I found this to be more than a little amusing:
By the age of 19, 80% of US males and 75% of women have lost their virginity, and 87% of college students have had sex. But this number appears to be much lower at elite (i.e. more intelligent) colleges. According to the article, only 56% of Princeton undergraduates have had intercourse. At Harvard 59% of the undergraduates are non-virgins, and at MIT, only a slight majority, 51%, have had intercourse. Further, only 65% of MIT graduate students have had sex.
The student surveys at MIT and Wellesley also compared virginity by academic major. The chart for Wellesley displayed below shows that 0% of studio art majors were virgins, but 72% of biology majors were virgins, and 83% of biochem and math majors were virgins! Similarly, at MIT 20% of ‘humanities’ majors were virgins, but 73% of biology majors.
I don’t know if you can really blame the graduates at elite East Coast universities for not having sex. I visited more than a few of them during my college years with the track team and I can honestly say that with the exception of Dartmouth, you could count the number of attractive women at Harvard, Princeton, Georgetown and other similar schools on one hand… and leave out your thumb. For a Minnesota boy accustomed to being literally surrounded on every side* by slender, pretty, Scandinavian blondes with blue eyes, these road trips always reminded me of Dante’s journey into the various circles of Hell.
Based on other correlations between atheism and college major, it’s not unreasonable to conclude that a primary cause of evangelical atheism – as opposed to mere skepticism or a personal lack of belief in a deity – is sexual frustration.
But highly intelligent people do tend to be creatures of extremes. Most of the very intelligent women that I knew at university were not sexually active, but a substantial percentage of those that were tended to fall in the “sexual freak” category.
I note that believing that an action is sinful is no basis for concluding that the believer will not engage in the sinful behavior. The Christian belief clearly states that ALL are fallen, including the believer, which is the very reason for Jesus Christ’s crucifixion and the need to repent. And as numerous Christians have pointed out, if sin wasn’t fun, there wouldn’t be any need to preach against it.
On a tangential note, Cosmos earlier asked why some people believed prostitution was immoral. This is either a tremendously ignorant question or a misplaced one. The reason is that prostitution is a clear violation of the Biblical commandment to avoid fornication… and the Scripture even contains specific warnings to avoid prostitutes. Whether one believes in the holy nature of the Bible and its moral precepts or not, the reason is perfectly clear and has been for centuries.
A better question would have been why people, regardless of their beliefs regarding the immoral nature of prostitution, should oppose its legalization. I note that while I believe prostitution is clearly immoral, it should be legal on the basis of it being a simple service transaction like any other. Given that the Bible does not advocate the banning of prostitutes or a legal punishment for engaging their services, merely the personal avoidance of them, I see no religious justification for the modern legal ban on the time-honored profession.
*Seriously. I mean, the janitor at our Northwest gym looked a lot like Scarlett Johansson and no one ever thought for a second that she was anything out of the ordinary. In fact, she wasn’t even as pretty as the previous janitor.