Why NO Christian Should Have a Smart Phone
I’m a Patreon support of Pints With Aquinas and the other day, Matt Fradd asked for objections to the assertion that “NO Christian should have a Smart Phone”. Here’s how I replied:
My two objections are as follows…
(A) Smart Phones are not intrinsically evil – abusus non tollis usum. Therefore you are encouraging people to forsake the goods of a smart phone unnecessarily.
(B) On a more personal level, I have several people in my life who are all-or-nothing types. No new hobby lasts long before it’s added to the long list of things from which they must abstain because they’t do it moderation. From the outside it seems like they rarely develop much of the crucial virtue of temperance.
David Bates, Patreon Supporter
Also, the angelic living rarely lasts forever and often results in bing-purge cycles.
At the end of a recent episode on this subject, a response was given to these objections:
Honestly, I was rather disappointed. I was expecting a better-prepared response, particularly from folks trained in philosophy, to what I considered to be some fairly obvious objections.
He saw that it was good
Simply adopting an Augustinian conception of evil doesn’t avoid my objections. Yes, everything is ultimately “good” because it was made by God – Marc spent most of his time emphasizing this almost to the point of caricature and straw-manning, as though one must first adopt Gnosticism in order to describe something as “intrinsically evil”. Marc said:
“I’m trying to imagine what this would be like, if Christian morality somehow involved getting rid of the things that are evil in themselves… what would that be? What would I get rid of?”
Marc Barnes
However, it’s not a term foreign to Catholic thought:
“hostile to life itself . . . whatever violates the integrity of the human person . . . whatever is offensive to human dignity,”
Pope St. John Paul “The Great”, Veritatis Splendor quoting Gaudium et Spes
Matt Fradd pointed out that there are even “goods” involved in sin, giving pornography as an example. Okay, but pornography is a distortion of the sex act. Sex has a licit context. Therefore, to answer Marc’s question, we’d get rid of the distortion, not the elements which are being distorted. As I said in my initial comment, just because something can be abused, doesn’t mean that it doesn’t have its legitimate use (abusus non tollis usum).
While conceding that Smart Phones have many goods, Marc seems to be suggesting that there is no such licit context for a Smart Phone. This is what we would expect if we made the moral claim that “NO Christian should have a Smart Phone”. If something cannot possibly be used in any context, isn’t it fair to call it intrinsically evil?
Conceding the debate?
Marc said several times that it “doesn’t follow” to say that smashing your iPhone deprives you of the goods it would otherwise offer, but without any real explanation. If I smash my phone, I don’t get to use Hallow any more! Is he saying that the world would be better without it? Interestingly, Marc then went on to pretty much concedes that people can in fact receive this goods in a licit fashion from their phones! It all seemed rather muddled.
I’m not saying that there isn’t a way of treating the phone for some people , in some situations, that isn’t for them a near occasion of sin. I concede it as possible – I don’t think it’s usual
Marc Barnes
Afterwards, Matt said that people have to decide for themselves whether or not the pro’s of ownership outweigh the con’s, which also seems to deny the assertion that “NO Christian should have a Smart Phone”.
“I can resist anything but temptation” – Wilde
I think Matt’s comment about temperance is legitimate. The Smart Phone isn’t the only place whereby one can develop temperance. I’d also concede that if someone truly knows that they can’t handle a Smart Phone, then the temperate thing to do is indeed to get rid of it.
My point was rather that I’ve noticed a pattern that of my friends who give up their Smart Phones they seem to constantly be giving stuff up. Every new hobby is embraced for a few weeks before they find that they can’t moderate it and so it is added to the ever-increasing list of things which they must eschew entirely. In my experience, these are the sorts of people who say things like “NO Christian should have a Smart Phone”…
Interesting topic to think about. I feel like I agree with both you and Barnes/Fradd at the same time. I agree with abusus non tollit usum, but sometimes it seems something can be such a net negative to society that it ought to be banned or highly regulated or something. Nuclear energy could be another example of this. There’s a lot of potential good that could come from it, but the weight of potential negatives may predominate. (I didn’t listen to the whole thing, only their answer to your objection, so maybe they went into more of that. I’m also not saying smartphones and nuclear energy should be banned; I don’t know where I stand just now and am working out my own thoughts.)
But I also agree with you that their response was kind of lame for what should have been an “obvious objection.” They seemed lost when hearing your objection. (I’m also surprised that they got through the entire episode and no one else apparently brought it up either.)
And they really began losing me when they said that even pornography has some good within it. I again agree with you that pornography is a distortion. I’m hardly a Thomistic scholar, but it seems to me that pornography is intrinsically evil because it is such a massive distortion of something good (the divinely instituted sex act). They may as well say a Black Mass has some good in it because it mocks a real Mass, or that counterfeit money has some good because is mimics real money.
I think proving that case would be incredibly difficult. For example, approximately 1.35 million people are killed in car accidents each year. Should we ban cars?
I think this is a perfect example because I couldn’t disagree more! Anyone who wants their country to get off fossil fuels should embrace Nuclear power.
Yeah, it rather speaks of living in an echo chamber, or at least in an environment where appealing to an interpretation of the Book of Genesis is sufficiently convincing.
Yeah, it was a very strange line of argumentation.
The nuclear power comparison was simply the first example I thought of for the point I wanted to make. It’s true that abuse does not cancel proper use, but what if there’s a particular something that mankind can never properly use? What if something tends toward destruction so powerfully that mankind can never use it in a temperate way? In a case like that, temperance would mean “refraining completely”, not “using a little bit but not too much.” That’s the sort of principle I’m trying to apply to things like smartphones, nuclear, or whatever else.
I don’t think such a thing exists, though. It would have to be demonstrated (and I think the case against Nuclear Power plants is not strong).
I just don’t think such a thing exists though – certainly not universally.
I followed Matt’s podcast as he talked about ditching his smartphone. I wonder if some people are prone to getting “addicted” (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and are unable to moderate their use. I would think most people would be able to figure out what they are spending too much time on and ditch those functions of the phone (certain social media or games, for example) while keeping the phone. Phones provide users with breakdowns of how they are being used, so it isn’t hard to figure out what is sucking up your time. It’s fine to tell your own story. Not so fine to suggest everyone should ditch their smartphones because you couldn’t moderate your own use of one. I’m not giving up my occasional glass of wine because you’re an alcoholic.
Exactly 🙂
I would rather ditch my occasional glass of wine then being a offense to my brother.
Since there are Christians out there who are offended by the use of alcohol, deeming it unbiblical. Does that mean that you don’t drink? Just to be clear, we’re not talking about abstaining from drink when in the presence of an alcoholic. We’re talking about the presence of such a person in the world means that I should forego my own personal liberty.