By: Shane James O’Neill

Would it help you to know that porn is physiologically damaging and that you’re designed for one person? Let’s play this out and see if a little satire can give clarity. 

Nurture vs nature

When it comes to dating, the West has definitely made the right decision by putting all their chips into the ‘nurture’ camp. We date hundreds of people, sleep with dozens, watch porn on the reg, and keep our eyes open for newer, hotter relationships. The use of dating apps have sky rocketed because who doesn’t want the ability to swipe through their options without ever needing to get to know the person? Getting to know someone would require an initial level of intimacy that is just best avoided, you know? Thankfully, app developers and marketers have begun to wise up, skipping the whole dating part and giving us sex apps — ‘no strings sex’. And wouldn’t you know, they’re unbelievably popular.

After all, if you can get rid of all the boring stuff and just begin at the climax, why the heck not?! Ugh, building relationships is a lame social construct. 

science for me

And in a way, we’re just being true to our scientific age. The more people you date and sleep with the larger the sample size to pull from. Date 100 people, sleep with 30, that increases the odds of you finding Mr. or Mrs. Perfect, right? We could never just meet someone, commit to knowing them in the every day, decide to live life with them and only them, and not need to evaluate them against a data base sourcing hundreds of thousands of options. That would be scary and hard and, well, too simple. And again, we’ve got to be scientists about this, remember? More is better. 

Also, where’s the stimulation in marriage? I mean, if you’re with someone for too long the excitement wears off, and expectations surface, and you’ve gotta face the truth that this person is kinda normal, and so are you. OH, and the sex, what happens when that becomes predictable and the thrill of novelty gives way to the intimacy of familiarity? No freaking way! The science that tells us humans are 99.9 percent the same is NOT helpful in these moments. I need someone perfect and always novel. 

Forget familiarity and forget commitment!

porn, please

But if you ever do settle down don’t worry, we’ve got porn! Inevitably, you gotta at least try and settle down, cause who wants to be alone? But we need the excitement, stimulation, and the freedom to have pleasure on our own terms.

Porn. Yup. The medicine for any relationship that lasts longer than 6 months. People really are just bags of flesh, with a personality of course. Yup, that worldview is perfect. There’s no “truer” meaning to sex, no real value to the covenant of marriage, no divine accountability for actions, no objective purpose to life, and no deeper meaning to personhood. We’re just evolved bugs. Which means we’re not any more important than bugs. After all, the earth could heat up tomorrow, wipe out humanity, and leave some bug to survive us all. If bugs survive, are they the fittest? All hail the bugs! Maybe bugs are more important than people… Yeah, if people aren’t made in the image of God, with no ultimate purpose, value, or meaning, then reducing them to objects of pleasure seems actually kinda right. 

How dare someone try and limit my sexual freedom by telling me other people have inherent value. Thank the Universe for the Sexual Revolution. 

What about ‘nature’? 

And, who needs the ‘nature’ aspect of science? Not me. I love me some science that allows me to be relative about truth and plural in my dating. All that research showing porn damaging the pleasure center of the brain really should just be ignored. Those studies showing porn disabling sexual performance can just be kept under the rug. And taking seriously those tests that show deep bonding taking place, on a neuro-chemical level, during sex, would really just cramp my life style. What do they call that again? Pair bonding? Yeah, that’s it. “Wired for pair-bonding,” is what they say. The same chemical and neurological bonding that takes place between mother and child as they breastfeed takes place with a man and a woman when they’re having sex. They say it enables the man and women to live life better together and parent, but who needs that kind of mushy scientific data?

Although I guess it is kinda freaky when you read that the same bonding process is happening when porn is being watched… Disturbing to think that all those intimate bonding chemicals are taking place between me and pixels as I practice digital intimacy. That’s probably part of the reason the pleasure center of our brains are getting damaged. Oh, and I hate the studies telling us that porn destroys trust and sexual intimacy between partners.  

I hate inconvenient science. 

I guess the sex apps really are the answer: if you can just treat people sexually, as one-dimensional creatures without special value, there will never be a problem. 

Dang. All this talk has my head really thinking. It’s a good thing I can forget all of it by hopping onto Facebook, jumping into a dating app, and then closing out the night with some porn. Yup, self-delusion is so liberating. Thank God for the Sexual Revolution! Well, not God… Ah you get what I mean! I love post-modernity.

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Shane James O’Neill is the Editorial Director for ProvenMen Ministries. He is currently working on a graduate degree in apologetics at Liberty University’s Rawling School of Divinity.