Is porn that bad for our society

[Robert_Sock]

Yes, God can bring good from evil. But “…woe to that man by whom the scandal cometh.” Matt. 18:7.

God will not heal a sinner against his will. God’s Holiness and Purity should be our holiness and purity, the nature of which is absolutely opposed to this vulgar, base, and corrupt pornography.

For the second question, can you see where porn might act as a raw sewage pipe within the population in general? This is in regards to a hyper-sexualized society in general. However, instead of for prostitution,as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed (see post 110), for porn and nude dancers. It’s the lesser of two evils, where you have a hyper-sexualized society on the one hand, and a raw sewage pipe that expels the hyper-sexual urges into a wasteland. Without such a raw sewage pipe for porn and nude dancing, one would have an increase in rape, prostitution, and sexual diseases.

 

[TimothyH]

I agree! However, I also believe that the struggle against porn can lead to a heightened spirituality that was otherwise unobtainable!

Otherwise unobtainabe? By inference, we must conclude from your statement, that it is better to struggle against porn and overcome than to have not experience a problem with porn at all. With all due respect Robert, that is simply contrary to God’s teaching.

*What then shall we say? Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not! (Romans 6:1) *

Many saints, and regular Christians for that matter, have acheived the highest measure of spirituality in the complete absence of any struggle against porn. That’s like stating that the grace, forgiveness, and spiritual effects offered by God to a murder would have been otherwise unobtainable had the murderer not murdered. With Mary as our example, it is clearly better to have been prevented from sinning than to have sinned, repented and been forgiven. Rember, there is punishment for sin and purgatory isnt goint to be fun.

Whatever higher level of spirituality is obtained from any struggle against sin can only be measured in relation to the lowest levels from which the sinner has to rise. When you are in the gutter, there is no place to go but up. I wonder where I would be had I worshipped and prayed to God from age 12 instead of spending 33 years of my life worshipping porn.

-Tim-

 

[Robert_Sock]

Otherwise unobtainabe? By inference, we must conclude from your statement, that it is better to struggle against porn and overcome than to have not experience a problem with porn at all. With all due respect Robert, that is simply contrary to God’s teaching.

What then shall we say? Shall we persist in sin that grace may abound? Of course not! (Romans 6:1)

Many saints, and regular Christians for that matter, have acheived the highest measure of spirituality in the complete absence of any struggle against porn. That’s like stating that the grace, forgiveness, and spiritual effects offered by God to a murder would have been otherwise unobtainable had the murderer not murdered. With Mary as our example, it is clearly better to have been prevented from sinning than to have sinned, repented and been forgiven. Rember, there is punishment for sin and purgatory isnt goint to be fun.

Whatever higher level of spirituality is obtained from any struggle against sin can only be measured in relation to the lowest levels from which the sinner has to rise. When you are in the gutter, there is no place to go but up. I wonder where I would be had I worshipped and prayed to God from age 12 instead of spending 33 years of my life worshipping porn.

-Tim-

I’m speaking here of individuals that are already addicted to porn. Think of the “Prodigal Son” here. Or, “Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.” (Luke 15:7)

 

[TimothyH]

I’m speaking here of individuals that are already addicted to porn. Think of the Prodigal Son here. Or, “I say to you, that even so there shall be joy in heaven upon one sinner that doth penance, more than upon ninety-nine just who need not penance.” (Luke 15:7)

And I am speaking as one who is recovered from a 33 year porn addiction.

That joy spoken about in the parable is in heaven. I’ll tell you about here on earth, the torn apart marriages, ripped apart families, wasted time and money, sons learning from their fathers to use use women as objects for their own enjoyment and millions of people who will die in a state of mortal sin and spend eternity in Hell.

My point, Robert, is that it would have been better for the Prodigal Son to have never left than to have left, suffered, repented and needed his Father’s forgiveness, even if there was joy on his father’s part and feast upon his return. And the story of the Prodigal Son isn’t about the son who sins as much as it is about his brother who was indignant, who should have realized that he was far better off to have lived a peaceful, quiet life of obedience with his father than to have to experienced what his brother went through.

-Tim-

 

[Robert_Sock]

And I am speaking as one who is recovered from a 33 year porn addiction.

That joy spoken about in the parable is in heaven. I’ll tell you about here on earth, the torn apart marriages, ripped apart families, wasted time and money, sons learning from their fathers to use use women as objects for their own enjoyment and millions of people who will die in a state of mortal sin and spend eternity in Hell.

My point, Robert, is that it would have been better for the Prodigal Son to have never left than to have left, suffered, repented and needed his Father’s forgiveness, even if there was joy on his father’s part and feast upon his return. And the story of the Prodigal Son isn’t about the son who sins as much as it is about his brother who was indignant, who should have realized that he was far better off to have lived a peaceful, quiet life of obedience with his father than to have to experienced what his brother went through.

-Tim-

I’ll let God be the judge. God will give as He chooses. Let it be known that a repentant sinner can gain great spiritual growth! Just how much is determined by God alone. However, I’m personally convinced that great spiritual rewards are reserved for those who overcome great spiritual struggles. Remember too, that a repentant sinner can become a great saint, like Saint Augustine. Would Saint Augustine have become a great saint if it were not for his sinful struggles? It’s debatable!

 

[TimothyH]

I’ll let God be the judge. God will give as He chooses. Let it be known that a repentant sinner can gain great spiritual growth! Just how much is determined by God alone. However, I’m personally convinced that great spiritual rewards are reserved for those who overcome great spiritual struggles. Remember too, that a repentant sinner can become a great saint, like Saint Augustine. Would Saint Augustine have become a great saint if it were not for his sinful struggles? It’s debatable!

I see your point, yes, and I am so grateful to God for having been delivered from my struggle, and I believe that I have certain spiritual gifts as a result of my struggle. Believe me, I do see your point… I was confirmed last year and picked Augustine for my confirmation saint for exactly the reason you cited. His stuggle is my struggle and I actually conversed with the Bishop about this beforehand.

My point is that it is better to have never sinned than to have sinned and been forgiven, no matter what gifts you are given by God though his grace and mercy. The former is sometimes seen as boring and non-eventful, a dull life of obedience. The latter is dramatic and makes for good stories. But Mary is our model. She is full of grace and therefor devoid of sin and everything that comes with it. If it was better to sin and be forgiven, then Mary would be most wretched.

And I put forth that there is no spiritual gift possible through repentance that is not also possible if one had not sinned in the first place. I was just taking issie with “Otherwise unobtainable”, that’s all.

I tend to stay out of threads that are over 20 posts as they are little more than poeple accusing each other of not answering their questions. But this is good conversation Robert. Thanks and peace.

-Tim-

-Tim-

 

[Robert_Sock]

I see your point, yes, and I am so grateful to God for having been delivered from my struggle, and I believe that I have certain spiritual gifts as a result of my struggle. Believe me, I do see your point… I was confirmed last year and picked Augustine for my confirmation saint for exactly the reason you cited. His stuggle is my struggle and I actually conversed with the Bishop about this beforehand.

My point is that it is better to have never sinned than to have sinned and been forgiven, no matter what gifts you are given by God though his grace and mercy. The former is sometimes seen as boring and non-eventful, a dull life of obedience. The latter is dramatic and makes for good stories. But Mary is our model. She is full of grace and therefor devoid of sin and everything that comes with it. If it was better to sin and be forgiven, then Mary would be most wretched.

And I put forth that there is no spiritual gift possible through repentance that is not also possible if one had not sinned in the first place. I was just taking issie with “Otherwise unobtainable”, that’s all.

I tend to stay out of threads that are over 20 posts as they are little more than poeple accusing each other of not answering their questions. But this is good conversation Robert. Thanks and peace.

-Tim-

-Tim-

Wow, thanks! You’re humble!!! Great trait!

 

[Earnest_Bunbury]

I’ll let God be the judge. God will give as He chooses. Let it be known that a repentant sinner can gain great spiritual growth! Just how much is determined by God alone. However, I’m personally convinced that great spiritual rewards are reserved for those who overcome great spiritual struggles. Remember too, that a repentant sinner can become a great saint, like Saint Augustine. Would Saint Augustine have become a great saint if it were not for his sinful struggles? It’s debatable!

A sinner becomes a saint not by choosing sin but in spite of sin. They turn from sin, they cease to sin, and they admonish others on the evils of sin. Sin comes from us, we create it by our actions.

Think about the Holiness, Purity, and Truth that finds its source in God. These are what we participate in, and the sewer pipe that is sin is not part of God nor is it the result of some evil principle separate from us. It is not our power that gets us out of sinful habits or overcomes sin. It is God’s Grace acting on our desire to be transformed into Christ, having His Divine life and sacred Humanity in us. We can only work against this grace by choosing that which is incompatible with it.

Wherefore as sin is opposed to virtue, from the very fact that a man sins, there results a diminution of that good of nature, which is the inclination to virtue.
ST. I-II, 85. A. 1

If you read the Bible, you see the admonition to turn from sin, not relishing the sin for the sake of forgiveness, a forgiveness that is not certain especially if one freely chooses sin because of faulty reasoning based on one choosing one’s passions over holiness and purity.

 

[John21652]

For the second question, can you see where porn might act as a raw sewage pipe within the population in general? This is in regards to a hyper-sexualized society in general. However, instead of for prostitution,as Saint Augustine and Saint Thomas Aquinas proposed (see post 110), for porn and nude dancers. It’s the lesser of two evils, where you have a hyper-sexualized society on the one hand, and a raw sewage pipe that expels the hyper-sexual urges into a wasteland. Without such a raw sewage pipe for porn and nude dancing, one would have an increase in rape, prostitution, and sexual diseases.

Robert, St Thomas Aquinas did not make a case for prostitution. he made an observation. He then surmised that perhaps prostitution might make for suppressed capricious lusts. he then concluded that the class of person who used prostitution was*"…most unchaste in its morals;"* and he then concluded that its very existence is *"… by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition." *In post #112 you asked michelle how you were misquoting the saints. That was already demonstrated to you in post #30 and you admitted as much in your response in post #71. Now that the thread has progressed you seem to think that a previously rebutted point is now somehow valid. It isn’t. You once again resort to your earlier proposition, made by you in post #46 that porn is the lesser of two evils. Making that statement makes it obvious you do not see porn as intrinsically evil and wrong. It causes great harm to society, as attested to by others here and by a plethora of freely available evidence using Google, it has no redeeming features, or attributes and yet you would have us believe it does by simply asserting that God can make some good come of it.

You now make the argument that its existence makes it possible for individuals to achieve a higher degree of spirituality because they can now fight its ensnaring evil. If that is the case, one must wonder just how holy the saints could have been had they been able to fight against porn addiction!

You keep asking whether God can make some greater good come from evil. To that, once again, I’m going to repeat what I wrote in post #85. It is this -

You seem to think that because porn exists it is so because God allows it. The converse, of course, is that if porn was totally bad and evil, without any redeeming features, as you have been suggesting it has, God would stop its proliferation. You are making some terrible assumptions about the nature of both God and man. God gave us free will and it is free will badly used that proliferates porn. If God were to prevent porn from proliferating, He would have to interfere with our given free will. God wont do that. Man is a moral agent who must himself choose between good and evil. If God interfered, then all evil would be banished and we’d be back in the Garden of Eden, but our moral agency would be redundant and our free will compromised.

God can do whatever he likes, with one exception Robert. He can not compromise the Free Will of man. If he did that, He would be a liar and all morality would be voided. God leaves it to the free moral agency of men to do good. The good that came after World War two was done by men of goodwill, not by God. The harm caused by war can be assuaged by men, but not undone. Yes, God could make His presence known and bring back to life all those slaughtered and all those maimed and displaced, but He doesn’t and He can’t because it would mean undoing that which was done by man as a free moral agent.

Can you understand that Robert?! God cannot bring good from evil done by man if it means compromising free will. To do so would be for God to contradict himself. War is avoided by men following the precepts of God’s teachings. Porn and its attendent harm is avoided by men instituting God’s moral laws in the promulgated laws of society. Porn is not the lesser of two evils Robert, it is evil per se. Intrinsically evil. It is loose upon the world because of the free will of men. Its addictive nature compromises man’s free will and that is the greatest evil of all.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Robert, St Thomas Aquinas did not make a case for prostitution. he made an observation. He then surmised that perhaps prostitution might make for suppressed capricious lusts. he then concluded that the class of person who used prostitution was*"…most unchaste in its morals;"* and he then concluded that its very existence is *"… by the law of order, it is most vile in social condition." *In post #112 you asked michelle how you were misquoting the saints. That was already demonstrated to you in post #30 and you admitted as much in your response in post #71. Now that the thread has progressed you seem to think that a previously rebutted point is now somehow valid. It isn’t. You once again resort to your earlier proposition, made by you in post #46 that porn is the lesser of two evils. Making that statement makes it obvious you do not see porn as intrinsically evil and wrong. It causes great harm to society, as attested to by others here and by a plethora of freely available evidence using Google, it has no redeeming features, or attributes and yet you would have us believe it does by simply asserting that God can make some good come of it.

You now make the argument that its existence makes it possible for individuals to achieve a higher degree of spirituality because they can now fight its ensnaring evil. If that is the case, one must wonder just how holy the saints could have been had they been able to fight against porn addiction!

You keep asking whether God can make some greater good come from evil. To that, once again, I’m going to repeat what I wrote in post #85. It is this -
God can do whatever he likes, with one exception Robert. He can not compromise the Free Will of man. If he did that, He would be a liar and all morality would be voided. God leaves it to the free moral agency of men to do good. The good that came after World War two was done by men of goodwill, not by God. The harm caused by war can be assuaged by men, but not undone. Yes, God could make His presence known and bring back to life all those slaughtered and all those maimed and displaced, but He doesn’t and He can’t because it would mean undoing that which was done by man as a free moral agent.

Can you understand that Robert?! God cannot bring good from evil done by man if it means compromising free will. To do so would be for God to contradict himself. War is avoided by men following the precepts of God’s teachings. Porn and its attendent harm is avoided by men instituting God’s moral laws in the promulgated laws of society. Porn is not the lesser of two evils Robert, it is evil per se. Intrinsically evil. It is loose upon the world because of the free will of men. Its addictive nature compromises man’s free will and that is the greatest evil of all.

Another rant that tries to cover the facts with words and phrases that mis-characterizes things. Saint Augustine, Saint Thomas Aquinas did indeed believe that prostitution was a lesser evil than rape and sodomy and that “prostitution was a necessary evil: a well-ordered city needed brothels just as it needed good sewers.” But this fact aside for a moment, my argument that porn and nude dancing acts as a raw sewage pipe for unwanted hyper-sexuality at the societal level still stands!

As for free will, can God bring about an ultimate, greater good from any evil Satan has to offer, including that temptation of our free will that leads to the use of porn and nude dancing? Please respond with a direct yes or no!

God is ultimately good, and God has divine providence over the whole Earth. As St. Paul writes: “in everything God works for good” (Rom 8:28).

 

[Catmando]

Sounds like you’re intending porn to be an outlet to the problem of hyper-sexualization in society.

Why not combat the hyper-sexualization at its root? It would be much more effective than band-aids and a heck of a lot more moral.

 

[Robert_Sock]

Sounds like you’re intending porn to be an outlet to the problem of hyper-sexualization in society.

Why not combat the hyper-sexualization at its root? It would be much more effective than band-aids and a heck of a lot more moral.

It’s a matter of reality vs idealism. I’m not designing any of this, but describing reality. I agree that we need to fight porn and nude dancing whenever and wherever we can.

 

[Catmando]

It’s a matter of reality vs idealism. I’m not designing any of this, but describing reality. I agree that we need to fight porn and nude dancing whenever and wherever we can.

“We would accomplish many more things if we did not think of them as impossible.”
Vince Lombardi

“It always seems impossible until its done.”
Nelson Mandela

“Because a thing seems difficult for you, do not think it impossible for anyone to accomplish.”
Marcus Aurelius

I think a few people would be inclined to disagree with you! It is not unrealistic or overly idealistic to fight for an end to pornography, but it is a cowardly and immoral act of approval to sit by and let it happen.

William Wilberforce fought injustices loosely disguised as necessity for a third of his life in the British Parliament, and he won. He fought the most stubborn body of people on earth on an issue no one else dared denounce and came out on top. Do you really think our society is so immovable and that the evil of pornography is so necessary considering the accomplishments that political reformers have achieved in the past?

 

[Bobby_Jim]

My personal belief is that porn is, in and of itself, disgusting, but I believe that porn does serve an important service to society in that it does indeed provide a sexual outlet for a hyper-sexualized society. I believe that the biggest evil is in the people watching porn.

Sorry I didn’t read most of the 152 replies, I just want to say in reply to the original post - the production of porn requires real people to do some really degrading, dehumanizing, and often dangerous stuff. It’s rather terrible to think that there is somehow an abstract societal good that comes at such a terrible cost to the individuals involved.

 

[valentino]

I believe that it is.Very bad.When a country loses its morals it decays.Homes are broken up.Juvenile deliquency spreads.drugs are seen as ok.More crimes of all natures take place.Our society is being drug down.Many people are blind to this reality.they forget history.

 

[Robert_Sock]

1. Can God bring about an ultimate, greater good from EVERY evil Satan has to offer? Please answer this question directly with a yes or no response!
2. If this is true, can God bring a greater good from porn, like it acting as a raw sewage pipe for hyper-sexualized behavior at the societal level? Again, please be direct with a yes or no response!

 

[John21652]

1. Can God bring about an ultimate, greater good from EVERY evil Satan has to offer? Please answer this question directly with a yes or no response!
2. If this is true, can God bring a greater good from porn, like it acting as a raw sewage pipe for hyper-sexualized behavior at the societal level? Again, please be direct with a yes or no response!

1. NO!

The answer why is contained in post #149.

2. Rediculous assertion, as explained by umpteen other posters.
Take special note of TimothyH’s post #142 and the quote he gave from Romans 6:1.

 

[tlimon]

I say yes to both questions. Satan tempted me into making a mess out of lots of things in my life only to have God eventually intervene in major way that, hear it comes, turns lemons into lemonaide. I know a lot about lemons, my last name is Limon. Thus, God could bring about a greater good from porn.

However, I think the camps here are talking past each other. If question two is meant to prove that pornography is acceptable because God can bring something good of it, then I have to disagree. God can turn lots of things to favor his plan but that does not mean we legitimize the sin.

Best Regards

 

[Robert_Sock]

1. NO!

The answer why is contained in post #149.

2. Rediculous assertion, as explained by umpteen other posters.
Take special note of TimothyH’s post #142 and the quote he gave from Romans 6:1.

For question #1 you’re denying God’s omnipotence!

God is ultimately good, and God has divine providence over the whole Earth. As St. Paul writes: “in everything God works for good” (Rom 8:28).

 

[Robert_Sock]

I say yes to both questions. Satan tempted me into making a mess out of lots of things in my life only to have God eventually intervene in major way that, hear it comes, turns lemons into lemonaide. I know a lot about lemons, my last name is Limon. Thus, God could bring about a greater good from porn.

However, I think the camps here are talking past each other. If question two is meant to prove that pornography is acceptable because God can bring something good of it, then I have to disagree. God can turn lots of things to favor his plan but that does not mean we legitimize the sin.

Best Regards

Porn is never acceptable! Our mission in life is to fight against evil whenever and wherever possible! But given that God is allowing porn, it must also contain an ultimate, greater good!