Xingyi Warrior
New Member
You can feel anyway you want C.S. Murphy. Opinions aren't worth much because everyone has one. I challenge you to come up with some hard evidence, not simple baseless assumptions, to support your your assertions. Not because I'm baiting you and believe I'm the only one thats right, but that I welcome any credible information regarding the subject even if it contradicts what I hold to be true. Thats the difference between myself, a scientist, and your run of the mill opinionee - I want the truth. But "subjective truth" wont cut it. I contend that, regarding the issue of pornography, there are deeper issues that, if ignored, will only result in fruitless efforts on our part as Christians to combat the phenomenon. I am in no way defending pornography, and honestly, I don't see where you draw that assumption unless it is a weak rhetorical tactic designed to draw attention away from the fact that you don't have anything strong enough to come up against my arguement. If you are emotionally involved with the issue, which I believe that you probably aren't, but if so that could also lead you to similar conclusions.I want to add that I feel pornagraphy is addictive and that when in withdrawel people will hurt for it. I am curious as to why you seem to be defending it.
Back in the 80's there was a government funded program called "Scared Straight". You might remember it. This program involved taking problem youths into prison and subjecting them to close contact with inmates that resulting in the subjects getting the hell scared out of the them. The expected result would be that less juevenile delinquints would end up in prison. Hypothetically it seems like a workable plan, right? Well the program was a monumental failure as most of the participants ended up in prison anyway. What went wrong? This situation, along with others, led to much research in the positive/negative reinforcement aspects of human psychology. All these years later we finally know that negative reinforcement is largely innefective in illiciting a desired behavior in human subjects. In not so many words, the government was conveying to the test subects that they expected them to fail and the test subjects were simply meeting those expectations.
The moral of the story? If you don't address the source of the problem, then your efforts will be fruitless in preventing its proliferation. Thats what I see happening with the issue of pornography. There are deeper problems within individuals who have let pornography control their lives that need to be dealt with rather than just compelling a person to turn their attention from the immediate manifestation of the sin. Do I think that pornography needs to be regulated and censored? Yes? But if the fundamental reason behind the behavior is not addressed, the deviancy is just going to manifest itself in another form with probably equally devastating results. If you have a life threatening injury you can take morphene to kill the pain, but uless you deal with the source of the affliction you will eventually bleed to death. Pornography proliferation is a front for a truckload of social problems that have accumulated over the yaers and that, sadly, the churches, by and large, have failed misserably in addressing or have ignored altogether.
[ October 18, 2003, 09:38 AM: Message edited by: Xingyi Warrior ]