To condemn the natural instincts in the name of religion and God...

To condemn the natural instincts in the name of religion and God, to sanctify mockery and celibacy, to decry wedlock, when the survival of humankind depends on the founding of families; to call all sex dirty and irreligious, to sanctify poverty and indigence, and to proclaim that man should seek the happiness of soul and spirit in the next world while abjuring this, is to make a tragic error and to fall into the most serious of heresies.

Religion's task is to acknowledge the instincts; to improve, to steer, and to govern them; not to deny or obliterate them. Man's nature is such that the spiritual and the…