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Genesis talks about Adam and Eve becoming suddenly aware of their nakedness and feeling shame. It doesn't really explain why they should be but it seems to suggest that being naked is somehow wrong. Now when a baby is born the doctor doesn't deliver them fully clothed in some stylish designer baby outfit, they're buck naked and a baby doesn't know the difference between a pair of pants and their nose. Clothing is in fact a human invention when human beings migrated to colder climates within a relatively short period of time and out of necessity they used animal hides or whatever else was available to keep them warm. They didn't invent clothing because they suddenly realized that being naked was something shameful. It was a matter of survival and fortunately at that point they had already been using tools and were able to use them with the materials they already had to create primitive clothing.
After countless thousands of years as cultures, religions and societies progressed clothing became something more than protection from the elements. It became a necessity based on established traditions which I can only speculate may have been influenced by the fact that men didn't want other men to see their wives naked because they might have sexual desires for them.
In any case this way of thinking has existed to the present day and religion continues to oppose the idea of exposing too much of the human body.
So here's my question, since we all know that a baby is incapable of understanding the very concept of being naked is there some point in the development of a baby to an adult from a religious perspective in which an individual should suddenly realize that they should be ashamed of being naked?
Well assuming you should be ashamed at all, then it should be sometime after puberty. Being ashamed of your "nakedness" is normally a thing that happens when a person looks at themselves in a sexual way or it is a learned behavior.
The explanation was that they ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; some scholars interpret that to mean they had intercourse, thus losing their innocence.
There is no reason why they should ever be ashamed of being nude. They might be ashamed of how they let their body go, but that is another issue, and does not relates to being nude.
I will remind. The shame - to be naked. It has appeared at the time of hristianization Europe. To take off clothes and to wash off . It meant to wash off water at a christening.
Here. East neighbours were "wild" because washed. Western did not wash.
We know that Greeks were not ashamed of a naked body and any bad and not cultural consequences were not.
There is plenty of nudity among indigenous peoples even today, so it's certainly nothing inherent in the human psyche. It is culturally conditioned.
That's exactly what I was thinking as well. Most such cultures that I can think of do seem to generally cover their tally-whackers with something, but most likely to protect from any thorny plants or vines from snagging tender nads. Males in some tribes (in New Guinea I think) wear outrageously long cones as a fashionable and customary way to display their manhood. These people have lived nude for generations. There's no shame and besides, some of these locations can be too hot and humid for clothing.
In areas of the world where climates are much cooler, adding a few extra layers of artificial "skin" (clothes) makes more sense for warmth, although I've never really figured out the advantage of neckties, other than as decoration. Regardless, on those *ahem* occasions where nudity can be more helpful and less of a hinderance, there's really nothing to be ashamed about. I agree that any feelings of shame tends to be cultural.
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