Welcome to answers from an apostolic faith.


In Father and Son, the Holy Spirit, One God. Amen.


Today, we continue to answer the courageous question received about the subject of pornography. We saw, in the previous video called Why Is Pornography a Sin?, the theological reasons that make pornography an evil that separates people from God. In this video, we will examine if there is a real harm in watching pornographic material.


Unfortunately, many youths have heard from their teachers at school and from even random TV shows that pornography and masturbation is something that is healthy. But that is not what science says. I'll present to you, in this video, some simplified scientific data and we'll see how science goes hand in hand with Christian theology.


Before starting, we need to be familiar with the term dopamine. Dopamine, in a nutshell, is a chemical in the brain that produces reward-motivated pleasure. Like drugs, when there's an rise in pornography viewing, the brain increases the production of dopamine, which causes excitement. The person becomes overexcited during this time. As the behaviour progresses and becomes an addiction, the brain realizes that it needs to produce an excessive amount of dopamine because of all the watching. So, it starts to react to this extra demand by slowing things down and reserving the dopamine for when the person is watching porn.


What does this entail? Since the dopamine is reserved for the time the person watches porn, the normal, meaning life without porn, becomes quite tedious. In other words, the addict doesn’t find happiness in his or her normal life anymore, because there's no dopamine, right? So, anything other than porn becomes uninteresting for this person. It leads the addict to the need to go back to the sin to regulate his or her emotional life, because pornography has become the new normal. Let’s see what an article in The Guardian newspaper has to say about this. It says:


''The Cambridge University neuropsychiatrist, Dr. Valerie Voon, has recently shown that men who describe themselves as addicted to porn (and who lost relationships because of it) develop changes in the same brain area─the reward center─that changes in drug addicts.'' (Dr. Valerie Voon, Cambridge University)


She's discussing here the effects of the dopa... or the extra dopamine that is produced, right? Another research says:


''(...) perceived addiction to Internet pornography predicted psychological distress above and beyond pornography use itself and other relevant variables.'' (Bowling Green State University, Youngstown State University, Department of Psychology)


These two studies and many others, they converge to one conclusion that pornography is indeed harmful.


The problem is that this psychological distress caused in the addict leads to other life detrimental effects. Since life has become dull, the addict seeks her dose of dopamine. So, she's lead to isolate herself from the world to be able to watch, or in other cases, to lead a double-life. Part of her life is normal as she interacts with the people and the other part is a secret life at night-time or when no one is watching. This is, of course, not how God intended us humans to live, as He created us as relational beings that are meant to live a purposeful life.


It gets even worse than this. In extreme cases, this addiction leads to depression and this is understandable, since the addict loses his sense of pleasure-reward in achieving the normal day-to-day task.


As the addict is willing to sacrifice what he cherishes most, in order to preserve and continue her unhealthy behaviour, the family life even can take a hit and there's discontent, there's dissatisfaction in the sexual relationship with the spouse, if there is a spouse. And we find that this God-given gift that should be used for experiencing intimacy with the spouse in holy matrimony has been ironically transformed into the reason the addict rejects the spouse, because he or she is not as perfect as what is being seen in the pornographic material. It is not a surprise that we see in other... another study that additional consequence of porn addiction is multiple sexual partners. It is a truly a dangerous sin that can destroy someone's precious life.


The result of this next study is very interesting. They examined religious people and the relation between watching pornographic material and the frequency of their prayers and service attendance. So, they observed their behaviour at two different times, which we will call T1 and T2. They discovered that the people that watched pornography at time T1 and continued until time T2, reported more religious doubt and lower prayer frequency at T2, compared to those who never viewed porn in the first place, which makes sense, right?


So, the effect of this sin on the person is clear. However, it doesn’t stop there. At the higher level of pornography viewing, the people that watched a lot, they found a sudden change in behaviour: the service attendance and prayer decline started to increase again. So, the high porn viewers found a need to go back to their religious affiliation.


This study can be explained from a spiritual perspective where in the beginning of the study, as the person started feeling the rush of dopamine and the associated pleasure of sin, he


turned toward the sin more frequently and naturally, slowly, he phased out from practicing his religion. And that's what happened between T1 and T2. However, as the corruption increased inside the person and he became a slave to this sin and life started becoming more and more miserable, the study shows a tendency for these people to go back to their original religious beliefs. This demonstrates that this sin doesn’t fulfill the person. It's quite the opposite: it destroys him.


Although the study refers to people from different religions and each one of them most probably went back to what he originally practiced, the true freedom is found in Christ alone. The harms of pornography are great and we have to be extremely careful with this rapid growing addiction.


For the viewers that might have already fallen in this sin, again, I want to remind you that there is hope. Many have repented. Many have overcome, even some that today we consider saints in the Church. And although they fell, through their repentance, their lives were metamorphosed. And I will conclude this video with a beautiful quote from St. Ephraim the Syrian really worth listening to. He says:


''The princes of evil have blinded me with their passions and by their cunningness they have robbed me of the beauty of my youth. What can I do, now that I have lost my purity? I will cry out to Christ, that He (...) return my beauty to me─and then will the evil ones be ashamed. My Savior cries out to me, to His disciple: do not despair of the salvation; I will restore you and forgive you your sins. I have found you and I will not leave you; for I have redeemed you with my very own Blood. Cry out, O sinner, with all your might, and spare not your throat; for your Lord is merciful and loves those who repent. As soon as you return, your Father will come out beforehand to meet you. He will slaughter the fatted calf, clothe you in a fine robe, and rejoice in you.'' (St. Ephraim the Syrian)


Truly we ought to never forget that there's always hope with God. Never give up.


And remember: Know your faith, live your faith, and teach your faith. And glory be to God forever. Amen.


References used in this video: