Christian Ethics and Sexbots

Sex robots are com... approaching rapidly. You can already get bespoke sex dolls. The normal response to this prospect is a mixture of titillation, disgust, and mockery of the people likely to need them. I'm interested in this from a theological perspective, though: is sex with a robot, strictly speaking, forbidden to Christians?

It seems useful to compare such acts to masturbation. Masturbation is generally disapproved of within Christianity, but there is not universal agreement on the rationale for this prohibition. This opacity has a lot to do with the Bible saying almost nothing about masturbation. Wikipedia mentions the story of Onan in Genesis 38, but the relevance of this passage (in which Onan is pressed by his father to sleep with his brother's widow, but refuses to impregnate her) seems dubious.

Leviticus 15 discusses the way a person may be made ceremonially unclean due to discharges of semen. However, I would presume that this no more applies to Christians than the Old Testament regulations concerning women's periods. Jesus' death removed the need for this kind of ceremonial purity, substituting his purity in the place of men.

So much for attempting to get an answer directly out of scripture. I am aware of four arguments as to why masturbation is usually or always sinful, which we shall refer to as the Purity, Radically Pro-Life, Teleological and Lust arguments. Note that accepting one does not entail the rejection of the others, and masturbation might be sinful for multiple reasons. There are, though, good reasons for rejecting at least the first two of these arguments.

Purity Argument

This is broadly the argument I suggested referring to Leviticus. The claim would be that masturbation in some way defiles or profanes the body. The Christian's body being a temple to the Holy Spirit and all, masturbation is therefore wrong.

Why, however, would we think that masturbation is profane in this way? As Paul writes in Romans 15:14:

I am convinced, being fully persuaded in the Lord Jesus, that nothing is unclean in itself. But if anyone regards something as unclean, then for that person it is unclean.

Masturbation might on this view be wrong for some people. But there's nothing here to justify a blanket prohibition.

Radical Pro-Life Argument

Life, many Christians claim, begins at conception. (I think a better way to put this would be that "the distinctively valuable feature of life - i.e. being part of God's plan - begins at conception", but that's a debate for another time). Why not go further, then? Why not argue that not merely a fetus, but even a sperm, has moral importance and should be treated with the same reverence as a person?

The first thing to note is that this would only establish a prohibition on masturbation by men. (And indeed, men would be perfectly entitled to masturbate so long as they did not ejaculate), Female masturbation is hardly going to kill an egg.

But even with that restriction, the argument seems dubious. An embryo will, in the right conditions, grow into a person: it is, one might well believe, a person who has yet to fully develop. A sperm is not like this, however, since it needs not only the right nourishment and protection to become a person, but also to be united with an egg.

Moreover, even when an act of sex does lead to procreation, there are hundreds of millions of sperm which do not fertilize the egg but instead die within a few days. If God had imbued sperm with intrinsic moral value, would He really allow 99.999999% of them to die even in the best case?

Teleological Argument

This was for a long time - perhaps still is, I don't know - the official view of the Catholic Church. According to this view, the purpose of sex is procreation within marriage. All acts of sex which do not aim towards this purpose are sinful.

I'm not going to challenge this as an argument, given that it has been developed and defended over hundreds of years by minds greater than my own. Perhaps it succeeds, perhaps it does not, and it would be the height of arrogance to think that I can refute its strongest form without ever having looked into it before now.

Two things are worth noting, however. First: if you accept this argument you should also oppose a wide range of other sexual acts, including not only familiar sins such as sex outside of marriage and homosexual sex but also sex using contraception, ejaculation into any orifice other than the vagina, sex between couples in which the woman is post-menopausal or already pregnant, etc.

Second, one can reject this argument while maintaining that sex has a particular purpose of procreation within marriage. It is mainstream doctrine in many denominations that sex is intended not only for procreation but also for pleasure, just as food is intended both for our pleasure and for our sustenance. Moreover, unless one thinks that whatever serves God's purposes is mandatory and whatever does not serve His purposes is forbidden, there remains work to be done in the move from "sex is intended by God for procreation by married couples" to "all sexual acts which cannot lead to procreation are forbidden."

Lust Argument

This, I think, is by far the most plausible argument against masturbation. Consider Matthew 5:27-28:

27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.

Masturbation is not in itself sinful. However, it is usually predicated upon, or at the very least assisted by, a sinful lust. Masturbating to thoughts of someone to whom you are not married is a violation of the Seventh Commandment. If one is able to masturbate without thinking of anyone, then sure, go ahead; if one masturbates thinking of one's spouse, then again go ahead (although procreative sex is perhaps better!).


What does this mean for sex with robots?

The Purity argument would presumably apply to robots as well as masturbation. But as we saw, this will make you impure only if you think it does and decide to go ahead anyway.

The Radical Pro-Life argument would establish a prohibition upon men ejaculating as a result of sexual relations with robots. We might think that for men to engage in sex with robots at all is therefore spiritually unhelpful and conducive to sinning, even if not sinful in itself. But as noted, this argument seems highly dubious and could not in any case establish an objection to women making use of sex robots.

The Teleological argument would presumably establish a prohibition on the use of sex robots, except where such usage is conducive to procreation. Again, though, the argument seems dubious.

What of the Lust argument? Does lust towards a robot constitute adultery? If the robot is intended to represent a particular person to whom one is not attracted, then it seems that it should: one would not be excused lusting over a pornographic actress merely because technically one lusted over a picture of her on a screen, so it should hardly be different if we replace the screen with a 3D representation.

Following this, I think it makes sense to think that any sexual act with a robot in which the act is reliant upon the robot's being representational of a person to whom one is not married should be considered sinful. Sex with a stranger is adultery just as much as sex with a known person. That said, a robot which is representational of one's spouse does not seem to fall foul of this rule: if sexting and sending of naked selfies between married couples is permissible, then masturbation to 3D representations of each other ought also to be permissible. Additionally, robots which produce sexual pleasure without being representational of any person would not fall foul of the lust argument.

In conclusion

I'm not here to set your doctrine for you. Perhaps you think I am wrong to reject the Teleological argument, in which case sex robots can be almost completely ruled out. Even the Lust argument that I think succeeds sets some strong limits on what kinds of sex robots can be used without sin. But it seems mistaken to argue that Christians should accept a blanket prohibition upon all such uses of robots.

Reading the Best of 2015: Part Three

(Previous installments)

Trump, Card by William Germano is vaguely interesting, but I have no idea what it's doing on this list. Etymology is a surprisingly interesting subject, but it rarely gives you anything to think about or anything more than an interesting tidbit to take away. This essay is no exception.

Izabella Kaminska's Cryptic Bullet Points could not be any more of a contrast. It is not an essay, rather it is simply a list of blog posts that she lacks the time to write properly.

This is a kind of blogging which I am happy to endorse. I'm unlikely to practice it myself, because nowadays when I have a good idea I'm less likely to blog it than to put it on my list of "potential academic papers", but I'm glad that there are people who are giving us the opportunity to learn from them rather than hoarding their ideas.

Did I learn anything from the list? Not really, largely because I didn't really understand much of it. If the post was intended for anything even close to the average reader then this could be a problem, since (having studied economics for two years in undergrad) I probably know a fair bit more about the financial industry than most people. However, the average investor presumably knows a fair bit more than I do, so perhaps it would be more useful for them. Given that I still have 91 essays to read, I'm not going to take the time to find out.

The award for "most misleading title", at least of the articles so far, goes to Evan Ratliff's My Wife Found my Email in the Ashley Madison database. The article is not about the resulting struggle to repair his marriage, but rather about the various other Mr/Mrs E Ratliffs who enter his email when they log in to a variety of sites. As with many of these articles it's interesting; as with many I would not place it in the top 100 articles that I've read this year. Most of it is just short stories, flashes from the lives of people who, were it not for that shared initial and surname, would be perfect strangers to the author.

An article which very firmly does belong on this list is Rachel Ward's I'm Sorry I Didn't Respond to Your Email, My Husband Coughed to Death Two Years Ago. This piece is a (somewhat) light-hearted retrospective on her experiences of becoming and being a widow, presented in dialogue form. I'm not certain what this presentation adds to it - perhaps it's supposed to be quirky and characterful, but really there are many more people who believe themselves to be madcap pixies than there are actual madcap pixies.

The essay is both funny and serious, but above all it's unpretentious. Ward explains what she has learned and what has changed in her life as a result of her husband's passing, but she doesn't try to make it into anything that it's not.

[The nurse] told me I’d see him again, at the funeral, and that I should just focus on sleeping and eating. And then I said “I can’t believe it, he was such a good husband.”

And she said, “Yeah, but he did a shitty thing today.”

And that was the first time I laughed after Steve died.

It would be fair to describe this as my favourite essay so far.

An actual defence of homophobes

A (himself gay) friend of mine wrote a blog post entitled "In Defence of Homophobes". I have a problem with is his post: it's not an actual defence of them, merely an argument that we should not be getting them fired from jobs (outside of politics) for their views. As it happens, I pretty much completely agree with him, but for the record, an actual defence of homophobes, one that actually attempts to defend the thing which distinguishes them from the population at large - their homophobia - instead of merely treating it as an unfortunate flaw, would look rather more like the following:


Any minority group within society which cannot interact romantically with non-members of that group places its members at a severe disadvantage. Such groups include homosexuals, most Christians, and probably a fair few other groups which I have less exposure to. In a society of 100 men and 100 women, where exactly 8 members of each sex are homosexual, each straight person has 92 potential partners whereas each homosexual has only 7. Straights are therefore able to be more selective about their chosen partner, and so their relationships are likely to be better optimised for happiness. Moreover, the assumption when meeting someone in whom you have a potential romantic interest is that they are straight, which means that in order to find a partner a homosexual will generally have to go to some specialised place. For example, this is why there are specialised nightclubs for gays - it's not that gays have systematically different tastes in music to straight people, nor is it that they are more fussy about the décor - it's to facilitate a hookup culture in which gays do not face a 90%+ chance of being rejected without any consideration.

Of course, homosexuality is not something that is chosen, so it is unfair to blame homosexual people for the position in which they find themselves. But that doesn't mean we can't try to shift people's preferences towards being more straight. If there is less talk about homosexuality, then it is at least plausible that reduced exposure to the possibility of finding someone of the same sex attractive will cause people to think less about being homosexual, act according to a "straighter" set of sexual preferences, and hopefully find more satisfying relationships as a result.

It should be noted that the argument would apply the other way if homosexuals were the majority and straights the minority. Indeed, the ideal would be for everyone to be bisexual, which would raise each person's number of potential partners in the example above from a mean of 85.2 to 199. But because a) currently the majority is straight, which provides as easy coordination point, and b) it's easier to reproduce (if not necessarily to actually raise children) within the context of a straight relationship, it just so happens that barring a major shift in favour of bisexuality, it makes sense to push towards a greater homogeneity around heterosexuality.


There are counter-arguments, of course. Given that there are significant similarities between members of the same sex which do not exist across the sexes - e.g. men supposedly having a greater appetite for sex than women, and tending to be more interested than women in things like sport and computer games - homosexual relationships could have a natural hedonic advantage over straight relationships. Without doing empirical research I really don't know which effect would be larger; the point is that an actual defence of homophobes - as opposed to an argument that they should be tolerated - would treat them as reasonable people with reasonable grounds for their beliefs and actions. Of course, no actual homophobe holds his/her position because of the reasoning I have laid out above.

In Defence of Ron

By now you can hardly have avoided the announcement. J.K. Rowling thinks, in hindsight, that Ron and Hermione were wrong for each other and that perhaps Harry and Hermione would have been a better match.

I was even more disappointed by Eric Crampton's take, a polemic replete with HPMOR quotes and a determination to ignore the fact that we're talking about an 11-year-old. Yes, Ron inherited some silly ideas from his parents (and from the Wizarding World as a whole) but he also had a cool head under fire and an admirable willingness to put his interests aside to serve others. In the first book alone note that, apart from his heroic sacrifice in the chess game, it was he who had the sense to think of lighting a fire when confronted with Devil's Snare.

I'm not going to attempt to defend the Ron/Hermione relationship - if they managed to be friends for six years and Ron only developed an interest in Hermione when she suddenly morphed into the actress playing her then I'm happy to lump it in with most late-teenage you're-fit-let's-date relationships, albeit with considerably more intense shared experiences than most. Harry and Ginny at least had complementary personalities - Ron and Hermione would never have become friends without Harry's influence. (If we're brutally honest, it's doubtful that Hermione would have had friends at all for at least her first four years at Hogwarts were it not for the troll incident - at least, not among the Gryffindors. Maybe she'd have bonded with Neville over neither of them having anyone else to hang out with?).

I remember one fanfic I read suggested that, in an alternate universe with no Ginny  Harry would (being rich, famous, presumably good-looking) have had his choice of girls, and gone for the one who he found most interesting - Luna. I like this theory, and Luna would certainly be my favourite alternative to Ginny. I don't know that I'd say that Luna was the best girl for Harry, but I would definitely say that (of the characters appearing in the books) Harry would have been the best guy for Luna. He never mocks her, which puts him ahead of just about everyone else to begin with. Let's hope that Rolf Scamander was suitably eccentric.

Gay marriage vs. Straight non-religious marriage

My position on state recognition for gay marriage was (and remains) roughly thus:

• The State should not be involved in marriage at all, whether for straight couples, gay couples, or polygamous groups.
• Thus, I opposed it being made legal, as this involved the state claiming the right to define marriage, This is as opposed to it merely being legal. I now oppose it being de-legalised for the same reason.
• From a religious perspective, I do not personally see a marriage between two people of the same sex as being valid.
• However, freedom of contract implies that two people who wish to have a contract between them which does not affect anyone else should be allowed to have that contract. If they wish to call it marriage, then that's their choice.

Th third point there is probably the most controversial. I see the fundamental purpose of marriage as being an illustration of the relationship between God and His people. God is an essential part of a marriage. This leads to a question which I'd never considered or even though of before it was asked on me on Tuesday by a housemate:

Do I see a straight marriage between two non-Christians as valid?

Since I see God as a fundamental part of a marriage, my instinct is not to recognise such as marriage as valid. This has important implications. Since I also believe that sex outside of marriage is wrong, answering "No" implies that I should believe sex to always be wrong for any non-Christian, "married" or not. It would not require me to advocate banning non-Christians from getting married, as explained above, but it might well mean that people who do advocate a ban on gay marriages should also advocate a ban on non-religious marriages.

There are perhaps ways of escaping this. Perhaps there is another crucial difference. The most obvious attempt would be some kind of Natural Law argument - that non-Christian marriages still serve a natural purpose of bringing new children into the world. However, I find this unconvincing - perhaps new children are brought into the world, but if those children are not brought up to be Christians, then is this really fulfilling Natural Law?

Perhaps it is that a straight non-Christian marriage has the potential to become a Christian marriage if both partners pledge themselves to Jesus. This simply isn't the case with a gay marriage. However, why then not say that the marriage becomes valid only once the partners have both committed themselves to God, and was previously invalid?