Pornography and Moral Blindness

No Christian and no decent person would ever endorse production and consumption of pornography or erotica. It simply goes against the command to flee fornication. The Lord Himself said,  in Matthew 5:28  "But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart". That ought to settle the issue for all of us, but some would still want to hear some more. And here is the additional news.

Not that anyone pursuing practical sanctification needs this news to support the Scriptures, but there are always some inquisitive souls who would love to receive additional information on any given subject — from ingrown toenails to the final state of BlackHoles. This article is devoted to them, and also to the resort of us who surreptitiously read it all — just to know, I mean!

The other day  I was, as usual, reading the latest from The New Scientist and the news from 12th August sort of popped out where it says that "Erotic images can turn you blind".  Let me quote them:

"Researchers have finally found evidence for what good Catholic boys have known all along – erotic images make you go blind. The effect is temporary and lasts just a moment, but the research has added to road-safety campaigners’ calls to ban sexy billboard-advertising near busy roads, in the hope of preventing accidents.

The new study by US psychologists found that people shown erotic or gory images frequently fail to process images they see immediately afterwards. And the researchers say some personality types appear to be affected more than others by the phenomenon, known as “emotion-induced blindness”."

What’s more, it was not some kind of crackpot research, but a systematic and controlled on done in a well-known American University. According to the story "David Zald, from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, and Marvin Chun and colleagues from Yale University in Connecticut, showed hundreds of images to volunteers and asked them to pick a specific image from the rapid sequence. Most of the images were landscape or architectural scenes, but the psychologists included a few emotionally charged images, portraying violent or sexually provocative scenes.

The closer these emotionally charged images occurred prior to the target image, the more frequently people failed to spot the target image, the researchers found. “We observed that people failed to detect visual images that appeared one-fifth of a second after emotional images, whereas they can detect those images with little problem after neutral images,” Zald says."

The Vanderbilt University researchers concluded that an erotic stimulus is able to capture the human brain in such a way that for a time all the other stimuli are suppressed.  Thus the human brain is no longer able to judge and discern things for some time, leading to inability in judging between what is right and wrong, and whether they are facing a danger or not. They also noticed that after an erotic billboard captures their attention, for a few moments they are no longer able to judge traffic patterns properly, unable even to take proper action if another vehicle endangers them or if they endanger another vehicle, making them prone to accidents.

The researchers also feel that the part of the brain known as amygdala plays a part. This part is involved in evaluating sensory input according to its emotional relevance, and automatically affects heart rate and sweating. These two things are stimulated by the human brain so that the person is ready to face the situation, specially those that need immediate attention and proper response. But the erotic pictures [or fantasies] create a bottleneck, so that once they capture the mind, the other signals [howsoever urgent they might be] are ignored for a while. They label this process as "Emotion Induced Blindness", a term we need to look at in some detail.

Meanwhile, "The effect could exacerbate the more obvious problem of drivers simply being distracted by large, arresting images. "It’s the responsibility of drivers to ensure that when they are behind the wheel they keep their eyes on the job in hand," says a spokeswoman from Brake, a UK road safety organisation. And some people are more vulnerable than others. The study assessed participants using a personality questionnaire, rating them according to their level of “harm avoidance”. Those scoring highly were more fearful, careful and cautious; those scoring low were more carefree and more comfortable in difficult or dangerous situations."

As I read all the above from the New Scientist, I though I should have a look at any related news they might have in the archives, and was stunned to read another one which says "Pornography, the US Senate was told on 18 October, is a drug more dangerous than crack cocaine. That, at least, was the opinion of some witnesses invited to testify on "the science behind pornography addiction". It’s not a view shared by everyone.

Mary Anne Layden, co-director of the sexual trauma and psychopathology programme at the University of Pennsylvania, said unpublished research showed that "even non-sex-addicts will show brain reactions on PET scans while viewing pornography similar to cocaine addicts looking at images of people taking cocaine". Jeffrey Satinover, a doctor whose website outlines therapies for homosexuals, described porn as a designer drug, delivered efficiently over the internet, which "does what heroin can’t do". A third expert witness said there was an urgent need for research on addiction to "eroto-toxins"."

Porn or erotica, they all maintained, can trigger the release of natural opioids, which have a stimulating effect on the brain, which can cause grave danger when it happens to the wrong person in the wrong place.

I am sure I do not have to remind my readers that erotical is becoming increasingly common in our society. Pictures deemed fit [and even too lewd] for pornographic magazines of the 1960 now routinely find place in what are called "family" magazines. Many unsuspecting Christians routinely buy them and allow them to remain in their living rooms where they eventually blind their young and impressionable minds. The world knows this and that is why they spend millions a day to mould the plastic and pliable minds to love erotica today, and crave for them tomorrow.

A few years ago I spoke in an Arabian Gulf church on the influence of Pornography on young [and not so young] people and why erotica should be avoided by Christians. A man in his late forties came to me and said, brother, you do not have to raise so much alarm. After all we all should taste everything that comes our way and then decide what is what. I was stunned. He claimed to be a Christian, and yet was taking a stand against what Lord Jesus said [in the Bible verse quoted earlier]. Such can be the blindness caused by Erotica. It is more intoxicating than what is used by the street drug-addicts.

"With thanks to New Scientist, & Original Journal reference: Psychonomic Bulletin and Review (August 2005 issue)"

[Dr. Johnson C. Philip is a physicist, with expertise in Quantum-nuclear Physics, and has worked extensively on the inner quark-structre of Protons and Neutrons. He has also specialized in Christian Apologetics, Biblical Archeology, and several other fields. This website provides you an access point to the dozens of websies that he maintains.]

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