Do Angels Have Sex?
First, full disclosure. I took eight credits in theology and minored in Thomistic Philosophy at a Catholic university. No, not OPtimistic philosophy – Thomistic, as propounded by Thomas Aquinas, who was later canonized but fortunately escaped unharmed.
Later, I converted to Avarice, Concupiscence, and Sloth; but the point is, I do know about angels, saints, sinners, virtues and vices, mortal sins (felonies) and venial sins (misdemeanors).
The cardinal virtues are wisdom, courage, temperance, and justice, the practice of which, at the moment, risks federal prosecution or, at the very least, vituperation on talk radio.
The Christian virtues are faith, hope, and charity, to which some moralizers have added patience, humility, and what used to be called long-sufferingness, later rebranded as suffering catfish.
Abstinence, quite properly, was never part of the deal. Abstinence is a counterfeit virtue developed at the James Dobson hypocrisy factory and espoused by right-wingers and extreme fundamentalists as God’s own political solution to teenage pregnancy and retro-viruses.
Now I learn that among Evangelical Christians, according to several recent studies, teenagers tend to have sex sooner (and with bigger grins on their faces) than mainstream Protestant kids.
Of course people who preach abstinence don’t necessarily practice it, and kids wise up to that fact early on. As for people who do practice it, nobody listens to them anyway. How else would they have become abstinent? So, back to my original question:
Do angels have sex? And, if so, do they sire baby angels to populate the earth?
Empirically, how many angels do you know? And where else would you look for angels – in the loftiest realms of society? How many angels do you see in the White House, the Congress, and the great mega-corporations who decide what you’ll have to pay for gasoline, health care, or cable TV?
And, by the way, how many angels can dance on the head of a pin? None, you idiot; stick to the point.
In Darwinian terms, a non-reproducing species is not long for this dog-eat-dog world. (Do dogs eat dogs?) Clearly, angels are absent. Inferentially, either they are abstinent or they use condoms. Or, they never came down from the clouds after all. Absence of evidence is not evidence for abstinence.
Bottom line: there is a significant cleavage between preachment and practice, and teens with significant cleavages are subjected to temptations that militate not only against abstinence but against the very existence of angels.
So what is there left to believe in?
If you’ve tried hard to be a good parent, you should believe in your kids.
No Comments »
No comments yet.
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Line and paragraph breaks automatic, e-mail address never displayed, HTML allowed: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>