When I was in my early 20s, I attended?a dinner party hosted by a friend of a friend. This was a crowd of white, college educated young people discussing all kinds of topics while the?alcohol flowed freely.?I finally had enough beer to chime in on the conversation and my first question basically wound up shutting the party down. I asked:
“Which has killed more people — sex or religion?”
Of course, the overwhelming majority of the people attending the party said religion, and me — being the contrarian that I am?– let’s just say that I couldn’t help myself. I took the position that sex has killed more people, and I almost wound up getting into a fist fight with a very drunk young man who passionately disagreed.
So the dinner party pretty much died at the early?hour?of 1:00 a.m.
This question had remained in my thoughts for many years, and up until now I had been very careful where I asked it.
Let’s look at the ways people die from both sex and religion, beginning with Religion.
- Religious ceremonies (sacrifices, exorcisms, baptisms, snake handling, ect…)
- Refusal of medical treatment?due to religious beliefs
- Religious wars
- Poor health (caused by stress from religious based problems)
- Suicide
- Executions carried out because of laws influenced by religion
- Murder (different from religious wars, for example honor killings)
Let’s look at the different ways people die from sex.
- Giving birth. While it’s possible to get pregnant without having sex, let’s not make it too complicated.
- Sexually transmitted diseases
- Suicide
- Rape
- Poor health caused by the stress of a relationship or obsession
- Murder.?Jealous spouses and lovers who catch someone cheating, angry parents, stalker ex-lovers, serial killers with sexual motivations, racial jealousy, and I am sure there are many other sex motivated or influenced reasons we could find for murder.
- Death during sex
- Male ejaculation.?It’s still up for debate on whether it’s fair to consider sperm to be human beings.
Now with some of these reasons listed, there is a “grey area.” In other words, a crossover between sex and religious deaths. For example, a man becomes suicide bomber who kills for religious reasons but is strongly motivated by having 72 virgins upon his death. Or a Christian cult leader sleeps with all the women in his cult, leading one to die from giving birth. There are a lot of examples where sex, religion, and death exist in perfect harmony.
I think the main reason that people feel that religion is the primary cause of death is because many people hate religion, or at least have a very unfavorable opinion of it. They see all the strife and conflict brought about because of religious beliefs. Religion is also boring and usually has a lot of rules to follow. It’s like an overbearing parent for your soul. So for most people who easily choose religion, I think it’s based on how they feel about religion, not necessarily the “raw numbers.” I’ll admit I could not find “raw numbers” to support either argument.
The case that sex kills more people is something I think people have trouble accepting, because sex is quite frankly one of the most pleasurable things humans experience while they are alive. Sex is something that virtually every human being on the planet has multiple times within their life time, while many people may never be religious.
Deaths from sex are also so common that most people don’t even associate those deaths as being tied to sex. Whereas deaths from religion hits our radar almost immediately. I think of death caused by religion to be like a water spout that turns off and on in large bursts. Meanwhile, death from sex is more like a steady sustained leak that never turns off.
The French use an idiom to describe the concept of an orgasm,?la petite mort, French for “the little death.” What are your thoughts?
