[andrepd]

There are "base urges" that are beneficial to suppress, and others not; this is the criterion. You would not suppress the base urge to eat (ironically, fasting for no reason is another prominent feature of many religions) just for its sake, why would you do the same with sex?

I will not respond to the Christian stability claim because that would require more paragraphs than I care to write right now. Suffice to say a cursory look at worldwide religious demographics shows that many of the countries with a higher standard of living are the least religious, and many of the most religious countries are the poorest and most underdeveloped.