72 Virgins. Such is the number promised to Muslims (I assume just men) who go to heaven.
I can’t understand why that is not the penalty for Muslims who go to hell.
In order for one man (assuming the afterlife presents full functionality) to please 72 women, he’s going to have to spend his entire afterlife having sex with them. That might sound like paradise until exhaustion and boredom set in. It sounds like paradise to a man used to having only one (very much non-virginal) woman… he’ll quickly find that his old idea of paradise is a terrible burden.
That’s the short-term story. The long-term story is far more horrific.
First comes 72 children. Then 144. Not long after hundreds of children are born. In a way that’s good (for him)… now these women can spend happy time with their children instead of demanding sex from an overworked and exhausted man supposedly living in paradise. But if we’re going to suppose a reality in which sex exists and ejaculation exists and virgins exist then obviously food exists, and these kids need food to survive. So now these 72 women and 1 man are going to have to work for food, or scavenge heaven for food, or pray to Allah or whatever other method they can devise.
We suppose 72 virgins must be heaven because on earth 1 virgin is heaven (actually, experienced women are more heavenly, but who am I to denounce the kind of people who believe 72 more desirable?) but sometimes more is not better.
You might say, well kings throughout history have had many women, sometimes concubines, sometimes wives, depending on the culture. That proves that more is better.
Those women have been in all cases of large numbers slaves. Thus the 72 virgins would be slaves but heaven cannot possibly tolerate slavery, thus the women have sexual and material demands on the single, overworked, exhausted, man.
Perhaps he’ll pray to Allah for deliverance from that life. Perhaps he’ll invent an afterlife for the afterlife. Perhaps he’ll even invent a religion to justify his desire.
Gotta love humans.
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