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advancedatheist comments on Stupid Questions April 2015 - Less Wrong Discussion

7 Post author: Gondolinian 02 April 2015 09:29PM

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Comment author: advancedatheist 04 April 2015 02:26:48AM *  -2 points [-]

Suppose you became deeply religious as a young adult

This assumes that different kinds of religiosity tend to converge on similar ethics about marital commitments and fidelity. You could become "deeply religious" in a way which allows for divorce or outside relationships.

This also assumes that your religion's doctrine on these matters remains stable over many generations. If your religious community accepts 22nd+ Century medicine and permits its members to seek treatment for engineered negligible senescence and superlongevity, then you could live long enough to see your religion undergo a Reformation-like event which allows for a more flexible view of marriage and sexual relationships.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I find Ridley Scott's portrayal of Future Christians in the film Prometheus interesting. The space ship's archaeologist character, Elizabeth Shaw (played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), wears a cross and professes christian beliefs at a time when christianity has apparently gone into decline and christians have become relatively uncommon. Yet as a single christian woman she has a sexual relationship with a man on the ship, which suggests that christian sexual morality during that religion's long twilight will tend to converge with secular moral views.

Comment author: JoshuaZ 04 April 2015 09:40:47PM -1 points [-]

First two paragraphs seem reasonable. To the third though:

I think I've mentioned this before, but I find Ridley Scott's portrayal of Future Christians in the film Prometheus interesting. The space ship's archaeologist character, Elizabeth Shaw (played by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), wears a cross and professes christian beliefs at a time when christianity has apparently gone into decline and christians have become relatively uncommon. Yet as a single christian woman she has a sexual relationship with a man on the ship, which suggests that christian sexual morality during that religion's long twilight will tend to converge with secular moral views.

Many, many self-identified Christians from pretty much all denominations have premarital sex. See e.g. here. And this isn't a new thing, even among the Puritans this was not uncommon (in there care we can tell based on extremely short times between many marriages and when children had their births recorded).