by Kharon » September 28th, 2012, 6:10 pm
No. However you appear to have made up your mind already, but consider this:
Sperm that fail to fertilize an egg, for any reason, die whether you masturbate or not. Therefore if "killing a potential you" or "killing potential offspring" is a sin, then it is a sin to have sex any less often than approximately every 11 weeks, whether you are married or not. As a result, a God judging people for allowing sperm to die without attempting to fertilize an egg would need to prosecute every male who ever lived. Abstinence would be as foul of a sin as masturbation, and the only holy or righteous act would be to make love at least once every 11 weeks.
A god who only punishes a specific subset of these men, those who release their seed through masturbation, is imposing an arbitrary restriction on his own rule of what a murder is, and is being unnecessarily cruel. Such a god would, by this act, not be a "good" god, as he punishes men simply for performing a satisfying act because it has the same result as taking no action -- killing sperm.
Therefore, we can conclude that regardless of what religion may say or claim, either it is not a sin to kill sperm, or we will all be punished for sperm which have died without attempting to fertilize an egg, and also that any god who would punish a man for this is not good.
With that in mind, you can choose to stop masturbating for any reason you want, but I believe that "it's a sin", like most religious rationales, is a cop-out for rationally thinking and making your own decision. Make your own decision about whether you think you want to give up masturbation instead of relying on scriptures or religious opinions to make the decision for you.[/list]