Do Religious People Have A Higher Libido?

[Joker37]

Is it true that religious people have a higher libido than non-religious people? What are the latest scientific evidence suggesting?

 

What do you think?

[dduckwessel]

I don't know about libido but divorce stats reveal an interesting picture:

 

"Divorce rates among born-again Christians were much higher at 27 percent than for other Christian faith groups"

 

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ifm_divo.htm

[CraigD]

Is it true that religious people have a higher libido than non-religious people? What are the latest scientific evidence suggesting?

I’m unaware of any reliable research correlating libido and religiosity. Scientifically, I’m not sure if it’s a datum worth pursuing, because “religious” and “libido” are problematical to define in a useful scientific way – that is, it’s problematical to objectively measure them. For most purposes, they must be measured via self-reporting – a surveyor must simply ask a person “how religious are you” or “how high is your libido”. Even when people answer honestly, these are such subjective concepts that its hard to tell what a given person mean by their answer.

 

If we define “libido” objectively as “frequency of sexual stimulation to orgasm” (eg: in units of number of orgasms per week) and “religious” as answering “yes” to the survey question “are you religious”, my guess is there is no significant correlation. Surveys such as those mentioned in this scienceandreligiontoday article appear at a glance to support my guess.

 

I don't know about libido but divorce stats reveal an interesting picture:

 

"Divorce rates among born-again Christians were much higher at 27 percent than for other Christian faith groups"

 

http://www.religioustolerance.org/ifm_divo.htm

Even more interesting, from religioustolerance.org’s U.S. divorce rates for various faith groups, age groups, & geographic areas, this full breakdown:

Religion    % have been divorced
Jews                         30%
Born-again Christians        27%
Other Christians             24%
Atheists, Agnostics          21%

 

Though interesting statistics, but for the reasons I mention above and others, one that needs to be considered skeptically. For one, these statistics are mostly taken from small, not rigorously statistically controlled telephone opinion surveys. For another, data such as the links dduckwessel and I give above are often poorly referenced, so may not be accurate. For another, many of them are more than 10 years old.

 

 

Reliable negative correlations between household income and divorce rate have been observed – the more money a couple makes, the less likely they are to divorce. Many of these other statistics are, I think, dependent on this correlation.

[dduckwessel]

 

Reliable negative correlations between household income and divorce rate have been observed – the more money a couple makes, the less likely they are to divorce. Many of these other statistics are, I think, dependent on this correlation.

 

This makes a lot of sense because financial concerns put a lot of stress on marriages.

 

As for the libido thing, I think that stress plays a big part in an overfunctioning libido. You may think this is funny but a friend of mine was complaining at the beginning of winter because her husband wanted sex all the time. He's a farmer (I'm sure many of you can relate!! :) ) and that time of year is very stressful for him. I told her he was just stressed and he would settle down soon - he did. I hope you don't mind me sharing this story, it's a little personal I know but I had noticed a pattern around these parts where the men get very depressed at the beginning of winter and since many of them are farmers I assumed their wives probably felt just like my friend!! Therefore, I made the assumption that stress is often the cause of a high libido.

[sanctus]

What are born-again christians?

[dduckwessel]

What are born-again christians?

 

Born-again christians resulted from a distinctive split between mainline Protestant denominations and Azuza Street believers (early 1900's) and centered around the 'gifts of the spirit'.

 

Wickipedia says it best:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Born_again_(Christianity)

[charles brough]

I don't know about libido but divorce stats reveal an interesting picture:

 

"Divorce rates among born-again Christians were much higher at 27 percent than for other Christian faith groups"

 

http://www.religious...rg/ifm_divo.htm

 

 

"Libido?" Joker must be joking! The dubious concepts of Freud are really out of place in the science of biology!

 

Brough

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