The only explanation that evolution can give for sex involves survival. Sex can only be explained if it makes people more likely to survive. Creation can explain the beauty of sex as well.

You bring up an important question: can a natural process like evolution lead to the existence of beauty and related feelings and experiences? I wrote about this a few years ago and I intend to address it here at atheology.com in the near future. I think the answer is yes, but I fully understand why you might be skeptical.

I do not trust scripture just because I feel like it. I trust it because the evidence indicates that it is God’s word. Scripture provides explanations because it gives us a picture of a certain kind of God, and His motives for doing things. That’s why there is the “problem of pain.” Since the Bible teaches about a good God, evil must be explained.

Science does not give the kind of explanations you’re talking about. One branch of science, natural philosophy, only finds patterns (laws), without explaining why they exist. The other branch, natural history, attempts to find out what happened in the past assuming those patterns have always held true. In this branch, evolution does what you are accusing the Bible of doing. It posits survival of the fittest, but if something is still around, it must have survived natural selection, so it is automatically defined as the fittest.

1. The only explanation that evolution can give for sex involves survival. Sex can only be explained if it makes people more likely to survive. Creation can explain the beauty of sex as well. Relationships, pleasure, and family are not merely useful, they are beuatiful because God made them that way.

2. your interpretation of Gen 3:16 (“Your desire shall be for your husband, and he shall rule over you.”) was strange. About every time I hear a Christian explain that verse, there is a different interpretation. I’ve never heard your idea of “desire” meaning specifically “sexual desire,” but I don’t think it makes sense with the “he will rule over you” part. See Genesis 4:7, where the same phrase is used of sin and Cain. A couple of plausible versions I’ve heard are these:
A. Woman will want a loving relationship with man, but he will abuse her.
B. Woman will want to dominate man, but will not be able to (This fits Gen 4:7).
C. Woman’s affections will be toward her husband, and his actions will influence her emotionally. (This one has a lot of complicated Hebrew etymology behind it.)

Why did the Bible’s authors make that assumption? Because they looked around themselves and saw that human beings were fruitful and multiplying. They thought, why are humans fruitful and multiplying? Must be because God wants it that way. But this, you see, is not really an explanation; it is just an assumption by humans that something is that way because God wanted it that way.

But sometimes the authors of the Bible go in the opposite direction (when they observe things in the world which they don’t approve) and assume these undesirable things exist because God did not want them. Hmm, the Bible authors thought, these bad things must exist because somebody disobeyed God.

Biblical accounts of why the world is the way it is boil down to the “explanation” that things are the way they are because God wanted them that way or because somebody disobeyed God. For any particular item, take your pick cafeteria-style whether God ordained it or it resulted from disobedience. For example, you account for lust as disobedience and you account for sexual desire as ordained. (Although Genesis seems to disagree and say that women will feel sexual desire for their husbands as punishment ordained by God.)

So that is why I don’t see quoting of scriptures as providing an adequate explanation for anything. The scripture authors are only noting the way things appear to be, and attributing those things to God or to disobedience.

On the other hand, scientists have discovered that by studying the natural world itself, we can develop useful explanations for things: explanations which can be extensive and coherent. We can study the history of life and see why different species developed as they did, and what contingencies led them to develop the traits and behaviors which they have today. Science is explanatory and scripture, as I hope I’ve convinced you, is not. (Or at best, Biblical explanations are arbitrary: this (which I approve) exists because God wanted it, this (which I do not approve) because somebody disobeyed God.)

So, to say sexual pair-bonding exists or families exist because the Bible says God wanted them to exist, that is not a useful explanation. Why did God want pair-bonding to exist? For example, why not create 5 complementary sexes instead of 2? Why not require the 5 sexes to join in an “intercourse circle” of love in order to reproduce? Or why have reproduction be a bodily thing at all? Why not have no physical sexes at all, and have people simply join their thoughts together in a very loving way, and have that engender a new soul, which then grows a body all on its own.

Unless you or the Bible explain why God made the choices he made, you are not providing explanations for those choices. You are not explaining why sexuality is the way it is. You are simply saying “God” as if that was a magic answer, and “Disobedience” as if that was another magic answer. On the other hand, evolutionary biologists do have explanations (not definitive, but detailed and plausible) for why sexuality developed as it did.

I hope this clarifies my perspective for you.

Perhaps so, if you don’t consider Augustine or the Roman Catholic church to be real Christianity.

Being a protestant, I think that many Roman doctrines stray from real Christianity, and even Augustine was wrong about sex. Look at what the Bible says: it is the one reliable source of the core doctrines of Christianity that have never changed. The errors in the Roman Church’s teaching about sex have been derived from too-high esteem of Greek philosophers, who did not believe that the physical creation was “very good” (Gen 1:31).

What is needed is not an explanation for reproduction. The question, rather, is why sexual reproduction rather than asexual reproduction?

1. Pair Bonding. Pair bonding is good for two (or three or more) reasons.
A. Companionship. Genesis 2:18 says “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” “Helper,” or companion. Not “servant,” as is seen a few verses later: “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” Review Genesis 2:15-25.
B. Symbolism (Eph 5:32). I’m not talking about sign language type stuff. I’m talking about physical and living representations of deeper truths. The love that my parents have for each other and for me has profoundly taught me about my relationship with God and other people. And I know it’s taught them a lot too (see Eph 5:25). As a Christian, I believe in the trinity, so I believe that Christ has always been around, and people who put their faith in Him have always been His church. Galatians helps explain this a bit.
C. Family. you really didn’t address what I said about marriage being the basis of the family, which gives protection and moral training to children. The family is always the basic unit on the Bible, not the individual.

2. Pleasure.
You said that the claim “God likes it a lot” was “not an explanation but simply an assumption.” You apparently didn’t read the passage I noted there, so I’ll paste it in here for you.
“Let your fountain be blessed,
and rejoice in the wife of your youth,
a lovely deer, a graceful doe.
Let her breasts fill you at all times with delight;
be intoxicated always in her love.” (Prov 5: 18-19)
If that’s not sufficient, just tell me; the Bible makes its approbation of sexual pleasure clear. As I said, God invented sex. A good God wants His creatures to have pleasure.

“You end with a condemnation of lust… I take it that this is your attempt to explain “sexual desire” as a consequence of turning from God.”

Lust is not the same as sexual desire. Lust is desire turned selfish. Lust is when sex becomes a mere tool of pleasure rather than an expression of love. Lust is when a man tells his wife, “It’s no fun to have sex with a fat woman; go lose eighty pounds.” At that point, he is using her, not caring for her. Although the Bible does not spell out the difference (it assumes its audience knows it), it is clear that fornication is not the same as sexual intercourse from passages like 1 Cor 7:1-8, where Paul encourages sexual intercourse to prevent fornication.

You say that I “dealt with a straw man rather than the real Christian view.” Perhaps so, if you don’t consider Augustine or the Roman Catholic church to be real Christianity. Even today, unless I’m mistaken, the Church considers sex for a reason other than reproduction to be improper, which is why birth control methods like condoms, IUDs, and the pill are considered sinful. And though sex for reproduction within marriage is acceptable, the Church does not consider it to be as good as abstinence, which is why marriage by its clergy is forbidden. But obviously you take a more favorable view of sex than that institution does.

Sex promotes reproduction, which explains why it has survived natural selection. True, but the Christian God, with his repeated command to “be fruitful and multiply” provides an equally good explanation.

I think you have missed my point here. What is needed is not an explanation for reproduction. The question, rather, is why sexual reproduction rather than asexual reproduction? “Be fruitful and multiply” doesn’t answer that. Later on you say that sexual reproduction exists because “God likes it, a lot”, but this is not an explanation but simply an assumption. It doesn’t become an explanation until you provide God’s reason for liking sex so much.

You do say that God likes sex because it promotes pair-bonding. But why are there pairs to bond? Why are there two sexes in the first place, if the creator is a single being? The Greek and Roman gods were already paired sexually, but monotheism is saddled with a sexless God, so why would that God like sex so much? That is the question that needs answering. (Obviously my facetious answer that God likes to watch is just that: facetious. No answer at all.)

To your credit you do suggest an answer. You argue,

[God] is the bridegroom. Although He does not have bodily functions as we do, the union expressed through sex is a symbol of the greater union between Christ and His church – a permanent love relationship

Your answer is that God created two sexes so that their pair-bonding could stand as a “symbol of the greater union between Christ and His church”. In some sense, it seems kind of vulgar that penises and vaginas and sexual orgasms were created to symbolize the union between Christ and His church. Can such a profoundly important aspect human life really exist only because God needed a symbol?

But the larger problem is that God separated humans into sexes thousands of years (millions, if you are not a young-earth creationist) before Christ appeared on the scene. There was no Christ and His church when sexuality came into being: there was nothing for it to symbolize for thousands (or millions) of years. It would make more sense to turn it around and say Christ and His church symbolize sexuality, since logically the symbol comes after what it symbolizes.

As a comparison, consider the claim that God created the rainbow to symbolize his promise to never again flood the earth. That claim becomes incoherent if rainbows existed before the great flood. The symbol must come after, not before, what it symbolizes. Likewise, neither sex nor pair-bonding can be symbols for Christ and His church because both existed long before humans knew anything at all about Christianity.

You end with a condemnation of lust, apparently seeing it as incompatible with love, and you argue that lust is due to the selfishness introduced by Adam and Eve’s disobedience. I take it that this is your attempt to explain “sexual desire” as a consequence of turning from God, rather than as a specific punishment imposed by God. But Genesis is quite clear that Eve’s “desire” for her husband is one of God’s punishments, along with painful childbirth, and being subject to her husband’s command. Note that it is not an urge for other men that Eve is condemned to, but an urge for her husband. It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the author of Genesis sees sexual pleasure as a punishment. But if God thought that would be a good way to punish people, I’d say He miscalculated.

So I still don’t see a theistic explanation of why God would have created sex. It seems completely out of left field.

Sex helps form bonds. So what? You’re assuming that such an ability promotes survival because, obviously, it has survived. …Unless you can show why natural selection would need it, you’re reasoning in a circle, not explaining anything.

Here I think you miss the boat. You agree that sex help form bonds. But apparently you can’t see why, from a biological perspective, forming long-lasting pair-bonds might be adaptive for humans. Imagine that women gave birth to a litter of 6 or 8 babies at once, and were left to their own devices to take care of all these babies until they could survive on their own. Because human children start out helpless at birth and develop slowly over many years, it ought to be clear that this would probably not be a very successful reproductive strategy in the wild. Having only one baby every year or two, and pair-bonding with a male who helps provide food and protection for the family seems likely to be a much better reproductive strategy for humans, given the great dependency of human babies. It makes it far more likely those babies will survive to adulthood and reproduce.

I stick with my conclusion: sex makes sense in the context of evolution, but if you take away evolution and leave only God as creator, sex doesn’t fit the picture.

First, let’s quickly go over evolution. You said that evolution accounts for sex in three ways.
1. Sex promotes reproduction, which explains why it has survived natural selection. True, but the Christian God, with his repeated command to “be fruitful and multiply” provides an equally good explanation.
2. Sex helps form bonds. So what? You’re assuming that such an ability promotes survival because, obviously, it has survived. But it can only have survived evolution if evolution is true. Unless you can show why natural selection would need it, you’re reasoning in a circle, not explaining anything. However, Christianity accounts for this nicely – more in a minute.
3. Assuming that you’re facts are accurate concerning Bonbos, you have proven that they use sex to avoid conflict. That would make sense even if God designed them. But I’ve never heard of humans having sex to ameliorate inter-group tensions.

Now let’s look at Christianity’s real view of sex.
1. God likes it, a lot (read Prov 5: 18-19). He invented it. He made Adam with physical and spiritual needs for a female counterpart, and showed him all the other animals to demonstrate that they could not match the role. Then he made Eve from Adam, showing their unity. (Adam being created “in the image of God” does not mean that God had a penis. God is spiritual – John 4:24.) Yes, there were orgasms before the fall. The whole ketchup-squirting thing was an absurd attempt of Augustine to deal with his lust problem, but has never been accepted by the whole church, and is not indicated in scripture. Smart people don’t always say smart things. (Case in point: the article I’m commenting one.)
2. Why does God like sex? Because it promotes “pair-bonding” (Gen 2:24). The fact that God created male and female (Gen 1:28) shows that God designed a wonderful union where two people complement each other. Since people are both physical and spiritual, the union takes place on both levels. When that union is formed, there is a family, an institution not only for procreation and protection, but also for training of children and mutual support.
3. God is not “a Divine Voyeur.” In fact, He is the bridegroom. Although He does not have bodily functions as we do, the union expressed through sex is a symbol of the greater union between Christ and His church – a permanent love relationship (Eph 5:32).
4. When Adam and Eve deliberately ignored God’s command, they introduced selfishness into their lives. Lust was a new possibility, because lust is the desire to use sex merely as a tool for physical pleasure, rather than an expression of love and commitment. It is longing after a person’s body, rather than the whole person. That’s why lust and fornication are condemned throughout the Bible. If lust replaces love, you get sadism, where people derive erotic pleasure from cruelty. You get sensuality, where people are so absorbed in physical sex that they can’t even think about God or real relationships. You get sexually transmitted diseases. You get the dissolution of pair-bonding, the destruction of the family, people without lasting relationships, and children without stable homes or parents to teach them about life.
So there’s a primer on Christian sex. Which model do you think better accounts for what we see?

It was in earliest times that Madison Avenue folks realized the great profit in covering genitals, and thus marketed clothing which prevented Gods gift of fornication – making it difficult, thus the excitement of removing clothing to procreate was established.

As I recall, lust was one of the punishments God inflicted on humans, according to Genesis. And clothing — in the form of fig leafs — seems to have predated Madison Avenue by a bit. But if we interpret God as just a plot device used by the author of Genesis, we see that its author seems to agrees with you: after Adam and Eve ate from the tree of knowledge they suddenly realized they were naked, they covered themselves with fig leaves, and one of the “punishments” (i.e. consequences) of this was the appearance of lust.

So that’s the point. Evolution provides a very coherent explanation for sexuality, and the Bible doesn’t. If you think you can provide a “spiritual” explanation for the existence of sex which matches the evolutionary explanation in coherence, please have at it.