Masturbation Debate - Sam Harris vs Jordan Peterson

Added: 2026-06-01

[00:00:00]The resurrection of Jesus is clearly an important question, but you've raised a much bigger and more pressing question for the audience, which is whether or not God cares whether they masturbate.

[00:00:10]So, I actually think if we pursue that answer, that we will actually wrap this up in a way that um >> You you want to end this on masturbation?

[00:00:23]>> I I think we owe it to them to >> Okay.

[00:00:28]>> So, look Give Give me a little leash.

[00:00:32]>> The floor is yours.

[00:00:33]>> Okay, great.

[00:00:36]How did I end up here? All right. So, here's here's the question. Let Let's just figure out if we can uh determine why God might care if you masturbate, right? So, let's suppose that we have a story, a heuristic of some kind that stands in for something.

[00:00:53]And the story is God is watching, he sees you always, he doesn't want you masturbating, so don't you dare.

[00:01:02]What happens?

[00:01:06]>> What happens?

[00:01:07]>> Yeah.

[00:01:08]>> Uh well, it's uh it's rather ineffectual >> You sure?

[00:01:14]>> idea. Yeah. Well, I mean >> think that story prevented lots of people from masturbating?

[00:01:19]>> no, but I think the reality was was that you had people masturbating and feeling terrible about it, and you had a whole layer of sexual neurosis that got grafted onto human psychology unnecessarily. Christianity has a certain typology of sexual hang-uppery, which which you know, the the Tantrics don't have.

[00:01:38]>> So, if I understand you correctly, you are agreeing that a certain amount, certain number of people will have masturbated.

[00:01:44]>> Some Some of them joined the priesthood and raped little boys. I mean, that's all of a piece.

[00:01:49]>> Let's stick with the the topic. So, a certain number of people will have masturbated. They will have thought >> Honestly, it's the same topic. I mean, that that those that the the taboos around masturbation, the taboos around sexuality prior to marriage, the taboo around divorce, all of the taboo around out of wedlock birth, the the ideal of celibacy in the priesthood, all of that is a is a just a diabolical machine of needless sexual conflict and misery.

[00:02:18]>> hold on. Hold on. Hold on.

[00:02:19]>> And But yes, okay.

[00:02:22]You have to take diabolical out of there.

[00:02:24]>> How's the How's the whole flood of pornography thing working out for you?

[00:02:28]>> I will I will grant you that there is some interpretation that takes supernatural principles and magic and otherworldliness out of the equation here that gets you some wisdom in the heuristic. Yes, if you're masturbating all the time, you're not satisfying your your monogamous relationship with your wife or husband.

[00:02:48]>> We wouldn't even need to go there. Let's just >> You're not procreating and we want children.

[00:02:53]>> that a certain amount of masturbation was present was prevented by that story which made people fear the consequence of them engaging in it. Which would result in, I'm pretty sure, less less masturbation. Which means that in seeking a release, which we are physiologically programmed to seek, one might end up looking in a more urgent fashion for a mate.

[00:03:19]>> Right. So, so it's Are we going to enforce monogamy? Is that the thing?

[00:03:22]>> No, here here So, look, I'm I'm trying to take you somewhere. I think I think there is a way that we can rescue some important part of what both of you are saying that can now be reconciled and then there's a bitter pill for each of you. I mean, that's just the way this looks to me. So, if we can agree that this makes sense actually as a fitness-enhancing adaptation, that this story would result in people behaving in a way that might result in them marrying early, might result in them reproducing earlier than they would otherwise, right? Then we can understand it as mechanistic and we can understand what you said that, you know, maybe God would care about whether or not people masturbate because God is a metaphor for some set of stories that gets you to behave in an adaptive fashion.

[00:04:05]But, the point for you then would be that Sam is arguing with reason we can decide whether or not to employ this story at this moment, whether it's a good idea for us to urgently reproduce as quickly as possible, which for example increases the size of the population of the planet, whereas delaying reproduction keeps the rate of population growth down and might be a better choice for a moment in history when we have 7.5 billion people on the planet. So, in some sense, what I think I see is the religious story itself makes some kind of sense if you adhere to it in a manner that you are obligated and have no tools with which to question it, then you will miss the fact that at this moment you might want to throw that story out.

[00:04:51]>> the problem is it doesn't make sense and this is this is a problem with these heuristics in general. It doesn't make sense for the right reason and that's why it's not a a reliable guide given other changes in the world. Well, with everything changing, you want to be making sense for the right reason. You don't want it like so useful fictions have to be retired at a certain point.

[00:05:12]Useful truths stay true. I mean, if you because they're based on your engagement with reality. And so to take your point about pornography, which I think is totally valid, you we you could have a completely rational conversation in terms of human psychology and sociology and what you want society to look like about the corrosive nature of pornography, right? That's not you don't have to be a Victorian uh prude to worry that there might be something wrong with the infinite availability of pornography to 13-year-olds and above, right? I mean, it's that's I don't know what what's generation of human beings we're raising in the current environment. It's it's, you know, it's quite worrisome, actually. But, again, you don't have to invoke mythology to do that. And I would say the temptation to invoke mythology is say, "Well, you actually, you know, Poseidon really gets pissed off when you masturbate."

[00:06:09]How do you do it?

[00:06:12]We have no mechanism for controlling that effect. on human relationships and your own mind and your own intention and the way you view other people >> That barely works for sex ed. It barely works for condom education.

[00:06:22]>> What was that?

[00:06:23]>> Barely works. Like those sorts of educational interventions to stop that kind of fundamental behavior have very little effect. People aren't nearly as as amenable to behavioral changes as a consequence of rational educational interventions as you might hope. I mean, and that that's that's part and parcel of a very broad clinical literature.

[00:06:41]>> They're they're not as they're not as amenable to dogmatic intrusions, either.

[00:06:45]I mean, they're not >> are. And well, that might be a problem.

[00:06:48]And there are there are problems with that.

[00:06:49]>> Well, no, because because they're again, this is just This is all This is all going in The problem is that this Even if you could make the case that a dogmatic attachment to one or another religion was better, all things considered, than being secular truly secular and truly rational, right? Uh it's vulnerable It's it's vulnerable to every next thing we find out.