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Atheist Philosopher Warns about the Power of Sex

Alain de Botton, an atheist philosopher and the author of Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believer's Guide to the Uses of Religion, recently (2012) made a surprising and entirely biblical observation about the power of sex. He writes:

Sex is not something we can ever expect to feel easily liberated from …. Tame it though we might try, it tends to wreak havoc across our lives; it leads us to destroy our relationships, threatens our productivity, and compels us to stay up too late in nightclubs talking to people whom we don't like but whose exposed midriffs we wish to touch.
Only religions … see [sex] as something potentially dangerous and needing to be guarded against. Perhaps only after killing many hours online at youporn.com can we appreciate that on this one point [Christianity] has got it right: Sex and sexual images can overwhelm our higher rational faculties with depressing ease. [Christians] are often mocked for being prudish, but they wouldn't judge sex to be quite so bad if they didn't also understand that it could be rather wonderful.

Editor's Note: To make this quote more preachable for a Christian "audience" we substituted the words "Christianity" and "Christians" for "religion" and "religions."

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