Think about it -who goes to AA meetings? Does a person with no cravings for booze go to AA? Of course not. So why is religious worship in the west like an AA meeting for people addicted to vice? Is it because they have such a hard time being honest, sincere, loving and refraining from wanting to kill their neighbor? And then there’s all this emphasis on sexual morality. How is taking vows of celibacy and chastity supposed to help a person find God? My guess is it has more to do with being popular than any spiritual attainment. Everybody loves a virgin; everybody hates a flesh hound.
If people are ‘addicted to vice’ then why would everyone ‘love a virgin and hate a flesh hound’?
Makes no sense. 
Good question phyllo, but I don’t have a good answer to that. You see, half the things people do make little or no sense. To use the analogy of the alcoholic again, the alcoholic develops a kind of love /hate relationship with the bottle. On the one hand, the bottle is his mistress, on the other, the bottle is this demon controlling his life. I guess it all stems from their complete lack of self-control, so the self disciplined person becomes a kind of idol.
My only motto is everything in moderation. Some people control their vices by avoiding them completely. If I am not compelled to drink against my will, then there is no reason for me to avoid alcohol altogether.
All religions started out as drug cults. Alcohol and magic herbs and mushrooms are the basis of early religious experience.
Can you explain how you concluded that?
With love,
Sanjay
mafdet
?
Not much to think about there. A person who is finally willing to admit that he is an alcoholic, has perhaps hit rock bottom, realizes that he is helpless and hopeless to help himself alone.
Perhaps in part because of the reason I mentioned above. People realize that they are not perfect. Religious people experience a need for God or at least sense that in part they need God.
Alcoholics are shown/taught that they need something greater than themself in order to be transformed - some higher power, not necessarily God, but it’s usually God.
Maybe, maybe not. It may be that or just that they realize they are fallible, weak at times. It’s human to want to worship something - it expands us emotionally and spiritually.
.
I think the main thing about sexual morality is in protecting one’s self from harm and others too - being responsible toward self and others.
Religious people namely priests nuns, etc. take vows of celibacy because the more one does not engage in sex, the more your sexuality, that passionate energy can be other-directed, causes one to reach out to others in a more caring, non-sexual way.
Obviously also, non-sexual intimacy with others may bring about a closer intimacy with god, if that is the purpose.
What does this have to do with thread? I didn’t know you were talking about high school here. lol
lol phyllo, how about “Opposites Attract”? I don’t like to use the word “evil” here but who do you think the deviant/sociopath, psychopath would be more compelled to desire, to possess, to destory – the virgin of course.
He might hang out with the fleshhound but how much satisfaction would that give him save for the romp in bed and the orgasm. Besides, often likes do repel.
The virgin would be so much more attractive beautifully pristine, the road not travelled to the deviant, don’t you think?
It makes ALL the sense.
Or, I just re-read this. Perhaps you were being facetious there. I just now noticed your
In which case, 
Were you being facetious?
No. His post makes no logical sense. If people desire ‘pleasures of the flesh’, then why would they hate those who actually achieve their goals and love those who do not?
It can’t even be explained by envy and jealousy.
He is not writing about deviants, he is writing about religious people in general. And he did say that everybody in that group ‘loves this’ and ‘hates that’. Even if ‘everybody’ is just hyperbole, he is characterizing the majority as thinking that way.
phyllo
Oh, I get it now.
I may be wrong here but re-read your question. It could be based on envy and jealousy. Stinginess, a perspective of why [should] he have something I can’t? Also, misery needs company. Why not?
,
I know this. I just used that term to point out someone who would necessarily be much more turned on by a virgin than a non-virgin. In this day and age, I don’t think it matters to most men, do you?
Yes, and you couldn’t even call that a generalization. Highly presumptious and no room for a changed perspective but can’t really know that untll we that there isn’t.
There is a certain amount of envy -“why should he have it if I don’t”. And there is a certain amount of “misery loves company”. But how much?
It seems to me that a significant factor driving religion is that people try material possessions, booze, drugs and sex and they feel unsatisfied. They ask themselves : “Is that all there is to life?”
They instinctively feel that there is more and that they need more.
“People do not live by bread alone…”
phyllo"
Well, the way I look at it, that might depend on the individual and also on how much he chooses to dwell on it and to feed off of it.
So what you’re saying here is that it is that which makes them turn to religion and God?
That’s not such an easy one, I don’t think.
If there isn’t self-realization and a coming to awareness that those things you mentioned don’t really satisy, except for a moment or two,
then all they’re doing is transferring one addiction and focus to another; namely, God.
If they’ve reached a kind of epiphany and realize that religion and God could be beneficial and give meaning to their life, I mean substantial meaning, then it could work for them.
Does that come from instinct or from experience and having had enough of the other?
"
On the other side of that coin, what just came to mind is that if people could come to realize that they COULD INDEED live by bread alone - bread being symbolic with just being content with enough and realizing that enough is also EVERYTHING - we could always see our cup as half full, instead of half empty, and perhaps simply completely full.
The more we feel there is more and we need it and then get it, the more we will need again and again. A dog chasing its own tail.
Sometimes enough can seem beautiful.
How many individuals think that way and how dominant is that thinking? Far less than the OP suggests.
Some people turn to religion and do not find satisfaction in it either. They engage in extreme religious practices. It seems like an addiction or at least a lack of balance.
The word ‘instinct’ (and intuition) is a catchall to describe thoughts which are not easily explained by reason. Everyone has experience so it cannot be separated out from instinct and intuition.
‘Bread’ symbolizes material needs. One needs bread to feed the body but one also needs that which feeds the spirit or soul.
…aka Hope.
I don’t think that it can be summed up by one word. The word ‘hope’ itself suggests something separate.
Consider just one example:
I can think that I have an important role in the universe. And that is not the same as hoping that I have an important role in the universe.
There is a difference between a noun and a verb.
To hope is not the same as having hope.
Hope and Threat are the two inspires of action in the living, aka the “spirit”.
Moses uses Threat to scatter. Jesus uses Hope to gather.
I think that is a trivial difference.
Jesus said that the Word of God feeds the spirit. The Word of God describes man’s relationship to the universe.
And in more modern analytical terms:
“Word of God” = Perception of Hope and Threat, PHT, guiding all living entities.
…not the hoping or threatening … more than a trivial difference.
What exactly is PHT feeding the spirit?
The inspiration to act, to motivate, to aspire, to live.