In a conversation with a professional colleague recently, I was discussing what might happen to ethics when sex with machines becomes common.That statement might seem a little bizarre out of context, so let me widen the net a bit.We were discussing the Bible and sexual ethics.This led to the question of how those who apply the Bible straight from antiquity might apply their beliefs to a world vastly different than first century Palestine.In biblical times, in other words, sexual options were limited and people didn’t understand the whole issue of human sperm and eggs, neither of which can be seen without a microscope.Applying their outlook directly to today is problematic, and so how do we apply a book without outdated views to a world vastly more complicated?
Someone recently paid me a small debt via PayPal.If sex is complicated, then let’s not even get started on Bitcoin or Apple Pay—for some of us money is money and even getting paid electronically is somewhat suspicious.I sometimes buy things online with PayPal.It goes straight onto one of my credit cards and then I write an old-fashioned check to pay for it.So I had to approach the altar of PayPal itself to figure out what it meant to have money in my account.What am I to do with it?Then I found the FAQ—TFIA (The Future Is Acronyms).One of the questions: “What is PayPal’s policy on transactions that involve sexually oriented goods and services?”Now, here’s a question of biblical proportions.
Paying for sexual “goods and services” goes all the way back to the book of Genesis when none other than the ancestor of David and later progeny did so.This is nothing new.But the question of ethics now looms extra large.For those who pay for such things, a new layer of complexity has apparently been added—can you pay with PayPal?My transaction had to do with tickets purchased for a concert online, where we wanted seats together so someone had to do the buying for everyone.What if the purchase had involved a somewhat more intimate setting?Who needs paper or plastic when a string of 16-digits, or even a username and password, will do?That’s to say nothing regarding the ethics of the transaction—this is, as it were, purely mechanical.What would Moses say?Surely this is a question of appropriate tips, for Tamar veiling herself by the side of the road had the moral high ground over her father-in-law who was simply looking for a good time.A staff and seal, however, were no less complicated that paying for goods and services online.
