Pornography: Sin Crouching at the Door
Download the notes and presentation for your own use
Today on the Covenant Eyes Podcast we will be playing segments of our workshop, “Pornography: Sin Crouching at the Door.” Recently I presented this workshop at an Iron Sharpens Iron conference in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In this presentation I will teach on the history of pornography, why pornography is so addictive, why it is becoming widespread in the church, and how to use accountability and filtering software effectively to guard the gates of our hearts and homes.
Please. Consider me one of your detractors. Do you have the courage and integrity to answer your detractors, to either refute them logically or else concede the point openly? We’ll see…
You go merrily on making diagnosis after negligent diagnosis of “porn addiction,” claiming a veritable pandemic, while the vast majority of those *actually* qualified to diagnose psychological addiction to pornography continue to affirm it as quite a rare phenomenon. It’s just another culture of fear, classed with: “Pornography causes violent sexual behavior!” Where is your peer-reviewed evidence for causation? Can you produce it? “Lives are degraded and destroyed by pornography!” But wouldn’t you consider *any* life degraded or destroyed that isn’t lived the way you think it should be lived?
You alarmists lack expert authority yet ever attempt to speak and act as though you possess it. In truth, even seminary training, let alone pew-sitting, does not automatically make one an expert on subjects underlying biblical claims. Yet we are constantly inundated with priests and parishioners alike attempting to speak as the authoritative equals of trained scientists and experts on various scientific subjects, and we are considered “immoral” or “persecutory” if we do not accept them as such. (That science can be wrong is immaterial – so can religion – but in terms of confirmatory track records, science leaves religion in the dust.)
But the so-called experts have agendas, right? Yes, the big, bad experts are wringing their hands and laughing manically while they plot to trip Christians up with “sin”; and Satan planted dinosaur bones to test our faith, as well. Again, where is your peer-reviewed evidence and logical chain of reasoning which establish your wild claims? Why should we trust what you say is true when you produce no valid evidence to support it? Do you think that much of yourself, or do you agree that no one should take you seriously until you can support your assertions with empiric peer-reviewed data? I await your response.
Thank you,
-Danny
Thanks, Danny. I’ll read over your comment carefully over the next day or so. I’d like to write a fitting and thorough response. Great questions you are asking here. Blessings!
Danny,
Thanks for your question. I’d love to pass along the peer-reviewed journals that we have consulted for our information about the effects of habitual pornography use.
The Journal of Adolescent Health is an excellent source of data. When you get some time read through Dolf Zillmann’s article, “Influence of unrestrained access to erotica on adolescents’ and young adults’ dispositions toward sexuality” (Volume 27, Issue 2, Supplement 1). You might also like the article from February 2007, “Trends in youth: Reports of sexual solicitations, harassment and unwanted exposure to pornography on the Internet” (Volume 40, Issue 2).
Some great advice is given to parents concern about overexposure of pornography with their children in The Journal of Applied Developmental Psychology: “Internet: Implications of peer-to-peer file-sharing networks for child development and families” (Volume 25, Issue 6).
I would also refer you to The Journal of Sex Research. In 1993, Brosius, Weaver, and Stabb presented, “Exploiting the social and sexual ‘reality’ of contemporary pornography.”
You also might like Joseph Shepher’s “Pornography: A sociobiological attempt at understanding,” from Ethology and Sociobiology (Volume 6, Issue 2).
If you are more interested in effects of pornography on women, volume 13, issue 1 of Women’s Health Issues presented the paper, “Does pornography influence young women’s sexual behavior?” Very interesting research based on surveys done in Stockholm.
You also might like Bryant Zillmann’s contribution in the Encyclopedia of Criminology and Deviant Behavior: “Pornography: Models of effects on sexual deviancy.”
Beyond these there have been other studies done that are interesting reads. For instance, Youth, Pornography, and the Internet (National Academies Press) does a great job talking about the specifics of the adult entertainment industry and a summary of many empirical studies. You also might like reading some of the work of Normal Doidge, MD, a researcher at Columbia University Center for Psychoanalytic Training. He’s written about some fascinating research on neuroplasticity and its relationship to pornography. Mary Anne Layden, Ph.D., who works at the Center for Cognitive Therapy (co-directing the sexual trauma program) at the University of Pennsylvania, has spoken quite a bit to this issue of sex addiction and its relationship to pornography.
We’ve always tried to dialogue as much as we can on this blog about such matters. Just last week I interviewed Dr. Samir Parikh, chief of the Department of Mental Health and Behavioral Sciences at Max Healthcare, about this issue. He talks about the term computer scatalogia, “the addiction to Internet related pornography wherein Internet pornography becomes a potent form of an addiction like any other and causes significant harm to the self and relationships.”
Now, all of this said, I agree with you that “addiction” can be an overused or undefined term. In most social contexts outside of psychology the term generally refers to the surrender of oneself to something habitual or obsessive. When we use that term on this blog we most certainly refer to this broad definition, not a narrow clinical definition. While many psychologists and psychiatrists recognize the need for therapy around habitual porn use, this does not mean that those described as “addicted” are in need of clinical treatment.
Our concern here is not specifically about the number or percentage of people who are actually diagnosed with sexual addiction problems but the ubiquity of pornography and its sociological effects, the increased risk in our culture for compulsive and addictive behavior. We are also concerned about the great volume of requests we receive from pastors, counselors, educators, parents, and teens who are struggling with these issues.
Thanks again, Danny. Please let me know if you have any other questions for us.
PS: In terms of science leaving religion in the dust, I have very little to say about that except what philosophers like Hume and Nietzsche understood about science and religion. These men correctly asserted that scientific enterprise was based largely on Judeo-Christian presuppositions and goals and therefore doubted the veracity of it. I, for one, believe deeply in scientific enterprises because of my beliefs in God and Christ: because I believe in a God of order who has crafted the universe, I can believe in underlying scientific assumptions (like natural law, causality, etc.) that make doing science possible. How an irreligious person seeks to engage in scientific exploration without these sort of presuppositions is beyond me.
PSS: I don’t know anything about Satan planting dinosaur bones on earth, but I’m sure our president, Ron DeHaas, would love to engage in a dialog with you about that when he has time. He’s a geologist by trade and has engaged with me in some fun conversation about the interplay of theology and earth science.
Thank you for your response. I have read the articles you mentioned. I also reviewed the notes contained in “Pornography – Sin Crouching at the Door.pdf” (http://www.covenanteyes.com/help_and_support/pdfs/Pornography%20-%20Sin%20Crouching%20at%20the%20Door.pdf?promocode=ceblog&utm_source=ceblog&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=ceblog).
I’d like to reiterate that what I requested, indeed what any reasonable person would request, was “peer-reviewed evidence and [a] logical chain of reasoning which establish your wild claims,” not a cobbled hodge-podge of selectively chosen articles and statistics from peer-reviewed data sets to act as a Frankenstein-esque stitch of “evidence” that may seem to those who won’t look any deeper to support what you’ve already decided ahead of time to believe. In other words, you have yet to provide a scientifically peer reviewed logical chain of reasoning which demonstrates that your conclusions logically follow from your premises via the data you have cited. That the data you have cited *may* exist in situ as being scientifically peer reviewed is immaterial, as there exists no consensus (no peer review) among professional scientists, researchers, and academicians that your particular *conclusions* are scientifically valid. For instance, it is as if you’ve cited the fact that 100% of all criminals started out in life drinking milk as evidence that proves your assertion that milk is therefore bad. (Immaterial to this point is the fact that few rare infants lack the enzymatic ability to break down even breast milk.) Even if the fact that 100% of all criminals started out in life drinking milk is scientifically peer reviewed and accepted, it doesn’t automatically mean that your assertion that milk is therefore bad is scientifically peer reviewed and accepted.
The overall problem, however, is that you begin with your conclusion, what-you’ve-already-decided-to-believe, and work backward, ignoring the overwhelming mass of evidence which casts in doubt what-you’ve-already-decided-to-believe while only citing the relative paucity of evidence which supports, or seems to support, or can be twisted around to seem to support it. You have not provided a peer-reviewed and accepted logical chain of reasoning to link your premises, through the articles and data you cited, to your conclusions.
As for your presentation, it’s easily dispensed with as well. For instance, you have ignored the obvious conflict of interests when you cited as main evidence, “Over 50% of pastors say that pornography addiction is the most damaging sexual issue in their congregations. (In March 2005 Christianity Today published the results of a study called ‘Christians and Sex’ in their Leadership Journal, saying 57% of pastors surveyed said addiction to pornography is the most sexually damaging issue to their congregation.)” Further, how has it been established that these pastors are qualified to make such statements? This in no way constitutes valid evidence, as it makes scientific claims that are not borne out by even the basic tenets of scientific peer review. Even worse, your next citation claims, “A recent survey suggested that 50% of Christian men say they are addicted to pornography. (Reported on Marketwire.com (August 7, 2006). ‘ChristiaNet Poll Finds That Evangelicals Are Addicted to Porn.’)” Likewise, these Christian men are in no way qualified to diagnose themselves as addicted to pornography, whether such addiction is broadly defined as troublesome obsession or narrowly defined as clinical addiction. (If I got it in my head that breathing were a sin, and tried my best to stop but to no avail as I just keep passing out and waking up to find I’m still breathing, then it might very well seem to me that I’m addicted to respiration; however, that obviously doesn’t mean it’s true.) This citation fails on similar grounds as the first.
There is a problem with your statement in your response to me above that, “In most social contexts outside of psychology the term ['addiction'] generally refers to the surrender of oneself to something habitual or obsessive,” to delineate a “broad definition” from a “narrow clinical definition.” Your arguments seem predicated on the “narrow clinical definition” alone, given your discussion of dopamine and your comparison to heroin addiction and cocaine use, making the “broad definition” moot. Further, I would challenge you to support your assertion that, “…many psychologists and psychiatrists recognize the need for therapy around [the 'broad definition' of] habitual porn use.” In accordance with the way you are defining “habitual,” it can just as easily be said that many married couples have habitual sex. It is not automatically cause for alarm when humans do something with monthly, weekly, or even daily regularity. Your concern is wholly predicated on your prima facie assumption that pornography is a bad thing for most people, and this you have yet to demonstrate.
The next two-and-a-half pages of your presentation, while ostensibly true, are predicated on the unestablished assumption that the spread of pornography on the heels of technology should be any more alarming than the spread of ever-widening circles of communication on the heels of technology, or than anything else which technology has enhanced and expanded.
The next page-and-a-half takes off running on an extreme minority opinion based upon the widely peer reviewed and long-since *discredited* work of Satinover and Brooks. This discredit revolves mainly around failure to properly apply the rigors of the Scientific Method in amassing and interpreting data, as well as logically linking their premises to their conclusions through those faulty data and interpretations. You are, and for that matter anyone else is, perfectly capable of doing the *bias-balanced*, *objective* research and finding out whether Satinover and Brooks are reliable sources of information on the subject matter. Their data do not logically establish the claims they make, and this has been amply shown in the results of the scientific peer review process in the literature. Because you begin with your conclusion, rather than ending with your conclusion as science and logic dictate, you use a scare tactic to make it seem as though pornography causing a release of dopamine is a bad thing. The truth is that all sex of any kind whatsoever causes the release of dopamine. So, for that matter, does eating. It’s part of the brain’s reward mechanism to reinforce behavior that leads to survival. Exploring the sexual aspect of one’s nature has obvious implications for the survival of the human species, as does eating. This is why our brains reward us. You *still* have not established that pathological addiction, or even lesser, *objectively* troublesome obsession, exists in such great measure, yet you insist on continuing to use the word “addiction” in your presentations. To my mind, this shows a clear lack of integrity.
Further, I seriously question the integrity of sprinkling wild claims into your presentation such as, “Clinical psychologists are seeing men and women line up outside their doors to confess their sex addictions, and every time, when you ask where all these people have come from, the psychologists say that it is because of the Internet.” Where is your evidence for this claim? Again, those *actually* qualified to diagnose psychological addiction to pornography, or even to recognize pathologically obsessive behavior, continue to affirm it as quite a rare phenomenon; and I would remind you that just because it *may* be the case that people are lining up outside psychologists’ doors to confess their “sex addictions” (self-diagnosis), it in no way establishes that addiction or even unhealthy obsession objectively exists in those cases at all. Many clinical psychologists may help paying patients to identify the underlying reasons for their use of pornography if those patients insist that it’s gotten out of hand in their subjective lay opinion (based on what the Church has told them), but this in no way equates to objective obsessional behavior, let alone the clinical pathology of addiction.
Your laments about the accessibility of pornography to minors, while important, are immaterial to the question of whether addiction to porn, broadly or narrowly defined, exists among adults and society at large as the pandemic you claim it does, as well as to whether pornography does the harm you claim it does. You have utterly failed to establish these claims, as have your informational sources. Statistical correlation does *not* establish causation.
The remaining pages of your presentation carry on as if your initial premises had been established, though they most assuredly were not, and thus the rest of your presentation must be held as logically unestablished as well. This is the nature of logic and the Scientific Method: even *if* you turn out to be correct in your assertions, you will still have been wrong to say that your assertions have been logically established with a compelling body of empiric evidence, all peer reviewed and accepted. In other words, non sequitur—your conclusions do not logically follow from your premises and presented data. Indeed, even if the data you cited were valid, you have not presented a scientifically peer reviewed logical chain of reasoning which demonstrates an accepted link between your premises and your conclusions.
Finally, the interstitial smattering of religiosity in your presentation is the most unsupported of all. Where are your compelling body of empiric evidence and logical chain of reasoning which establish your bible is the word of a supreme being, which would support your presupposition that, for instance, pornography is sinful and interferes with your god’s “plan”? Where is your evidence that your bible has any relevance whatsoever to anyone? The so-called evidence for such has been brought up and dispensed with, brought up and dispensed with, over and over again since before Celsus. However, the problem remains today because most fail to take seriously their ethical responsibility to become informed in a bias-balanced, objective manner with a truly open mind *before* deciding what to believe (not to mention due to the centuries during which Christianity forcibly wielded so much power as to act as de facto thought police). In other words, even if a negative could be proven, such as, “The Christian god does not exist,” it wouldn’t matter in a society where few lift a finger to inform themselves objectively.
I could present far more evidence which casts what you’ve already decided to believe in doubt than you can provide for support, but what would that ultimately mean? It wouldn’t guarantee that I was right. Let me say here, now, that no one should take my word for it, nor yours, nor one’s priests, pastors, or preachers, nor a book whose provenance is dubious at best. Instead, one should do the bias-balanced, objective research with a truly open mind on one’s own and abide by the results, regardless of preconceived ideas and indoctrinations—to, as Thomas Jefferson implored his nephew, Peter Carr, “Fix reason firmly in her seat and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion.” Does your presentation encourage this? Quite the opposite. It encourages intellectual laziness, as: (1) your citations fail to meet the criteria of fairness, balance, and avoidance of conflicts of interest, denying the reader the chance to make up his/her own mind based on a balanced, realistic picture of the issue; (2) your data and arguments mistake mere statistical correlation with actual logical causation; and (3) throughout, you use language that begs the question, encouraging the reader to accept that you’ve already established your premises (when you have not), and to thus accept your conclusions as having already been logically established.
My mind remains open, but thus far all I have seen is psychosexually immature religious doctrine with no basis in scientific evidence or logical discourse. Why should I, then — indeed, why should anyone — accept your conclusions?
I consider your conclusions to be refuted by virtue of the basic machinery of logic. Will others who have taken seriously their ethical responsibility to become informed in a *bias-balanced*, *objective* manner consider them refuted as well? My guess is a resounding yes. Can you refute these observations, or else concede the points? Can you provide a scientifically peer reviewed and accepted logical chain of reasoning replete with valid empiric evidence which serve to establish that your conclusions follow from your premises?
(Because it’s been my experience that firm challenge is often misinterpreted by religionists as persecution of some description, let me point out that the tone is: first, not flippantly adopted but quite purposeful, and second, a reaction to the harm which psychosexually immature religious doctrine and sexual repression do to society. The emotional subtext would be similar to William Lloyd Garrison’s statements in “The Liberator” in 1831: “I am aware that many object to the severity of my language; but is there not cause for severity? I will be as harsh as truth, and as uncompromising as justice. On this subject, I do not wish to think, or to speak, or write, with moderation.”)
P.S. That’s…um…an interesting interpretation of Hume and Nietzsche. I wonder, though, whether those horses’ mouths are smiling or frowning in the wake of your statement.
P.S.S. Oh my, no. Thank you.
Danny,
Thanks for your thoughts again. In truth, I can’t disagree with many of them. While I take issue with the idea that my selection of articles is a “Frankenstein-esque stitch of evidence,” I totally agree that there is no scholarly consensus. I’m not claiming a broad, sweeping agreement. As you can see from my very short list of articles, only a few are really talking about this issue or trying to raise public alarm based on their findings. In truth, there are few psychiatrists and neurobiologists I know about who are even qualified to speak to this issue with clarity, so I wouldn’t expect a broad consensus. What I find so troubling about your statements is that we would be criticized for taking the actionable knowledge we have read about and experienced to present such data and the context of that data to a broader audience.
You are also right that pastors and laypersons are not qualified to make clinical statements, but neither are they doing such. I know of no pastors who state they are presupposing clinical definitions and then make assertions using them (at least for this issue). As I said, the broader, wider use sex/porn addiction terms apply here. As for the research that’s been done concerning the release of various hormones, no one disputes that such hormones are released upon sexual stimulation, even for those who are not clinically addicted to such releases. I fail to see why my broad definition is moot. I never predicated my statements about the release of hormones on the narrow definition, at least not to my knowledge. If I have misspoken somewhere, please let me know so I can print a retraction.
You have hit the nail right on the head about my prima facie assumptions. When I presented this message, I was, in fact, speaking to a group of men who largely share those assumptions, which would make the message fitting for the context. As for those who disagree (say, those who do not share my faith), we need to start the discussion in another place altogether.
As for my “compelling body of empiric evidence and logical chain of reasoning” which establish the divine inspiration of the Bible, that goes beyond the scope and purpose of this blog. As an individual I am more than happy to talk about such things, but its hardly fair to fault someone giving a presentation about pornography given to a group of churched men for not delving into the foundations of Christian theism in the mean time.
My faith is based on the empirical observations of whole communities of people who have witnessed numerous events that stretched their personal paradigms and worldviews, enabling them to embrace a belief that the God of Israel is real and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. I’d be happy to belabor the details of such observations for you; you probably know quite a bit about them already. In short, I believe in Jesus as the Christ for the same reasons that persons like Paul, James, Peter, and other New Testament figures believed—because of what they experienced concerning him. I realize that you don’t agree with the conclusions drawn from this data, and you may not even accept the data as such, but if you want to continue this discussion I’m more than happy to do so.
Danny I think you are at a loss trying to convince small minds of where you are trying to go. Once again the attempt here by this person is to pit “natural” “worldly ideology” against that which can only be achieved by faith not by intellect. It says in the Word on more than one occasion that the reasoning of men is foolishness before God and similarly the apostle Paul conceded sic (i am very loosely paraphrasing) that the gospel of Christ would be received as foolishness by the people of the world who were blinded to it. Remember the reception he got from the Greeks who liked to argue philosophy for one point or another. You cannot “prove” the power of God’s Word and that of the Holy Spirit to those who have little or no faith. It only comes by faith. This guy obviously has a problem and wants to achieve solutions of it intellectually and from a very judgmental position. That is not going to happen unless he “hears” what really is going on. Do yourself a favor. Stick to faith in God’s Word. Intellectual stuff is cool but all it does is stir the pot. It provides short term (in a worldly sense) solutions. God cannot work an eternal gift in us with that kind of stiff necked pride in ones own reasoning.
So Sorry Luke,
I am sorry the above comment was for you not Danny. Please post it . I meant Danny was the one whose mind is closed or rather open to his own logic. Logic reasoning and rational’s change when someone produces evidence contrary to the original line of thought. Think…. everyone believed the world was flat even when presented with evidence to the contrary. So science changes with every new discovery. God’s Word does not! As far as proof someone forgot to tell Danny that Christians live by faith not sight and our “empirical” proof lies in the testimony that we give of our experience with God one on one. That is the empirical proof positive that no man can deny nor take away from you once you experience it. What the psychologist’s are telling you today five years from now will be obsolete. Think…..people will base their lives on this “empirical data” and make command decisions about their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Only to find that the drugs they were given and the advice they might have received was faulty or has been improved. God’s Word never changes will always be the same and work to the perfection of those who seek it,. Even with centuries of interference form governments and corrupt church officials God’s Word shines through. Note the problem we have in churches everywhere no matter the denomination is that you have priests pastors etc. serving who have not been “called” to that service. Maybe God had a different plan for them? Luke the only advice you can give Danny is that you’ll pray for him.
@Louis – Thanks for your comments. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Minds need to be opened by the sovereign power of the Spirit for faith to even be possible. My point for Danny is there is great overlap between his God-given yet twisted desire for “empirical” evidence and God’s revelation. Before special revelation was inscribed on the pages of Scripture, it appeared in the person of Jesus Himself. He was seen, touched, and heard. I pray Danny and many more empirically-minded people can see that. Thanks for your encouraging words!
Thank you for your response.
“What I find so troubling about your statements is that we would be criticized for taking the actionable knowledge we have read about and experienced to present such data and the context of that data to a broader audience.”
Let me clarify. You are not being criticized for “taking the actionable knowledge [you] have read about and experienced to present such data and the context of that data to a broader audience.” You are being criticized for failing to amass an honest, objective cross-section of actionable knowledge on the subject, then (and only then) determining whether there is even cause to raise a “public alarm”; and I would deny that you even have actually presented the “*context* of that data to a broader audience,” as doing so would demand that that context be an objective, balanced representation of the issue at hand as opposed to the obviously cherry-picked offering of data in your presentation. (How could the data you present be anything but cherry-picked if you haven’t presented a single iota of the vast majority of data on the subject, when that majority of data on the subject denies your conclusions?) What could the goal of cherry-picking be but to manufacture a desired public opinion, as opposed to acting from a place of humility in the knowledge that you yourself could be mistaken and providing an honest, balanced picture of the issue so that public opinion can evolve naturally and on an individual basis? How would you feel if you were standing trial in a court of law, and the only evidence deemed admissible was the evidence that established your guilt, even though the vast majority of all the evidence available established your innocence? You are being dishonest with your audience, and that does real harm. It encourages others to fall in line with psychosexually immature and repressive Church teachings regarding human sexuality and to blindly support initiatives designed to deprive others of their right to make their own determinations. What you are doing is unethical and immoral. This is why you are being criticized.
“You are also right that pastors and laypersons are not qualified to make clinical statements, but neither are they doing such.”
Incorrect. When, for instance, “over 50% of pastors say that pornography addiction is the most damaging sexual issue in their congregations,” those pastors are most assuredly making clinical statements—as *both* the narrow clinical definition of psychological addiction *as* *well* *as* broadly defined, objectively troublesome obsession are the purview of practicing clinicians whose profession is subject to the dictates of peer-reviewed science, and not the purview of pastors whose profession lacks the logical rigor of science. When “…50% of Christian men say they are addicted to pornography,” it is also the case that these men are making a clinical statement. Religionists acting solely within the context of religious practice and lacking applicable training and credentials are in no way qualified to make judgments regarding *either* the narrow or broad definition of addiction. The religionist may *subjectively* believe that s/he has an obsession or addiction to pornography, but that in no way establishes that even broad *objectively* troublesome obsession or addiction exists, as even this broad definition requires a trained clinician who can establish that the individual in question has been truly (objectively) damaged by pornography. Neither Christians nor their pastors are qualified to determine whether pornography has objectively damaged a person.
“I fail to see why my broad definition is moot. I never predicated my statements about the release of hormones on the narrow definition, at least not to my knowledge. If I have misspoken somewhere, please let me know so I can print a retraction.”
In your presentation, you stated: “…pornography isn’t just easy to access, it is also highly addictive… When someone uses a street drug like cocaine, this tricks the brain into releasing dopamine. This is where the feeling of being high comes from. Pornography releases the same hormone… When viewing porn the brain also releases oxytocin. This is a strong bonding hormone that is also released the first time mothers hold their newborn baby or when lovers hold hands or make love. Oxytocin creates a bonding effect. But instead of bonding to another person, the brain is bonding to pornographic images, to a fantasy experience. Pornography is essentially overexposure to erotic stimuli that exhausts our normal sexual responses.”
In these statements, introductory to the entire presentation and thus setting the context for the entire presentation, you have equated pornography with highly physically addictive controlled substances. How else do you expect your audience to respond to your presentation but to see pornography as a physically addictive drug, obviously referring to the “narrow clinical definition of addiction” alone? This is why your apologetic discussion of a “broad definition” is moot to the question of the validity of your presentation. Please *do* print a retraction.
“You have hit the nail right on the head about my prima facie assumptions. When I presented this message, I was, in fact, speaking to a group of men who largely share those assumptions, which would make the message fitting for the context. As for those who disagree (say, those who do not share my faith), we need to start the discussion in another place altogether.”
Incorrect. The nature of your audience is a non-issue to this particular question. Having a sufficiently like-minded audience does not establish that it is valid to make scientific statements following from prima facie religious assumptions. Regardless of who your audience is, it is under no circumstances whatsoever valid to make scientific statements about pornography which follow from a prima facie religious assumption that pornography is bad. Utilizing science to establish a conclusion demands that no prima facie assumptions be made, and that initial premises that do not follow from first principles be clearly identified as dependent and contingent rather than presented in the context of unquestionable gospel truth. (This leads to the philosophy-of-science concept of falsifiability, which purely religious arguments lack.) Thus, your presentation, wholly regardless of the nature of the audience to whom you present it, is indeed inherently flawed on this point as well. It is dishonest and unethical for you to purposely imbue your presentation with a scientific air without abiding by the dictates of science.
“As for my ‘compelling body of empiric evidence and logical chain of reasoning’ which establish the divine inspiration of the Bible, that goes beyond the scope and purpose of this blog. As an individual I am more than happy to talk about such things, but its hardly fair to fault someone giving a presentation about pornography given to a group of churched men for not delving into the foundations of Christian theism in the mean time.”
The scope and purpose of your blog is immaterial to the question of the validity of your presentation. It is in no way unfair to fault you for giving a presentation about pornography, whose *scientific* conclusions are in part predicated upon prima facie religious assumptions, for failing to scientifically establish the authority of those religious assumptions. These are the pitfalls of attempting to mix a scientific context with a religious context. What your presentation essentially does is sidestep the rigors of the former context by jumping to the latter, while sidestepping the weaknesses of the latter by jumping back to the former. This breaks the continuum necessary for logical establishment, and thus your presentation’s conclusions have not been established.
“My faith is based on the empirical observations of whole communities of people who have witnessed numerous events that stretched their personal paradigms and worldviews, enabling them to embrace a belief that the God of Israel is real and that Jesus of Nazareth is the Messiah. I’d be happy to belabor the details of such observations for you; you probably know quite a bit about them already. In short, I believe in Jesus as the Christ for the same reasons that persons like Paul, James, Peter, and other New Testament figures believed—because of what they experienced concerning him. I realize that you don’t agree with the conclusions drawn from this data, and you may not even accept the data as such, but if you want to continue this discussion I’m more than happy to do so.”
The problem with this statement is that you characterize these observations as empirical, but they are not. The only scientifically valid empirical observations are those which can be independently confirmed; however, religious experience is not a transpersonal phenomenon. The personal observations of any single person regarding any phenomenon whatsoever, as far as can realistically be determined, are always subject to the flawed, subjective sensorium and cognition of the person making the observations. If observations cannot be independently confirmed by others, then the observations in question fail to qualify as empirically useful, as their accuracy cannot be verified. Thus, the observations you mistakenly identify as empirical actually collapse into hearsay, that is until one traces back to the alleged, but more importantly subjective, religious revelations on which a given piece of hearsay is based. For a compelling establishment as to why even religious revelation cannot be said to establish a religion’s objective truth, either universally or even for the individual who feels something has been revealed to him, I would encourage you to start with Thomas Paine’s treatise “The Age of Reason.”
Thus, your faith, given what you admit it to be based upon, is not empirically justified. Being that that is the case, there is no ethical basis for attempting to interface the prima facie assumptions of a religious faith so defined with a scientific discussion designed to establish what is, in the end, a purely religious belief about pornography. This is circular logic and is therefore flawed. (Please see my response to Mr. Webb’s comments for further support.)
“My point for Danny is there is great overlap between his God-given yet twisted desire for ‘empirical’ evidence and God’s revelation.”
It’s interesting that religionists, who, like the rest of us, enjoy the fruits of scientific- and empiric-mindedness at virtually every waking moment, will then turn around and bad-mouth that venerable world view and life approach. It never ceases to amaze me that they will live their entire lives at the cutting edge of modernity, and only dissemble about the scientific evidence that threatens their fragile world view. Every single aspect of that modernity has been made possible by successful scientific theories, including all of the lifespan-quadrupling knowledge, medicines, and treatments that, for instance, Evolutionary Theory has provided.
Even the knowledge of primitive folk medicine, though often imbued with a spiritual component, was accomplished through the humble objectivity and trial-and-error that are the hallmarks of scientific thought and method; so such anti-science/pro-science flip-floppers would have no medicine whatsoever to treat themselves or their family, should they take ill, if not for scientific/empiric thought. Actually, advances in knowledge about animal husbandry and agriculture, necessary for humans to have shed our nomadic hunter/gatherer existence, are similarly dependent upon pre-establishment science. In truth, this line of reasoning stretches back millions of years when our evolutionary ancestors first began to make and use tools using the mental precursors of our modern critical thinking and analytical/scientific method, thus paving the way for the evolution of the human brain, all without the benefit of religion.
That there are currently holes in our understanding of Evolutionary Theory (ever fewer with time), in no way reflects badly on the theory itself. Would you also write off Einstein’s Relativity, Maxwell’s Theory of Light, or Newton’s Theory of Gravity (for we still have holes in our understanding of them as well)? It’s ridiculous to argue that we have to *fully* understand a scientific theory, and be able to anticipate *every* *single* future piece of empiric data affecting it, before we can rightly call it a theory whose current incompleteness, yet vast empiric confirmation, easily outpaces the scientific claims that religion has been making for thousands of years (with its own far more incomplete theories with virtually no empiric confirmation).
Our minds are open. Anti-science/pro-science flip-floppers may in the end be right, but they won’t be right on the basis of any of their *current* arguments, logically inconsistent, asked and answered, and long since refuted but ever perennial as they are.
Thus, I maintain that your presentation is fatally flawed and, as above, “your conclusions to be refuted by virtue of the basic machinery of logic… Can you refute these observations, or else concede the points?” Further, I maintain that your use of scientific reasoning in your presentation does indeed demand a “scientifically peer reviewed and accepted logical chain of reasoning replete with valid empiric evidence which serve[s] to establish that your conclusions follow from your premises,” regardless of the nature of your audience. As above, I maintain that it shows a “clear lack of integrity” to “insist on continuing to use the word ‘addiction’ in your presentations,” broadly or narrowly defined, when no such addiction has been remotely established (given that both definitions are the purview of objective science); and I would add that continuing to misuse the tool of science to promote your religious beliefs shows a further lack of integrity and ethical constitution. (To be clear, as long as scientific conclusion is *soundly* and *properly* achieved, using it to promote religious beliefs is of course fine. However, your conclusions, contingent as they are on the science you invoked, are not logically established and so do not support your religious suppositions regarding pornography.) Finally, I maintain that your presentation and its choice of evidence presented in a scientific context lacks bias-balance and objectivity; and, given that your presentation seeks to inform and persuade others regarding issues of public health, the lack of bias-balance and objectivity in your presentation is wholly unethical and immoral.
To Louis Webb: There are a number of problems with your comments. Can you refute the following observations or else concede the points? (After all, if your opinions are worthy of you, then they should be able to stand up to the scrutiny.)
“Once again the attempt here by this person is to pit ‘natural’ ‘worldly ideology’ against that which can only be achieved by faith not by intellect.”
Incorrect. The religious faith to which Mr. Gilkerson admits is not my concern. Instead, I am pointing out that Mr. Gilkerson acts unethically when he seeks to inform and persuade others regarding issues of public health by abusing the tool of science. He uses a bias-unbalanced and subjective Frankenstein-esque stitch of “evidence” presented in a scientific context which relies upon prima facie religious assumptions. He encourages intellectual laziness in his audience, as: “(1) [his] citations fail to meet the criteria of fairness, balance, and avoidance of conflicts of interest, denying the reader[/listener] the chance to make up his/her own mind based on a balanced, realistic picture of the issue; (2) [his] data and arguments mistake mere statistical correlation with actual logical causation; and (3) throughout, [he] use[s] language that begs the question, encouraging the reader[/listener] to accept that [he'd] already established [his] premises (when [he had] not), and to thus accept [his] conclusions as having already been logically established.” I would encourage you to read my comments again, as it appears you’ve missed their point.
“Danny I think you are at a loss trying to convince small minds of where you are trying to go.”
It’s easy to engage in mudslinging, much harder to actually support the claims underlying that mudslinging. Are you up to the challenge?
“This guy obviously has a problem and wants to achieve solutions of it intellectually and from a very judgmental position.”
“Judgment” has become such a dirty word in western society, but you still need to support your inference that the judgment at hand is in any way inappropriate if you expect to be taken seriously. I contend that judging the sociopolitical actions of others (and, if necessary, challenging those actions when that judgment indicates the actions to be potentially harmful) is not only ethically appropriate, but crucial to the health of society. Can you refute this, Mr. Webb? You seem to be suggesting that when one sees another person doing damage, then one should keep his mouth shut about it. That logic is obviously flawed.
“…Danny was the one whose mind is closed…”
It’s interesting how so many who fail to support their claims further fail to cultivate the humility to look to themselves for the reason, instead accusing those they had attempted to convince of having closed minds. I’m sure you’ll agree that simply claiming a thing is true does not magically make it true. Can you support your assertion that my mind is closed? Let me be clear: my mind is wide open, to logical argumentation, magical revelation, whatever—so long as it gives me a compelling reason to abandon aspects of my ever-tentative world view for a more accurate picture. Can you say the same, or do you instead ignore all evidence which casts what you’ve prejudicially decided to believe in doubt and only pay attention to evidence which supports, or seems to support, or can be twisted around to seem to support what you’ve prejudicially decided to believe? I am not only open to the possibility that my current world view might be wrong; I am as certain as I’ve ever been of anything that my current world view is indeed wrong, as I am not so arrogant as to imagine that any human can ever be 100% correct in his world view or that any segment of one’s world view can ever be unquestionable. The problem is that one never knows which parts of his world view are correct and which are incorrect. I wonder how many people would agree with you that it sounds as though such a person as me, so defined, has a closed mind.
“Logic reasoning and rational’s change when someone produces evidence contrary to the original line of thought.”
Incorrect. One’s *conclusion* changes “when someone produces evidence contrary to the original line of thought”; however, the dictates of logical reasoning and rationality remain constant.
“So science changes with every new discovery. God’s Word does not!”
Likewise incorrect. The *conclusions* of science change “with every new discovery”; however, the dictates of science itself remain constant. Furthermore, your claim that “God’s Word does not [change]” is false. Even the oldest extant Judeo-Christian scriptures show countless thousands of alterations over a wide span of time, most of which fundamentally change the meaning of the words. Further, with each new translation of the Christian bible, the meaning of its content becomes ever more subjective. (I defy you to find a single linguist, even among theologians, who would say that recasting a sentence, even within the same language, can possibly result in precisely the same shade of meaning.) Admittedly, if the Christian god exists and the Christian bible represents his word, it may well be that what he actually means in his bible does not change; however, that meaning cannot be discerned by humans without relying upon human subjectivity, which means that the meaning of the Christian bible is subject to personal interpretation. In practice, no two interpretations of the Christian bible ever *fully* agree. In other words, humans have no access to the absolute meaning of another’s words. This is a logical tautology bound up with the nature of the human condition as a discretely autonomous individual whose only access to the outside world is through a flawed representational sensorium and cognition. Invoking the “Holy Spirit” mentioned in the Christian bible to provide *objective* discernment to Christians of the true meaning of the Christian bible’s words presupposes the prima facie veracity of the text being discerned in which reference is made to that holy spirit; it begs the question, which is obviously logically flawed. Thus, invoking this holy spirit can do nothing to overcome Christianity’s problem of subjective discernment.
“As far as proof someone forgot to tell Danny that Christians live by faith not sight and our ‘empirical’ proof lies in the testimony that we give of our experience with God one on one. That is the empirical proof positive that no man can deny nor take away from you once you experience it.”
Your word choice is interesting. You seem to believe that truth is that which someone else tells you it is when you say, “…someone forgot to tell Danny…” Anyhoo, faith is not the issue, and “proof” was never once mentioned, certainly not by me. A little humility might suit you better.
The truth is there is absolutely, positively, and without a doubt nothing whatsoever that can be said to be known for certain. This involves the very epistemological limits of human knowledge and experience. Do a thought experiment if you doubt this: Imagine something which you think that no one could possibly deny we know for certain, for instance: “At least it can be said that the sun will come up tomorrow morning, even if hidden behind clouds.” However, can this really be said for certain? After all, why precisely do we believe that, all things being equal, the sun will come up tomorrow?—essentially because of (1) a compelling body of empiric evidence that shows that the sun has always come up each day in the past and (2) a powerful theory regarding the movements of the earth and sun, venerably confirmed by a mountain of empiric evidence, that predicts that the sun will come up tomorrow. However, what real guarantee do we have that there exists no perfectly natural, though very rare physical process in the universe that we humans, for as relatively short of a time as we’ve existed, have never witnessed that could nullify the prediction of our current theory of the movements of the earth and sun, which might act to prevent the sun from actually being seen to rise over our horizon tomorrow morning? Indeed, we have no such guarantee. If you follow this line of thought to its conclusion, through a journey similar to the one Rene Descartes once took, after which he concluded that the only thing a man can truly be certain of is, “Cogito ergo sum” (”I think, therefore I am”), you will see that every human being lives his life by faith, without exception. I have faith that the sun will come up tomorrow, but I cannot strictly say that I know for certain that it will.
Thus, it is not a question of science versus faith, or logic versus faith, or reason versus faith. Absolutely everything must be taken on faith, whether one is a religionist or not. It is simply a question of what is reasonable to have faith in and what is unreasonable to have faith in. Whether fully cognizant of it or not, the vast majority of all decisions a person ever makes, even the most devout Christian, is determined by the confirmatory track record of the world views being used to arrive at those decisions. The confirmatory track records of countless religious claims are utterly dismal compared to those of the bases on which we make the overwhelming majority of our life’s decisions.
Even the “proof” you mention of the “…testimony that we give of our experience with God one on one” can be no proof at all, but is unequivocally merely subjective faith, since it is not possible for you to positively and inerrantly distinguish between true personal revelation from your god and, for instance, hallucination (or countless other phenomena which, for all you or anyone else knows, can mimic your subjective expectation of what true revelation should feel like). Again, all possible world views of humans, given the fundamental limitations of the human condition, are merely subjective faith, without exception. Your claim that “that is the empirical proof positive that no man can deny nor take away from you once you experience it” must therefore certainly be false, inasmuch as anything at all can be said for certain, as there can exist no “empirical proof positive” of anything at all. I would suggest that you cultivate some humility about the fact that it is always possible for you to misinterpret your personal perceptions and sensations, even those which tell you that you are experiencing your god one on one.
Virtually all religions and mystical traditions make the claim of the “religious experience” or “mystical experience,” universally defined across all such religions and mystical traditions in terms of a singular and transcendent, often euphoric or ecstatic, sensation of universal union/interconnectedness with the divine that fills one with an overwhelming sense of well being, peace, and innate certainty in one’s subjective interpretations of the experience. Indeed, the same experience is even related by many outside of religious and mystical contexts as well. After extensive research (see “neurotheology”), these experiences are, thus far, physiologically indistinguishable from those within other contexts and world views. They all heavily involve the temporal lobe, which among other tasks, is important in processing semantic meaning and in assigning relative meaning to one’s experiences in a weighted fashion. Very telling are those cases of temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), in which hyperreligiosity and religious/mystical experience often figure very prominently in the symptomatology but most often occurring completely outside of the context of religion, prayer, ritual, etc. This suggests that a purely neurophysiological context for explaining religious/mystical experiences is more than adequate, obviating the need to resort to empirically unsupported supernatural phenomena.
I would contend that it is the height of arrogance to imagine that there is a basis for a religionist to insist that his “religious experiences” are genuine while the neurophysiologically and descriptively indistinguishable “religious experiences” of those from other religions are not. People have been reporting these experiences long before Christianity was a twinkle in the eye of a Jewish mystic. In this regard, Christianity has always seemed to me to be like a guy who comes to a party late, and then tries to convince everyone that he threw the party and that no one was partying before he got there. It is arrogance incarnate.
“What the psychologist’s are telling you today five years from now will be obsolete. Think…..people will base their lives on this ‘empirical data’ and make command decisions about their lives and the lives of their loved ones. Only to find that the drugs they were given and the advice they might have received was faulty or has been improved.”
True, subjective interpretations of scientific data are always subject to the possibility of being wrong or becoming “obsolete”; however, the same is unequivocally true of subjective interpretations of your Christian bible, and subjective interpretations are all you can possibly have access to with respect to your Christian bible. Thus, the human institution of science and that of religion are on equal footing to begin with: it’s all faith. Again, the only real question is what is reasonable to have faith in and what is not reasonable to have faith in, and we can never have a guarantee that we are correctly identifying the difference. Yes, “people will base their lives on this ‘empirical data’ and make command decisions about their lives and the lives of their loved ones,” but precisely the same is true of religionists. However, it is the human condition that we can do nothing else. It is the human condition that one can only do what one does in Vegas: play the odds, hope for the best, plan for the worst, and alter your method of play as your continuing experience dictates. Logic and reason help us to determine the odds; and while it’s true that our ability to reason and use logic is flawed, it is, in fact, the only game in town, and religionists have not supported their insistence otherwise.
“God’s Word never changes will always be the same and work to the perfection of those who seek it,. Even with centuries of interference form governments and corrupt church officials God’s Word shines through.”
Obviously incorrect. If your god’s word is the same for those who seek it and always “shines through,” then it could not possibly be the case that there are today over 33,800 different Christian denominations, and yet, according to the millennial edition of the World Christian Encyclopedia, a Christian publication, there indeed are—each insisting upon a patently different interpretation of the Christian bible and patently different prescription for how to practice Christianity. Constancy is simply not something which you can claim for your religion.
No one is claiming that the words in your Christian bible actually change, as if the molecules of ink periodically rearrange themselves on the pages. Whether or not your god, if he exists, changes his mind is immaterial. The only question of relevance is what Christians *believe* their god means in the Christian bible, which is not necessarily the same thing as what their god *actually* means, and what Christians *believe* their god wants is *always* changing. In 2000 years, there has never, ever been a consensus as to the correct way to conduct oneself as a Christian. (Even immediately after the Council of Nicea, not all Christians practiced Christianity in the same fundamental way, even though achieving consistency was the goal of the council.)
Ultimately, regardless of whether the Christian world view is true, this is immaterial to the question of whether Mr. Gilkerson has supported the conclusions he makes in the presentation in question, and none of what you have written casts that assertion in doubt. Can you answer the refutations above, Mr. Webb, or else concede the points? (If my mind were truly closed, why would I be willing to hear your answer and to alter aspects of my world view if those aspects were shown to be in error?)
Thanks again for your response. Thanks for also clarifying what your specific contentions are.
I would be happy to listen to any other data to supply a more honest, objective cross-section of actionable knowledge on the subject. And I would love it if you would point me in the direction of any such data. I’m all ears.
I see how it might be perceived that narrow, clinical definitions are being used in these samples of data. My first mention of “addiction” in my presentations was when I spoke of my own experience of pornography: “Classify it or call it whatever you want, but it had all the forms and all the trademarks of an addiction.” My intention in this phraseology was to point out that I was speaking of addict-like behaviors, not that I had been diagnosed with a sexual addiction by a trained professional. And as for my linking of controlled substance addiction and pornography addiction, my statement was that both pornography and street drugs can trigger similar hormonal responses. It is the desire for this hormonal release that produces compulsive behaviors, whether we term these patterns as the result of a clinical addiction or not. I’ve found no researchers who would disagree with these statements yet.
As for printing a retraction, I will be writing a post soon to highlight these issues of broad vs. narrow definitions and print my clarifications there. I hope this will help.
However, I also read in your statements, “Religionists acting solely within the context of religious practice and lacking applicable training and credentials are in no way qualified to make judgments regarding either the narrow or broad definition of addiction.” So, I’m not sure any clarification about broad vs. narrow definitions will really get to the core of your complaint. Whether I speak broadly or narrowly, you don’t believe I’m qualified to speak the way I do about pornography addiction.
I would disagree that the broad definition of “addiction” is the purview of objective science. Common use of this term clearly shows this. People poetically refer to their “addiction” to many substances and behaviors in casual conversation all the time. All the same, perhaps it would be better for us to change our verbiage to “compulsion” or “craving” or “fixation.” Thoughts on this?
As for your assessment about empirical observations and religious phenomena, I would have to disagree entirely. There is simply very little anyone can know about anything from merely “scientifically valid empirical observations” alone. For instance, our knowledge human history cannot be confirmed by the scientific method. No one can reproduce “yesterday” in a lab. I cannot scientifically prove to you that I existed yesterday. We arrive at that sort of knowledge through historiography, not scientifically valid observations.
Again we are coming back to our foundational presuppositions. I think we both value empiricism greatly, but I have been persuaded that clear, empirical observations throughout the ages point clearly to the existence of God and the lordship of Jesus as His Messiah. Do these convictions color my view of the world? Absolutely. Certainly you can understand how this works. You hold to a foundational belief that reason and empirical observation are the tools by which we come to know the world. This belief colors your view of everything you see. I’m not saying your convictions are wrong about this, only that you understand by analogy how a foundational belief makes someone see things a certain way.
The crucial question is whether my foundational beliefs are wrong, not how they color my understanding of morality of social action. When I spoke of my faith being grounded on empirical observations, I was not referring to the “personal observations of any single person” but of the personal observations of multiple groups of persons.
In regard to Thomas Paine, I have great trouble with his worldview. He leaves his readers on very shaky ground, for while he attacks the foundations of religious revelation, he still holds to his “rational” belief in a powerful, immutable God whom would call all people to make an account for our lives, but unfortunately give no rational account of what this judgment will be like. Moreover, reading through his work leaves me the impression he knew very little about the Bible anyway.
I have little to no comment about Evolutionary Theory. I am not proficient in that topic in the least. I’ve read plenty about theistic evolution, such as the work done by Francis Collins, but not much more.
Danny,
While I can tell thay you are educated and have done a lot of reading – but I do wonder what your qualifications are in this field or any other?
You cannot see oxygen and yet you believe it exists and would undoubtedly have numerous arguments for its existence. But there ARE many documented cases that to an intelligent person like yourself who was “not” operating on his own presuppostions – that clearly show the truth and authenticity of the Bible. One of my favorite quotes applies to most of us, including you – “A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still.” And that is where I believe, at some point, we need to shake the dust off our feet and direct our attentions to those whose hearts and minds are receptive – and I do not feel that is you.
By the way, your remarks about basic regular people, or pastors, are not capable of diagnosing addiction you’re right. Regular people don’t diagnose, but they can and do recognise it without the help of formal training or “amassing an honest, objective cross-section of actionable knowledge on the subject”. Go to any AA meeting – they recognize they have an addiction. I am astute enough to realize that when I can’t stop doing something – like video games or reading books or watching tv or doing drugs – and it is interfering in almost every aspect of my life – basic things like eating regularly, taking care of my family, my job ( finding ways to sneak that “non-addiction” at inappropriate times), hinders me from maintaining relationships with family and friends. – that I am suffering from an addiction.
If you cannot see that, then it is your presuppositions that keep you from doing so. Or perhaps it is “He doth protest too much”. You speak out against this website, these intelligent people and rational reason itself, because your heart is being convicted of your own issues and thus you turn that mighty intellect against what you cannot deal with – the conviction of the Holy Spirit.
I believe that the “Hound of Heaven” is after you and you are close to being caught. May God continue to work in your heart and bless you.
Darla
Wow, this has been a facinating read…. was web-surfing looking for some help for my son who has been exposed to pornography. I lost my husband to the porn battle, so though I know nothing of the how and why of Danny’s initial “detraction” I can only tell you that the addiction to pornography may actually be tougher than drugs, alcohol, or cigarettes…. I watched the batlle, and I dragged the corpse off the field when he lost.