I asked my religious sister how she would describe 'paradise recently', and she used a lot of 'nice' key words such as; fairness/equality/beautiful scenery/at one-ness with all etc etc. I agreed with her, this 'vision' of Paradise was one that most religions use, but wasn't it odd that in the Koran, Allah didn't bother bigging up the 'beautiful' aspects of Heaven, but instead saw it fit to use sex as the main 'carrot'. She then said ; 'Allah knows his creation best, and He knows that sex is on people's minds (men and women) all the time - that's why.' I asked her why she didn't include that in her Paradise description in the first place then (she 'forgot'). She also failed to see the shallow nature of this 'carrot', or the fact that perhaps, just perhaps, spirituality was less about the physical aspects of being human, and more about the divine, innate nature of everything and everyone. Neither did she explain what awaits her, as a woman (bar the beautiful scenery etc). When I mentioned that 'lashings of sex' sounds very much like a man made notion, and a thoroughly immature one at that, she told me I was simply wrong, and that all Mankind really thinks about is shagging, and Because Allah knows everything, he decided to make it very clear what awaits good Muslim men in language they could relate to......but not women (unless they happen to be a black eyed virgin, I guess).
That just about summarises the close mindedness of religious people in general in a paragraph...