*Immoral adults ensalved by lust are not helping the situation by pretending their own perversions are normal.*

Sex and lust are perfectly natural and normal, Runner. I bet that
you had erections a long time before you got married. All very
natural.

Christians really need to loosen up on this one, no wonder so
many are going to Islam, where the sex offered is much better.

The Catholic Church has lost huge numbers of followers, due to
their backward family planning ideology

I wonder how much of the ancient religions' attitudes towards sex ("dirty" etc.) is due to simple physiology?
What sort of town planner would put a playground in the middle of a sewerage works?

In answer to the original question: The guy who did the study ("who founded Recovering from Religion in 2009 to help people who needed a support system to help them deal with the aftermath of leaving religion.")seems to reckon that there is no residual feelings of guilt after people left religion. Therefore it should make a difference whether or not people had a religious background.

You said you have read the contents and it is in there so I'm wondering if you missed that or you are just skeptical that the researcher would do valid research given his barrow. If it is the latter I'm with you.

Can someone explain what is it about sex that can invoke/create/generate guilt?

I've racked my brains to recall one single instance where I've said to myself "ooops. Now I feel guilty". But I've failed, utterly.

Can someone clue me in?

Give examples.

Guilt is probably more a women thing Pericles, at least as applies to the past in relation to stigma attached around women and sex. Some experts write that it had more to do with issues of paternity.

Ultimately guilt is self-imposed deal with that and you solve the problem.

No, no, no, pelican.

The guilt can very much be a male thing too when religion is involved. It is, after all, one of the core methods religion uses to keep its followers coming back for “salvation” - by making a sin out of something we enjoy and where failure will be inevitable.

I can remember, only too vividly, the nauseating feeling of guilt after my first time. I was still in high school - long before I left the church - and had every intention of saving myself for marriage (although I can now see how problematic doing so would have been). But as with even those in the highest positions of religious authority, I crumbled and the fact that I had the audacity to fall very much in love with this girl - not to mention how extremely beautiful and she was - didn’t exactly help my predicament.

What should have been a momentous milestone in my life was ruined by an unfounded and irrational guilt.

Needless to say, numerous “sinful encounters” followed throughout the course of the relationship, but the feelings of guilt subsided gradually over many months, only because I constantly reminded myself that I at least *wanted* to marry her.

Pericles,

I hope this helps answer your question too.

The only other point I could add, is that unlike Protestant married couples, Catholic married couples feel guilt when they have sex for pleasure alone as they believe that it’s a sin unless you’re trying to procreate (which explains the differences in the study between Lutherans and Catholics).*

“Every sperm is sacred, every sperm is great,
If a sperm is wasted, god gets quite irate…” - Monty Python

If there are married Protestant couples who feel guilt, then I suspect it would be the kinds who believe that the missionary position is the only acceptable form of sexual activity but continuously give into to their desires to be more adventurous.

*While I’m generalising for the sake of brevity, this is the doctrine as accepted by the church hierarchy. Last I checked anyway.