Darrel Ray > Quotes

“Religion has the capacity to silence critical thinking and create blindness in entire groups of people. It can infect the minds of followers so completely as to allow the most egregious sexual acts against children and others to go unchallenged for centuries.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected, these ideas are deeply embedded and almost impossible to change.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“All religions have something to say about sex, and it rarely coincides with scientific knowledge of sex and sexuality.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man?”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“It is not very romantic, but reality is a better basis for building a relationship than fantasizing about a soul mate or counting on a god to find you a partner.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The church may update its techniques and methods, but it is always in service of the institutional organism. This is one of the reasons why the pedophile priest issue is and will remain an endemic disease in the Catholic Church.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Humans love sex. Both men and women are wired to be sexually responsive. Sex is the social glue of the human species. It takes heavy-handed training or trauma to kill a human's sex drive.
Religion has that power. Sexual training in guilt, shame, and fear begins virtually at birth by sexualizing nudity. The religious signal is that nudity is always sexual and the body must be covered for modesty. The Adam and Eve story is taught to young children even though they have no way to know what it means.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The abstinence-only programs and reclaimed-virginity movement make men and women ashamed of being sexual creatures before or outside of marriage.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Religion is evolving to survive but is losing the battle in many regions, largely because of the Internet. Sexual information is far more available now, which interferes with religion’s ability to use sexual guilt to perpetuate.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“People develop a conscience with or without religion. Our culture teaches murder and cheating are wrong; we don't need religion to know this.
Guilt comes from a different place in our mental experience, a place that is independent of general cultural training and directly related to religious indoctrination. That is why two people may feel guilt about different things while being equally convinced that cheating and murder are wrong.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Si otras culturas han sobrevivido 10,000 años sin las reglas religiosas del islam, mormonismo, hinduismo o cristianismo, ¿cuál es el propósito de las restricciones y la culpa religiosas?”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Regardless the options you have, the most important thing is to choose consciously. Don't let ancient religious programming dictate your emotional and intellectual responses. You are a biological and social creature living in a biological and social world. Recognizing this gives you the power to make more rational decisions about how you want to enjoy the only life you have.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Treating depression often requires that a patient identifies and changes self-defeating thinking. Identifying religion as the problem is especially difficult, since people often retreat to religion to deal with their depression. In reality, however, while religion promises peace and fulfillment, it often creates more of what caused the depression in the first place.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The more risk averse a person is, the higher his or her religiosity [...]. In other words, risk-averse people don't want to take a chance on getting on the wrong side of god.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“While [female genital mutilation] may have not originated with Islam, it has become an integral part of the religious practice in many regions tied to notions of male dominance and control of female sexuality.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Wherever sexually restrictive religions invade, they bring the tools of repression with them - fear of punishment, shame if caught, guilt that the deity watches and terror of punishment. Islam, Christianity and Judaism, with their patriarchal, asexual god, have systemically overcome local sexual ideas throughout the world and infected cultures with sex-negative practices.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“In the Christian view, sex was an unclean act. Ask Christians, "Did Jesus have sex?" and watch their nonverbal response. Or ask, "Did Peter enjoy sex with his wife?" or "Did Mary and Martha, 'whom Jesus loved,' ever enjoy a good orgasm?" Such questions do not compute in the Christian mind. The Christian founders are seen as asexual.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Sexual preferences develop, evolve and change over a lifetime. [...] Without opportunities for sexual exploration and discovery, how is a 19 to 20-year-old to learn what he or she likes and how his or her body reacts?”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“the more educated and financially successful, the less religious a person is likely to be.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“We acquire both the language and religious concepts from our immediate culture – at the same time. A child cannot discriminate between useful survival information and the emotional and psychological manipulations of religion. Once infected, these ideas are deeply embedded and almost impossible to change. Just as you would be hard pressed to unlearn your language, it’s hard to unlearn your religion.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Religious persons are generally very interested in sex just like any normal person - and have an imagination and the energy for it. When constrained by the guilt cycle, however, they keep it under wraps. When guilt is temporarily removed, they can go to the other extreme. Many can remain in the uninhibited phase for weeks - months at most - then a wave of guilt overtakes them.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The younger a religious person is when she gets married, the less she understands and knows about her sexuality. Add to this the incredible fear of talking about sexual fantasies, masturbation, experimentation and pornography, and a young adult enters a marriage with a serious handicap that can inhibit sexual development for life.
Such people have no template for communication except through their guilt-based training.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The conflict between church teachings and natural desires results in guilt, shame and anger.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Normal people redirect their sexual energy all the time, but religion takes that skill and hijacks it. Religion says, "No, you cannot do that, that is sinful. Direct energy toward god."
Sexual desire does not disappear with increased religiosity and activity. Instead, it gets redirected but the thoughts and incoming stimulation continue.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“We have multiple sex maps - form genetic and epigenetic influences that are largely out of our consciousness to social and cultural influences that may or may not be within our awareness. We are a social and biological species with sexual patterns and tendencies that exist independent of any religion. Religion attempts to force sex into a one-size-fits-all box, placing a layer of complexity on sexuality that is neither realistic nor related to the biological roots of our species.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Living a religious sexual lifestyle is tantamount to living a lie.
Religion distorts our sexuality when the majority of religious people live one life for the public and another in private. It can be as simple as living as a "happily married" couple when you are both miserable with your sex life.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Genetics and epigenetics are far more important in sexuality than any idea of choice. No evidence has been found that anyone chooses their sexuality. Choice is a theological concept, not a biological one.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The sexual map we acquire in youth includes body image, masturbatory guilt, sexual preferences and more. From what turns us on to what turns us off. From attitudes about menstruation to the right of women to wear certain clothing. But using this guilt- and shame-ridden map as a guide to sexuality is like using a map of an ancient city sewer system to locate the fiber optic network. What if the only map we had of a city was made 2,000 years ago? How useful would it be today? My city was an open prairie 2,000 years ago with no roads and maybe a few animal paths. A map of that reality would be of little use today.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“The religious guilt cycle interferes with learning and change. Rather than learning who he is as a sexual being, he measures himself against an impossible religious sexual standard and always comes up short. Absent religion, many unrestricted people can deal with their behavior in a rational manner.”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality

“Theology has not advanced an inch in the last 1,000 years. How much respect does a profession deserve if it cannot add to the knowledge and understanding of man? How much respect does a helping professional deserve who has little or no training in anything but superstition and is not required to adhere to a set of professional ethics?”
― Darrel Ray, Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality