Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

JOHN PIPER -- "PORNOGRAPHY: THE NEW NARCOTIC"

Piper offers important information and insight on pornography:

The new narcotic. Morgan Bennett just published an article by this title. The thesis:

Neurological research has revealed that the effect of internet pornography on the human brain is just as potent — if not more so — than addictive chemical substances such as cocaine or heroin.

To make matters worse, there are 1.9 million cocaine users, and 2 million heroin users, in the United States compared to 40 million regular users of online pornography.

Here’s why the addictive power of pornography can be worse:

Cocaine is considered a stimulant that increases dopamine levels in the brain. Dopamine is the primary neurotransmitter that most addictive substances release, as it causes a “high” and a subsequent craving for a repetition of the high, rather than a subsequent feeling of satisfaction by way of endorphins.

Heroin, on the other hand, is an opiate, which has a relaxing effect. Both drugs trigger chemical tolerance, which requires higher quantities of the drug to be used each time to achieve the same intensity of effect.

Pornography, by both arousing (the “high” effect via dopamine) and causing an orgasm (the “release” effect via opiates), is a type of polydrug that triggers both types of addictive brain chemicals in one punch, enhancing its addictive propensity.

But, Bennett says, “internet pornography does more than just spike the level of dopamine in the brain for a pleasure sensation. It literally changes the physical matter within the brain so that new neurological pathways requirepornographic material in order to trigger the desired reward sensation.”

Think of the brain as a forest where trails are worn down by hikers who walk along the same path over and over again, day after day. The exposure to pornographic images creates similar neural pathways that, over time, become more and more “well-paved” as they are repeatedly traveled with each exposure to pornography. Those neurological pathways eventually become the trail in the brain’s forest by which sexual interactions are routed. Thus, a pornography user has “unknowingly created a neurological circuit” that makes his or her default perspective toward sexual matters ruled by the norms and expectations of pornography.

FBI: MORE PEOPLE KILLED WITH HAMMERS, CLUBS THAN RIFLES

Interesting statistics, to say the least.  Awr Hawkins reports:  (HT: Drudge)

According to the FBI annual crime statistics, the number of murders committed annually with hammers and clubs far outnumbers the number of murders committed with a rifle.

This is an interesting fact, particularly amid the Democrats' feverish push to ban many different rifles, ostensibly to keep us safe of course.

However, it appears the zeal of Sens. like Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) is misdirected. For in looking at the FBI numbers from 2005 to 2011, the number of murders by hammers and clubs consistently exceeds the number of murders committed with a rifle.

Think about it: In 2005, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 445, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 605. In 2006, the number of murders committed with a rifle was 438, while the number of murders committed with hammers and clubs was 618.

And so the list goes, with the actual numbers changing somewhat from year to year, yet the fact that more people are killed with blunt objects each year remains constant.

For example, in 2011, there was 323 murders committed with a rifle but 496 murders committed with hammers and clubs. . .   Another interesting fact: According to the FBI, nearly twice as many people are killed by hands and fists each year than are killed by murderers who use rifles.

All of this is exceedingly interesting, indeed.   

DOES LARCENY IN THE HEART MOTIVATE TAXING THE RICH?

Doug Wilson thinks so.  He makes a good and generally unrecognized point:

[...]  We have thieves in Congress and in the White House because we have thievery in our hearts. Because we have larceny in our hearts, wanting to pay off 2012 debts with 2022 money, we put up with Bernake's monkeyshines at the Fed. Because we have larceny in our hearts, we hear a politician say that the rich should pay their "fair share" and we reflexively say yeah! -- in the name of justice. Thus we call rank injustice justice (Is. 5:20), and we do it because there is larceny in our little piggy hearts. Because we have larceny in our hearts, we call it greed when someone wants to keep the money he made, and we don't call it greed when we want to take it away from him. But we are the ones with sticky fingers -- and we have sticky fingers because of our sticky hearts. . . .

By the way, and I simply make this point in passing, it will do no good to get off this charge by appealing to our cultural memories of Robin Hood. He was not robbing the rich to give to the poor. He was robbing the tax collectors in order to get the money back to the people who had earned it in the first place. The Sherwood Forest hideout had a Gadsden flag flying over it.  [more . . .]

DAVID BROOKS - THE KILLER THAT IS INSIDE EACH OF US

I came upon David Brooks' article "When the Good Do Bad" via Charles Colson's Breakpoint article, "The Line Between Good and Evil."  Both articles ponder the tragedy of Staff Sargent Robert Bales, the U.S. soldier who allegedly murdered 16 Afghan civilians, including women and children.

Both meditations are worth reading.  In their own way, they make similar points.  From Colson's article, I appreciated his recounting Alexandr Solzhenitsyn's profoundly true observation:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either, but right through every human heart.”

And,

“This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years. Even within hearts overwhelmed by evil, one small bridgehead of good is retained; and even in the best of all hearts, there remains a small corner of evil.”

This is the extraordinary insight germane to the Christian understanding of reality and the human heart.  David Brooks understands and accepts this perspective.  He begins his article saying,

U.S. LOSING THE BATTLE AGAINST SEX TRAFFICKING?

Heather Sells of CBN news reports:

After 10 years of focus on global sex trafficking, the State Department has decided to take a look at trafficking within the U.S.

What prompted the change? Officials cite mounting evidence of this horror's existence right here at home.

Shared Hope International is a non-profit organization that works to combat trafficking globally. Undercover video captured by the group revealed how young the targets are.  (continued below)

 

According to researchers, traffickers usually begin targeting kids who are 12 years old. Every year, up to 300,000 U.S. children are at risk of being sold for sex.

To the untrained eye, trafficking is hard to spot. While many believe it's confined mainly to urban areas, CBN News recently discovered that Toledo, Ohio, is one of the top city for trafficking.

An FBI anti-trafficking task force now operates there, as well as in 38 other communities around the country.

Problems within the system abound, however, making justice difficult to obtain.

Also, most state laws aren't nearly as comprehensive or severe as federal laws, often leaving authorities with nowhere to take victims.

"Most of the girls have no self-esteem by the time we get them. They have been beaten," FBI Victim Specialist Jennifer Meyers said.
   
Across the country, Christian grassroots groups have begun to set up shelters for victims - a beginning step in an enormous battle to fight this modern atrocity.

HAS NEUROSCIENCE RELEGATED "EVIL" TO AN OUTDATED CONCEPT?

Ron Rosenbaum write a noteworthy article in "Slate" -  The End of Evil?  Neuroscientists suggest there is no such thing.  Are they right?

Rosenbaum surveys current thinking, pro and con, and then offers an observation of his own:

Evil does not necessarily inhere in some wiring diagram within the brain. Evil may inhere in bad ideas, particularly when they're dressed up as scientific (as Hitler did with his "scientific racism").

I think that's partly on the right track.  For my money, the struggle between good and evil (sin) best explains human life and reality.  As I read Rosenbaum's article (which quotes scientists who deny free will), my mind went to Alan Jacobs' Original Sin: A Cultural History.  No explanation of human behavior can stand that ignores our "bent" condition.  Only those with a marked ignorance of their own interior self can deny the reality of sin and evil.

SUSANNA WESLEY'S DEFINITION OF "SIN"

John Wesley's mother, Susanna, was an extraordinary woman!  As a young man, Wesley (the founder of the Methodist Church), once asked his mother for a definition of sin.  She replied in a letter:

"Take this rule: whatever weakens your reason, impairs the tenderness of your conscience, obscures your sense of God, or takes off your relish of spiritual things; in short, whatever increases the strength and authority of your body over your mind, that thing is sin to you, however innocent it may be in itself."
                           -- Susanna Wesley (Letter, June 8, 1725)

"CHRIST ON CAMPUS INITIATIVE" FROM TRINITY EVANGELICAL DIVINITY SCHOOL

TEDS recently announced the following essays can now be accessed on the internet.  Trinity is one of the foremost Christian seminaries in the world today.  The editorial team of CCI is led by Dr. D.A. Carson.  Here are the essays published to date.  More will follow.

• Human Flourishing - Danielle Sallade
  
• Sin: Not the Way It's Supposed to Be  -  Cornelius Platinga Jr.
  
• Five Arguments for God  -    William Lane Craig
  
• Christianity and Sexuality  -    Christopher Ash
  
• Naturalism and the Biblical Worldview   -  Kristen Birkett
  
• Jesus Christ and Religious Diversity   -  Harold A. Netland
  
• Do Christians Have a Worldview?  -   Graham Cole
  
• Jesus of Nazareth: How Historians Can Know Him and Why it Matters  -   Craig L. Blomberg
  
• A Christian Perspective on Islam   -   Chawkat Moucarry
  

 

VIDEO OF JENNY SANFORD RESPONDING TO REPORTERS' QUESTIONS

Update 6/27/09 - AP print interview with Jenny Sanford

- (Original post) It's only about 46 seconds long, but worth viewing.  Click here.  The comments from viewers are interesting.  One says:

Good for her. Wow. The republicans sure have some strong women:  Palin, Lynn Cheney,  Jerie Thompson, Michelle Malkin, Michelle Bachman,  Jenny Sanford   --  Proud. Loud. STRONG

Update: I think readers will be interested in Cal Thomas' column, "Should we forgive him?"   Excerpt:

I once asked evangelist Billy Graham if he experienced temptations of the flesh when he was young. He said, "of course." How did he deal with them? With passion he responded, "I asked God to strike me dead before He ever allowed me to dishonor Him in that way."  [more . .]

Update #2 - I think readers will also want to read Charles Colson's reflections on the Mark Sanford affair.  Colson is disappointed, pained and angered.   He warns and admonishes:

Nearly every grave moral failure begins with a small sin. Because there comes a time, after we toy with sin, when one pull of the flesh causes us to cross the line, to disengage from reason, and to follow our appetites wherever they may lead. . . [more . . ]

BEN WITHERINGTON - WE NEED TO REPENT OF GLUTTONY

Ben Witherington posts some thoughts and admonitions:

It’s Lent and time to think about the things we should be repenting of. . .  One of the most depressing things I have done in recent years is attend the Southern Baptist Convention in Greensboro N.C. It was not depressing because it was the Southern Baptist Convention as those folks were gracious enough hosts and good Christian people. No, it was depressing because I got to see up close and personal the devastation of what obesity has done to southern ministers, their spouses and also leading southern lay persons. Though I certainly did not take a head count or do a scientific survey it was clear from scanning the audience on repeated occasion that at least 70% of the audience was overweight, and at least 50% was considerably overweight, with perhaps 30% of that group being to the point of morbid obesity. It was simply depressing. Very depressing. . .

Obesity is a horrible Christian witness to a culture already known for its conspicuous consumption. . .   It is clear that here in the South we have entirely forgotten that gluttony is a sin, not to mention 

Blurring Lines Between the Decent and the Repulsive

One of my blog post categories is "Collapse of the West."  (See the column on the right side of this blog for other categories).   I think what L. Brent Bozell III reports fits that category.   He begins his article by saying,

Daniel Bergner isn’t the devil’s advocate, but he is a pervert’s apologist. This author and contributor to the New York Times Magazine has a new book titled "The Other Side of Desire," which argues it is unfair to judge bizarre, harmful, and disgusting sexual attractions as bizarre, harmful, and disgusting.

Bozell says further,

It’s natural that a New York Times contributor would draw praise in the New York Times Book Review, but the reviewer, National Public Radio commentator Lori Gottlieb, went beyond the call of duty in her February 8 piece. She aggressively touted Bergner’s literary and journalistic gifts, then took up the banner of his libertine crusade to blur all lines between the decent and the repulsive.  [my emphasis]

Me: And that's my cue for categorizing this book and its favorable reception as yet another sign of the "collapse of the West."  When a culture can't distinguish between "the decent and the repulsive," it is done for, barring some sort of supernatural Christian revival.  "Repulsive" is a word one rarely hears.  It's a good, strong word that needs to find its way back into appropriate usage.

- After posting the material above, I came across a symposium, "Islamic Terror and Sexual Mutilation," which expands the discussion of "repulsive"considerably.  It probably deserves a separate blog post, but I'll just note the symposium for now. 

During the horrifying siege of the Taj Mahal Hotel, the Islamic terrorists sexually humiliated and mutilated the guests before shooting them dead. Why? Frontpage has assembled a distinguished panel to discuss this question with us today.

Quote of the Day - G. K. Chesterton on Original Sin, Beggars, and Kings

From G. K. Chesterton's Orthodoxy  -

Christianity preaches an obviously unattractive idea, such as original sin; but when we wait for its results, they are pathos and brotherhood, and a thunder of laughter and pity; for only with original sin can we at once pity the beggar and distrust the king.

Me:  One could draw all manner of applications from this quote, but perhaps the most relevant would be to distrust all would-be "messiahs."  There are none, except Christ alone.  All who suppose otherwise will have their hopes and dreams dashed.   

WE WOULD ALL LOVE TO LIVE IN THE LEFTISTS' DREAM WORLD

But that's what it is, a dream world. Thomas Sowell published an astute column today.  He says:

Conservatives, as well as liberals, would undoubtedly be happier living in the kind of world envisioned by the Left.

Very few people have either a vested interest or an ideological preference for a world in which there are many inequalities.

Even fewer would prefer a world in which vast sums of money have to be devoted to military defense, when so much benefit could be produced if those resources were directed into medical research instead.

It is hardly surprising that young people prefer the political Left. The only reason for rejecting the Left’s vision is that the real world in which we live is very different from the world that the Left perceives today or envisions for tomorrow.

Most of us learn that from experience — but experience is precisely what the young are lacking.

“Experience” is often just a fancy word for the mistakes that we belatedly realized we were making, only after the realities of the world made us pay a painful price for being wrong.

Those who are insulated from that pain — whether by being born into affluence or wealth, or shielded by the welfare state, or insulated by tenure in academia or in the federal judiciary — can remain in a state of perpetual immaturity.

Keep reading for more of Sowell's column.  [I might insert here that those who believe in "original sin" perceive human life in a profoundly more realistic way than those who do not.  See, for example, Alan Jacobs' book, Original Sin: A Cultural History and the review of the same, by George Sim Johnston originally published  in the Wall Street Journal (6/13/08)]

JOHN EDWARDS' ADULTERY (OOPS, I mean extramarital affair)

Do words matter?  Do we shy away from using the word "adultery" for a reason? Fr. Robert J. Landry thinks so.   He notes that

 those in the media and many people in our society consider the terms “adultery” and “betrayal” too negatively value laden to be used in any objective description of what Senator Edwards did, as if the evil were no longer inherent in the action but rather only perhaps in the eye of the commentator. 

His column is a useful read on the state of adultery in American society today.  Read on below.. (HT: The Corner)

It Was like Hell in that Pizza Joint

Carol Currie, an excellent newspaper columnist, tells a story of food and greed.   She writes:

"We were returning from Georgia on a recent Sunday night and not many restaurants were open. We stopped in a chain pizza buffet restaurant in a small South Carolina town because it was quick and because there wasn’t much other choice.

The place was packed with people who all seemed to know each other. What we witnessed was a full-scale hog-out of the worst kind by