Sex and Punishment: Eric Berkowitz Talks 4,000 Years of Judging Desire

"Our sex organs were kind of like hands or feet, they were obedient," says Eric Berkowitz, author of Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire. "After we ate the apple and did what we did, the sex organs to Augustine became like little dictators that we have to either succumb to or overpower."

ReasonTV's Tracy Oppenheimer sat down with Berkowitz to discuss original sin, trends in sex laws, and societies' perceptions of sexual transgressions.

About 9 minutes.

Produced by Tracy Oppenheimer; shot by Zach Weissmueller.
Go to http://reason.com/reasontv/2013/01/28... for downloadable versions and subscribe to Reason TV's YouTube channel to receive automatic updates when new material goes live.

• Category

  News & Politics

[UnusVita]

In what capacity do you study science? I am unimpressed by your relation to doctors as it in no way demonstrates your understanding of medical science, nor of psychology, or biochemistry. I am not suggesting that you don't have an understanding but you will have to be more specific if you are to sway me.

[UnusVita]

I question the science that decrees that people are incapable of making rational decisions until 27. If that were correct the human species would have died out long ago. Think of how many essential decisions you had to make before the age of 27 to reach the age of 27. While it is true that people are more impulsive and less able to connect action and consequence before certain ages it does not mean that they are incapable of sound decision making before then they are simply less able.

[milesbennettdyson]

Showing no knowledge??? I've given you evidence from three different languages on the subject of original sin and Jewish tradition and direct quotes from the English translation of Augustine's De Bono Coniugali. What evidence have you given for your position? "Read your Torah, read your Torah, read your Torah." ~That's not evidence.~ You have no evidence for your position, so your only recourse is to insult me personally. By any objective standard of debate, you've lost.

[Hunterkirk]

Again read the Bible or Torah as it is clear I am discussing a subject with someone who know little on the matter. If you have read it read it again because you are showing no knowledge on it. Granted you may have a beef against Christianity that is hardly a position of logic it is more a position of emotion.

Would you like me to give you a link to Genesis to help you out?

[Hunterkirk]

You must really love robots and ants. You seem to find perfection in slavish mindless following. Thankfully God does not. Christianity (at least the version I understand to be Christianity) does not promote such a mind set.

Anyways I repeat read the Bible or the Jewish Torah. If you have do it again as you really need to refresh your memory. Best of luck with the group think perfection idea. I plan to remain the free thinker God intended me to be.

[milesbennettdyson]

Once again--you, like Augustine, are putting agency where it does not exist. How could Adam and Eve "choose" to disobey without the knowledge of what that disobedience would mean in terms of free will? If they were "innocent" or "prelapsarian" in the Garden, then they couldn't have known the consequences of their actions, and couldn't have made a choice. Their choice was "do what God says, because he says it." No second option; what could else could they have chosen, knowing nothing else?

[milesbennettdyson]

Yes--according to the Original Sin doctrine, God, who is all-knowing, knew that his own race of people, whom he designed in His own image, were going to betray him. Thus, he had to punish the people he created for doing the thing he created them to do (have free will), because they were born wrong just by virtue of being born, and by virtue of being born doomed all mankind. God created human beings just to have an excuse to send them to eternal torment for something they were created to do.

[UnboundEndeavors]

It looks hopeless at moments, but the past wasn't fixed, nor is our future. Both depend on what one person and thereafter many persons do at any given moment.

[UnboundEndeavors]

If you are referring to how parties in a relationship co-mingle or divide property or parental tasks when conducting relationships, that could be settled by means of voluntary contract, much as it is in business. If it's in the contract and the terms violate no previously existing rights, it's obligatory; if it's not in the contract, it's not obligatory. All parties would have to be cautious to get their desired result and it would require "a deal is a deal" ethics, but it's possible.