messengers who got the Word of God from God. The bottom line is that a Messenger of God who was more than a mere mortal man/men received revelations form God and scriptures were written on their behalf or in the case of Muhammad dictated, or in the case of the Bab and Baha’u’llah, written in their own Pens.
I do not know what history shows about their sex lives, only that they wanted their followers to lead a chaste and holy life, but none of them prohibited sex in marriage so I would not call that prudish.
If Baha'i sexual standards are "higher" it is because the old man who wrote them was more of a prude than some of his predecessors.
I hardly think so, given He had several wives and several children.
How is the "moral laxity in modern culture in the Western world is eating away at the very fiber of society"?
It is a disgrace. All you have to do is turn on the TV and it is one sex scandal after another. Some politician could not keep his pants on. If you cannot understand why that is disgusting I cannot help you. Then of course there are many sex crimes and murder is associated with many of those sex crimes. I guess people are so used to it now that it is the “new normal” but it is a disgrace for any culture to behave this way. It is beneath the station of a human who is a spiritual being to live like an animal, having sex with whoever is available at the time. That is excusable for an animal because that is their nature, but even most animals have a mating season and the reason they mate is to produce offspring.
I am not saying it is not okay to have sex for pleasure, I did that for years myself, but to live for sex is a sorry thing indeed, I did that too so I know... Also, all people get old and die and there will be no physical body in the afterlife. Hell has been depicted by some as a person who died and was still attached to the physical world and sex in particular, because there will be no ability to gratify those desires in the afterlife...
Back to channel atheist, I know you do not believe in an afterlife, but you cannot deny old age, although you can get a prescription pill that might keep you going into old age. God did not design the human body to have sex throughout life, be it a man or a woman, so that cannot be the “purpose of life.” I figured that out around the time of menopause. It was a rude awakening but I faced reality, since I could not deny it. I took hormones for a while but then I decided I did not “need” to “continue” having sex, I just thought I did. Did you know that there are people who are asexual? They are perfectly happy and well-adjusted although most people would say there is something psychologically wrong with them, but that is because most people place such a high value on sex. Most psychologists nowadays realize that it is perfectly healthy to “choose” not to have sex.
13 Things Asexuals Are Tired Of Hearing
Since you acknowledge that it's most people who apparently don't want to live up to your "higher standards" why bother making a comment about atheists and souls?
All human beings have souls, whether they are a believer or an atheist. All souls continue to exist for eternity, whether they are a believer or an atheist.
The remainder of your prudish opinions are noted.
I am anything but prude. I lived for sex for a good portion of my married life, but then I realized there is much more to life and marriage.
I am an atheist. I consider humans are, in some ways, "more advanced" than a roach. However, from an evolutionary viewpoint, roaches are far more successful.
Oh they are? Can roaches make scientific discoveries?
Many non-atheists who believe in evolution recognize the fact that we are very much like other animals. Your comment that "we are spiritual beings, not physical bodies" is just your religious viewpoint.
Yes, that is what it is, a religious viewpoint. One has to believe we have a soul/spirit in order to believe we are spiritual beings. It is a Baha’i belief about the soul as a sign of God is different from Christianity and the other older religions in that regard. Baha’u’llah wrote a lot about the soul and its eternal destination but in brief...
“Thou hast asked Me concerning the nature of the soul. Know, verily, that the soul is a sign of God, a heavenly gem whose reality the most learned of men hath failed to grasp, and whose mystery no mind, however acute, can ever hope to unravel. It is the first among all created things to declare the excellence of its Creator, the first to recognize His glory, to cleave to His truth, and to bow down in adoration before Him. If it be faithful to God, it will reflect His light, and will, eventually, return unto Him. If it fail, however, in its allegiance to its Creator, it will become a victim to self and passion, and will, in the end, sink in their depths.”
Gleanings From the Writings of Bahá’u’lláh, pp. 158-159
We have a brain that developed intelligence and advanced language capabilities. These gave rise to man asking questions. At the same time they gave rise to man saying "GodDidIt" instead of honestly replying "I don't know".
The only way we can know anything about God is through revelation from God, but there is more that we don’t know than that we do know. Creation is evidence that God exists, but only to a believer. If all we had as evidence was Creation that would not be a “reason” to believe in God because Creation could have come into existence without God. I hate it when believers say to atheists that is ample evidence; it only makes them look like a dork. As an aside, Baha’is do not believe that God created Creation but rather we believe that God and His Creation have always existed. We believe humans evolved, but God’s Creation always existed.
I'll just repeat ...
Every religion has its "messengers" who supposedly got "the Word of God" from God. The bottom line is that a mere mortal man/men started stories, wrote stories, improvised stories, perpetuated stories, etc.
I’ll just refer you back up to what I believe. Of course you can no more “prove” what you believe than I can prove what I believe.
If Baha'i sexual standards are "higher" it is because the old man who wrote them was more of a prude than some of his predecessors.
No, not at all. The standards came from God to Baha’u’llah and then He wrote them down. I tend to take them more literally than most Baha’is, but maybe that is because I know the potential sex has to take over one’s life, so I know what Baha’u’llah wrote what He did about “self and passion.” Let’s just say I have never been one to do things “halfway” as you can see by how many posts I write and how much I write in my posts. All I can say is that for everything there is a season. One season ends and another begins. I had a school season and sex season and now I am in a God season. I think this is the last season of my life. I spent way too much time in those other seasons.
Trailblazer said: Allowing sex only in marriage is not suppressing the sex instinct.
ecco said: It is for unmarried people.
That is true. I don’t know what to say to that except that I believe the proper use of the sex instinct is only in marriage. That is probably the main reason we got married only three weeks after we met. Otherwise, we could have waited, but having already waited 32 years......
Obviously that prohibition presents problems for many people and they all have to decide how to handle it, if they are religious. If they are not religious, it is just a matter of what they consider moral. I never considered sex outside of wedlock to be moral, even before I believed in God or had a religion. My parents did not teach me anything, they were not religious and were absentee. I cannot say why I thought that way, I just did. My sister went another route. My best friend in high school had sex with many boys. Back then, I did have a high sex drive but I just did not think it was moral to have sex out of wedlock. I was a hippie and took all the drugs but never went for free love.
I never said it was. It's about the guilt heaped upon people by people with religious views such as yours.
I do not heap anything on anyone. Although on a forum I will explain what I believe, if there are homosexuals on that forum I am super sensitive to their feelings. One of the posters I posted to for a long time was an atheist homosexual and I hated it when the Christians ganged up on him, saying he was going to hell just for being a homosexual. Of course, they already told him he was going to hell for being an atheist.
I gave those Christians a piece of my mind, pointing out their hypocrisy. I pointed out that I think it is more moral for a married homosexual to have sex than for an unmarried Christian to have sex. Funny thing, I got no responses from those Christians. Probably only a minority of Christians abstain from sex until they get married and many live together out of wedlock. Baha’is are stricter than Christians because Baha’u’llah made it very clear what the Law is. It is not as clear what the Bible says about fornication as is Baha’i Law.
OK. But what about the 13 year old son of Baha'i parents who is caught masturbating - guilt trip. What about the 13 year old daughter of Baha'i parents who tells her parents that she is a lesbian - guilt trip.
Guilt, whether imposed by Baha'i or Baptist or Muslim parents, leads to suicides.
Guilt is not the only thing that leads to suicides, and guilt can be over things other than sex. I know, because I used to feel guilty about everything and it is a primary contributor to depression, which is anger turned inward. Depression is the main thing that leads to suicides. I know because I have been suicidal many times.
I cannot say what Baha’i parents do. I was never a parent but had I been, I never would have put a guilt trip on my children. But you are right about the guilt trip. A few months ago, I counseled a young Baha’i woman from a forum whose father was a Muslim, her mother a Baha’i. She had made a mistake and went further with a boy than she wanted to, although not all the way. She thought her life had ended, she felt so guilty and so ashamed. She never told her parents. She was even wondering if she could follow through with her plans for college. Luckily I was able to help her realize it was not the end of the world, it was not a big deal, it was just a learning experience. It took a lot of explaining. Of course, I knew how she felt about the guilt, since I had felt so guilty over other things.
