What is wrong with masturbation?

Onan was not a masturbator. He just practiced coitus interruptus, exploited his wife. The Bible said God stuck him down. I'm not a Biblical literalist. Biblical writers were just trying to explain unexplained death.

So what's wrong?

Youre wasting your time.

I'm certainly not saying that everything in the bible is gold, but I'm certainly not going to act as though there is nothing wise contained therein either.

Has been twisted into so many perverted ways.

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote many words that most would agree were very wise indeed. That does not prevent his words from being twisted and perverted into ill use. It also doesn't mean that we should ignore or avoid his writings.

HEY... NOT LIKE THAT!

She was his siter-in-law. What that was was a "Levirite marriage," wherein the younger brother of a married man who dies with no heir is obligated to beget a child with his brother's widow, which child will then be considered his dead brother's son. Onan pulled out because if his brother had an heir, he himself would inherit less when his father died. There are theologians who consider that treachery to be part and parcel to the "sin of Onan," instead of or in addition to the spilling of seed.

So whack it like there's no tomorrow, people!

He was supposed to impregnate his brother's wife after his brother died, so that his brother would have an heir. (They had some weird rules back then.) But Onan wanted the inheritance, so he "spilled his seed" so as to deny his dead brother an heir.

:silly:

not lusting business.

Of course, that would mean that if you masturbated while thinking about your wife, it should be ok.

The Bible pretty much makes it clear that our joy buttons are for procreation only. And even then its not exactly happy that it occurrs at all.

But the sociological reason perhaps goes back to the origins of the Christian sect.

Early Christians sects differed from the surrounding pagan systems in that they seemed to be primarily experential rather than ideological. That is the adherants believed they could commune with their diety in a number of ways.

There were a vast number of differing sects practicing different versions of communion with the diety. According to various descriptions their practices ranged from fasting, drugs, self flagilation, sex, meditation/prayer, alcohol, and any other method they could come up with the alter their state of mind.

Eventually the conflicts between competing sects lead to a few dominant methodologies. In the end the official means of communing with god became controled by the church and were folded into the ceremonies.

A major problem with a belief system that advocated communing with the diety is that the clergy lose control of the direction the religion is heading in. So after the purge of the opposing methodolgies the clergy also sealed the means of communing away from the adherants along with the bible. Such knowledge was restricted to the clergy and only a watered down version was allowed access to the practitioners. We see these echoes to this day in the form of waifers and wine as well as prayers and fasting.

But the problem of the other means of accessing this altered state of mind still existed. As in any competing system it demonized the opposition. Thus the practices that were not incoprorated in the winning side became associated with anything evil and tainted. Thus sex, drugs, and such excesses of substances were demonized.

Onan a man who spilled his seed (sperm) on the ground, and was struck dead by God...This story can be found in the Bible in Genesis 38 and 49, Matthew 1 and Luke 3.

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/er_and_onan/gn38_01.html

The Story of Er and Onan

Gn 38:7
But Judah's firstborn Er was offensive to Yahweh, and Yahweh killed him.



Gn 38:8
Judah said to Onan, 'Have sex with your brother's wife, performing the duty of a brother-in-law to her, and raise offspring for your brother.'




Gn 38
But knowing that the child would not be his, whenever Onan had sex with his brother's wife, he would spill his semen on the ground to avoid giving offspring to his brother.



Gn 38:10
What he did offended Yahweh, and Yahweh killed him too

you shouldn't do anything that is pleasant and fun. Christians teach that removing fun is the goal of life. Look at Arkansas and their ban on sex toys.

That may be what Puritans are taught--and not all Puritans are Christians. Remember how the Maoists told young Chinese that they should be abstinent until marriage at the age of 25 for women and 30 for men? (This doesn't mean they actually followed the rule, of course, but if your Red Guard comrade found out that you were having premarital sex and wanted to get you in trouble for it, watch out.)

So I don't know from where you summon the authority to imply that all of Christianity teaches this.

Paul Tillich:

Joy is demanded, and it can be given. It is not a thing one simply has. It is not easy to attain. It is and always was a rare and precious thing. . . .

. . . many Christians try to compromise. They try to hide their feeling of joy, or they try to avoid joys which are too intense, in order to avoid self-accusations which are too harsh. Such an experience of the suppression of joy, and guilt about joy in Christian groups, almost drove me to a break with Christianity. What passes for joy in these groups is an emaciated, intentionally childish, unexciting, unecstatic thing, without color and danger, without heights and depths. . . .

Joy seems to be the opposite of pain. But we know that pain and joy can exist together. Not joy but pleasure is the opposite of pain. . . .

Our joy about knowing truth and experiencing beauty is spoiled if we enjoy not the truth and the beauty but the fact that it is I who enjoys them. . . .

Power can give joy only if it is free from the pleasure about having power and if it is a method of creating something worthwhile. Love relations, most conspicuously relations between the sexes, remain without joy if we use the other one as a means for pleasure or as a means to escape pain. . . .

Every human relation is joyless in which the other person is not sought because of what he is in himself, but because of the pleasure he can give us and the pain from which he can protect us. To seek pleasure for the sake of pleasure is to avoid reality, the reality of other beings and the reality of ourselves. . . .

Mere pleasure, in yourselves and in all other beings, remains in the realm of illusion about reality. Joy is born out of union with reality itself. . . .

And so we use them for a kind of pleasure which can be called "fun." But it is not the creative kind of fun often connected with play; it is, rather, a shallow, distracting, greedy way of "having fun." And it is not by chance that it is that type of fun which can easily be commercialized, for it is dependent on calculable reactions, without passion, without risk, without love. Of all the dangers that threaten our civilization, this is one of the most dangerous ones: the escape from one's emptiness through a "fun" which makes joy impossible. . . .

Do joy and pleasure exclude each other? By no means! The fulfillment of the center of our being does not exclude partial and peripheral fulfillments. . . .

We must challenge not only those who seek pleasure for pleasure's sake, but also those who reject pleasure because it is pleasure. Man enjoys eating and drinking, beyond the mere animal need of them. It is a partial ever-repeated fulfillment of his striving for life; therefore, it is pleasure and gives joy of life. Man enjoys playing and dancing, the beauty of nature, and the ecstasy of love. They fulfill some of his most intensive strivings for life; therefore, they are pleasure and give joy of life. Man enjoys the power of knowledge and the fascination of art. They fulfill some of his highest strivings for life; therefore, they are pleasure and give joy of life. Man enjoys the community of men in family, friendship, and the social group. They fulfill some fundamental strivings for life; therefore, they are pleasure and give joy of life. . . .

But Jesus, in contrast to John the Baptist, was called a glutton and a drunkard by His critics. In all these warnings against pleasure, truth is mixed with untruth. Insofar as they strengthen our responsibility, they are true; insofar as they undercut our joy, they are wrong. Therefore let me give another criterion for accepting or rejecting pleasures, the criterion indicated in our text: Those pleasures are good which go together with joy; those are bad which prevent joy. . . .

Joy is more than pleasure; and it is more than happiness. Happiness is a state of mind which lasts for a longer or shorter time and is dependent on many conditions, external and internal. . . . Happiness can stand a large amount of pain and lack of pleasure. But happiness cannot stand the lack of joy. For joy is the expression of our essential and central fulfillment.

Blessedness is the eternal element in joy, that which makes it possible for joy to include in itself the sorrow out of which it arises, and which it takes into itself. In the Beatitudes, Jesus calls the poor, those who mourn, those who hunger and thirst, those who are persecuted, "blessed." And He says to them: "Rejoice and be glad!" Joy within sorrow is possible to those who are blessed, to those in whom joy has the dimension of the eternal. . . .

This cannot be otherwise, for blessedness is the expression of God's eternal fulfillment. Blessed are those who participate in this fulfillment here and now. Certainly eternal fulfillment must be seen not only as eternal which is present, but also as eternal which is future. But if it is not seen in the present, it cannot be seen at all. . . .

Where there is joy, there is fulfillment. And where there is fulfillment, there is joy. In fulfillment and joy the inner aim of life, the meaning of creation, and the end of salvation, are attained.

Full text: (nuts link is broken)

I'm not a biblical literalist either so I can't find any ground to say that anything is wrong with it.

That's just scary!

;)

This website has more info. And here.

I read an essay once by a "secular" Jewish scholar ( I can't remember his name, Bohm? ).

Though the essay wasn't directly about masturbation (and didn't mention it) there were many parts of the essay that easily could be construed to refer to that as well as pornography (and I think it was meant to be understood that masturbation was the subject, but it was more philosophical, but everyone knows what he was talking about).

The main argument was about objectification and how "certain acts" intensify that dualistic dehumanizing quality to such a point that we only see people in an either/or category of desirable/undesirable and that we can further that to the point of a fetishizing neurosis.

It's not that we should feel guilty about erotic pleasure, but that without the humanizing aspect of relationship we alienate ourselves through habituation into objectifying people. Of course we do this in so many other areas of life, but the intensity of the sexual impulse "solidifies" this fixation in a deeper way.

Anyone know the essay I'm talking about?

which is corrupting your body that is a temple. Also, the lust sin aspect.