Masturbation: Why Does Religion Condemn It ??

Christianity and Judaism both call masturbation something to stay away from.
Why is that??
(I don't know about Buddhism and Hinduism.)
I believe it is because of the connection between (a particular kind of) masturbation and homosexuality.
Orgasm with yourself is fundamentally different than orgasm during heterosexual intercourse.
I mean that in intercourse you aren't looking at your genitals.
For your organ is within the woman's vagina.
So your attention is directed to her as your love object.
Rather than to yourself (your genitals).
But in auto-eroticism you look at your genitals at the very moment of orgasmic pleasure.
What's wrong with that ?? More than you realize.
Pleasure produces liking.
Great pleasure produces the expansion of liking, namely loving.
Now if you are focusing on your sex organ right as you become "all the way up" and especially as you reach orgasm,  
what happens is this:
The pleasure you are feeling = intense love.
But because you are viewing your penis all that love goes to that love object !!
That pleasure/love becomes a lens thru which you see your sex/love organ.
It's as if you were seeing yourself thru "rose-colored glasses."
The pleasure you are feeling makes that part of your body LOOK BETTER than it ordinarily does.
You develop more love for that sex organ as a result.
Each time you look at it as it squirts your semen, you are likely to reinforce that love.
 
What's wrong with that??
Well, your mind operates by inductive reasoning to some extent.
That's where you go from the particular to the general.
Let's say you visit a foreign country as a tourist.
You have a good time, the Chinese people you meet seem friendly, decent.
That single vacation can lead you to generalize til you see all Chinese that way.

Ditto, with your own sex organ.  
You think that it is so good-looking.
You think that only that particular penis is attractive - because it is yours.
But your mind generalizes and so all penises become attractive to you --  
without you knowingly choosing it to be so.
All this same-sex attraction could have been avoided -- if only you had not habitually masturbated  (while holding a mirror so you could gaze upon it, the object of your lust.)
Now you can see why religion condemns masturbation.