Can Homosexuality Be Proved Wrong From Natural Law

[antunesaa]

Homosexuality is entirely defensible. The only argument against it is that certain believers claim that a supernatural being has inspired writings against it. And this argument, outside the circle of believers, is a very weak one.

infertility is a weak and irrational argument against it

health is a weak and irrational argument against it

“Natural Law” is a weak and irrational argument against it

You state you are agnostic, so you’re outside the circle of believers. Now, from an agnostic perspective, pretty much everything is defensible under certain circumstances. For instance, incest is defensible. Polyandry, polygamy and other combinations of males and females are also defensible. The death penalty is defensible. Voluntary slavery is defensible. Abortion is defensible. Sadism and masochism are defensible. Bestiality is defensible. Euthanasia is defensible. (I’m against all these practices.)

Do I have to spell out arguments for all these things based on merely agnostic principles? Principles like: (1) “life is valuable up to the point that it is deemed admissible by the human community”; (2) “the free will of any person must be respected in all circumstances as long as it does not interfere with other people’s lives”; (3) “people can and should use any available means of achieving their personal goals as long as they do not harm others directly or indirectly”.

To attack voluntary slavery, abortion, incest, polygamy, polyandry, sadism, etc. you need something else. You need something beyond the consensus of the human community, because that consensus is by definition contingent. The problem with the above principles is that they are made by men for men. They lack the universality and continuity required for condemning practices that, by and large, have been condemned throughout history. These principles are not sufficient to rule out things that today are condemned by everyone but which, eventually, will be defended by someone within some years.

Take incest. Two adult people who happen to be brother and sister decide they love each other and want to live openly their relationship. Are those principles enough to combat their decision? I don’t think so. Their relationship concerns them only. They don’t hurt other people; by (2) we can’t deny them the fulfillment of their best wishes. Should we prevent them from having children? No: by (3) they could check whether their offspring were healthy and by (1) they would be allowed (as now people are) to abort potentially defective fetuses. So why forbid incest between consenting adults?

There is one principle that allows you to combat all these practices. The principle is that any being that is human is loved and wished by the God that was revealed by Jesus. (And perhaps the God of the other religions of the Book.) Of course, for you, who are a non-believer, any talk of God is anathema. But then you have to admit that, sooner or later, all those practices indicated above will be allowed if the current Western mindset persists.

 

[larkin31]

**Post #314: **Natural Law is “a law that is in principle accessible to human reason and not dependent on (though entirely compatible with and, indeed, illumined by) divine revelation.” (The Clash of Orthodoxies, Professor Robert P George (Princeton), 2001, p 169).

Interesting.

But I wonder which God’s “divine revelation” is referred to. Any of the gods?

 

[larkin31]

You state you are agnostic, so you’re outside the circle of believers. Now, from an agnostic perspective, pretty much everything is defensible under certain circumstances. For instance, incest is defensible. Polyandry, polygamy and other combinations of males and females are also defensible. The death penalty is defensible. Voluntary slavery is defensible. Abortion is defensible. Sadism and masochism are defensible. Bestiality is defensible. Euthanasia is defensible. (I’m against all these practices.)

I would never defend all of these. I have never heard a persuasive defense of most of them. And certainly the Christian God does not condemn all of them. So I really don’t get your point. Even the RCC explains or “defends” its dogma. What is wrong with “defending” a moral principle or decision?

 

[John21652]

The level of debate on this thread has fallen dramatically since I last checked in. Is Laurie still around? I was supposed to answer a query of his? You there Laurie?

The rest of you are so far off topic it’s rediculous.

 

[djeter]

Something I quoted from the other day but now have reading selections for here:

payingattentiontothesky.com/2010/07/09/selections-from-pope-benedict-xvi%e2%80%99s-address-to-the-participants-in-the-international-congress-on-natural-law/

regards,

dj

 

[DysonSphere]

God created man and woman and made them physically and spiritually attracted to each other.

And only each other? Why should a non-Catholic believe this?

How can homosexual “love” which is totally opposed to nature be equal or on a par with heterosexual love as ordained by our Creator?

I never used the phrase “on a par”. Even if it’s not equivalent, how would that establish your claim that all homosexual love is neurotic sentimentality? There is, at least until otherwise established, quite a bit of middle ground.

Can you prove the opposite?

I don’t know what this means or why it is important.

 

[DysonSphere]

Why shouldn’t it be a valid assessment?

I don’t know if it is or not, since I’m not a psychologist. I would not consider accepting its results, on the face of it, unless these results were also presented in a respected peer-reviewed journal. As far as I know, they may have been presented in a respected journal. If so, I’d like a reference.

 

[CarlosMorales]

Yes. Check out this amazing study, complete with the animal analogy answer.

tfp.org/images/books/Defending_A_Higher_Law.pdf

 

[larkin31]

Yes. Check out this amazing study, complete with the animal analogy answer.

tfp.org/images/books/Defending_A_Higher_Law.pdf

Why should one read past these obvious mistatements of so-called “unchanging laws”?:

Anyone can observe that the universe is ruled by unchanging
laws: Leaves are green; blood is red; water freezes at a
given temperature; birds fly; night follows day; and so on.

(from the beginning of the chapter on Natural Law).

 

[budgie2]

Dearly beloved friends,

A non-Christian may be prepared to concede that homosexual deviant acts are ‘unnatural’ in the sense that some things plainly have inherent functions (termed teleologies by philosphers). Thus to use one’s reproductive organs for purposes other than that for which they were intended (i.e. procreation) is manfestly unnatural.

However, whilst they might allow that homosexual genital acts are aberrant and unnatural, they would say that that does not necessarily make them wrong. They want to know how one leaps from unnatural to wrong. Thus, by way of example they will say that the bridge of the nose was not intended to hold glasses (an unnatural use), nevertheless, it is clearly not a ‘wrong’ thing to do. Again hair on the head is natures way of preventing heat loss, so to shave one’s head is unnatural and frustrates the function of hair. However, nobody would seriously argue that a No. 0 haircut was ‘wrong’. Likewise, they would contend that homosexual deviant acts may well be unnatural, or contrary to inherent functions, but that does not thereby render them wrong and improper.

Since it would be pointless to reference Sacred Scripture or the teaching of the Church, the authority of which atheists do not acknowledge, how can we respond to and refute these arguments by recourse to natural law reasoning only, demonstrating irrefragibly that homosexual genital acts are not only unnatural but wrong and improper also?

Warmest good wishes,

Portrait

I do not mean to cause offense but I do believe anal sex is unnatural. The anus is designed for defecating and not for making love. I don’t know what happens if the other person needs to go to the loo and I think anal sex can cause an injury.

 

[Abu]

CarlosMorales
Particularly useful for DysonSphere and larkin31 are facts:
Note 3 p 67
3. According to St. Thomas, “a sin, in human acts, is that which is against the order of reason. Now the order of reason consists in its ordering everything to its end in a fitting manner…. [A]nd just as the use of food is directed to the preservation of life in the individual, so is the use of venereal acts directed to the preservation of the whole human race” (St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, IIII,q. 153, a. 2).4. Marital relations in the cases of natural sterility resulting from pathological deficiencies in either the husband or the wife are legitimate because no hindrance is being placed against normal intercourse, which only fails to produce its natural results on account of unintended, accidental causes.

We’ve seen that no one can change the natural moral law, that disregarding it brings chaos and confusion, and that science itself is based on reason from cause to effect developed through the teaching of the Catholic Church.

The ongoing hang-up is the failure to accept the reality of God and His laws for the selfist prejudice of trying to make their own.

 

[Windfish]

I hope I am not too late to be a part of this discussion. Before I address the main topic, I have some questions about the Catholic notion of “Natural Law.” I apologize for this mess of a post. I am writing rather quickly, but I hope I am understood well enough.

Please bare with me as I lead up to my question:

I was discussing with a friend how atheism inescapably leads to nihilism. If there is no God, the universe is merely incidental and, therefore, has no intrinsic value of any kind. Any notion of value we have now could only ever be arbitrary as the same purposeless processes that eventually produced it could have just as easily resulted in something else, and that would be arbitrary, too!

It follows that our sense of ethics and morality could only every be subjective and illusory. Atheists, outraged at this, usually appeal to natural explanations for the moral behavior of people, but this supports what I said earlier - that our notions of value would have no basis in truth because there is no real truth and because they would only be the result of purposeless processes. Those explanations simply affirm the arbitrary nature of our sense of ethics and morality.

MOREOVER, while natural explanations may account for how people behave, they do not at all show that people ought to behave that way, which is what morality is (i.e., how people ought to behave). Here is an excellent video on this, and I hope you watch it from beginning to end:

Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist

Have you watched it yet?

Here’s where I get to my point: in debating atheists, I realized that the is-ought gap cuts both ways, for atheists and for theists. In other words, the “Natural Law” describes things, it does not prescribe things. What is unnatural is not necessarily wrong. After all, celibacy is unnatural, but it can be a virtue.

Is there more to the Catholic notion of Natural Law than what I know? I tried looking in the Catechism, and I think I got an answer:

(1954) The natural law is written and engraved in the soul of each and every man, because it is human reason ordaining him to do good and forbidding him to sin . . . But this command of human reason would not have the force of law if it were not the voice and interpreter of a higher reason to which our spirit and our freedom must be submitted.

Bingo. The Natural Law, on its own, cannot prescribe anything. If it is to have any prescriptive value or “force of law” at all, it would have to be because of God, who DOES prescribe.

I still have trouble reconciling, though, how things like celibacy could been seen as virtues if it is so averse to the Natural Law. Can anyone offer some insight?

As for the topic of homosexuality, no, I don’t think you can appeal to Natural Law without invoking God because of the is-ought gap mentioned earlier. Even if homosexuality is contrary to the natural purpose of sex, one cannot logically go from that statement of fact to a normative ought without invoking the prescriptive laws of God.

But here’s the kicker and something worth noting to your friend: without God, as I’ve briefly shown above, any discussion about any moral issue would be unintelligible because there would be no real point of reference to judge if something is moral or immoral. There could only ever be amoral. Someone can assert one thing and someone else can assert another thing. Neither assertion would be true or not true, they are just fluid perspectives. Every notion of morality within this world view would break down when you ask this age-old question “why?” Why would it break down? Because there is no “why!”

In other words, Dostoevsky was right. If there is no God, everything is permitted. To even think we can arrive at a moral conclusion about anything is to presuppose God (and a lot of atheist do, whether the know it or not). The practical alternative, to use a dramatic illustration, is this:

youtube.com/watch?v=swfItnTUFvY (make sure to read the video’s caption)
Original Poster:

Since it would be pointless to reference Sacred Scripture or the teaching of the Church, the authority of which atheists do not acknowledge, how can we respond to and refute these arguments by recourse to natural law reasoning only, demonstrating irrefragibly that homosexual genital acts are not only unnatural but wrong and improper also?

For better or for worse, unless a brilliant mind can show us otherwise, converting them is the only recourse we have.

 

[John21652]

I hope I am not too late to be a part of this discussion. Before I address the main topic, I have some questions about the Catholic notion of “Natural Law.” I apologize for this mess of a post. I am writing rather quickly, but I hope I am understood well enough.

Please bare with me as I lead up to my question:

I was discussing with a friend how atheism inescapably leads to nihilism. If there is no God, the universe is merely incidental and, therefore, has no intrinsic value of any kind. Any notion of value we have now could only ever be arbitrary as the same purposeless processes that eventually produced it could have just as easily resulted in something else, and that would be arbitrary, too!

It follows that our sense of ethics and morality could only every be subjective and illusory. Atheists, outraged at this, usually appeal to natural explanations for the moral behavior of people, but this supports what I said earlier - that our notions of value would have no basis in truth because there is no real truth and because they would only be the result of purposeless processes. Those explanations simply affirm the arbitrary nature of our sense of ethics and morality.

MOREOVER, while natural explanations may account for how people behave, they do not at all show that people ought to behave that way, which is what morality is (i.e., how people ought to behave). Here is an excellent video on this, and I hope you watch it from beginning to end:

Nihilist: The Intellectually Honest Atheist

Have you watched it yet?

Here’s where I get to my point: in debating atheists, I realized that the is-ought gap cuts both ways, for atheists and for theists. In other words, the “Natural Law” describes things, it does not prescribe things. What is unnatural is not necessarily wrong. After all, celibacy is unnatural, but it can be a virtue.

Is there more to the Catholic notion of Natural Law than what I know? I tried looking in the Catechism, and I think I got an answer:

Bingo. The Natural Law, on its own, cannot prescribe anything. If it is to have any prescriptive value or “force of law” at all, it would have to be because of God, who DOES prescribe.

I still have trouble reconciling, though, how things like celibacy could been seen as virtues if it is so averse to the Natural Law. Can anyone offer some insight?

As for the topic of homosexuality, no, I don’t think you can appeal to Natural Law without invoking God because of the is-ought gap mentioned earlier. Even if homosexuality is contrary to the natural purpose of sex, one cannot logically go from that statement of fact to a normative ought without invoking the prescriptive laws of God.

But here’s the kicker and something worth noting to your friend: without God, as I’ve briefly shown above, any discussion about any moral issue would be unintelligible because there would be no real point of reference to judge if something is moral or immoral. There could only ever be amoral. Someone can assert one thing and someone else can assert another thing. Neither assertion would be true or not true, they are just fluid perspectives. Every notion of morality within this world view would break down when you ask this age-old question “why?” Why would it break down? Because there is no “why!”

In other words, Dostoevsky was right. If there is no God, everything is permitted. To even think we can arrive at a moral conclusion about anything is to presuppose God (and a lot of atheist do, whether the know it or not). The practical alternative, to use a dramatic illustration, is this:

youtube.com/watch?v=swfItnTUFvY (make sure to read the video’s caption)

For better or for worse, unless a brilliant mind can show us otherwise, converting them is the only recourse we have.

Windfish, you need to go back through this thread and have a good read. Much of what you discuss in your post has already been addressed.

A point to consider here is that you need to distuinguish between the Natural Law and Natural Law morality. The former is an observable set of real worls ‘Laws’, whilst the second is a human construct, as is any philosophy. Natural Law morality arrives at an ‘objective’ morality as defined by reason using the Natural law.

You are correct in equating atheism with nihilism. The resultant ‘morality’ is subjective and relative. In that context, almost any human behaviour can be justified.

Earlier in the thread we discussed human actions and behaviours which might be abnormal, but not necessarily ‘wrong’. The prescriptive nature of Natural Law morality is derived from Natural Law, not prescribed by it. Human reason is the catalyst. From this we reason how we ought to behave.

 

[antunesaa]

I would never defend all of these. I have never heard a persuasive defense of most of them. And certainly the Christian God does not condemn all of them. So I really don’t get your point. Even the RCC explains or “defends” its dogma. What is wrong with “defending” a moral principle or decision?

I take note that you say that you have never heard a persuasive defense of most of (but not all) the practices I mentioned. Which ones would you consider totally indefensible? Not even in 50 years?

Incest, for instance, is totally defensible from a purely human perspective. If you don’t acknowledge a higher authority than people, given the general moral stance of Westerners I don’t see any decisive argument against incest. The same for polygamy and polyandry, and also other more “creative” types of unions.

You can make a purely secular argument against bestiality, I think, but it should be quite convoluted.

 

[John21652]

I take note that you say that you have never heard a persuasive defense of most of (but not all) the practices I mentioned. Which ones would you consider totally indefensible? Not even in 50 years?

Incest, for instance, is totally defensible from a purely human perspective. If you don’t acknowledge a higher authority than people, given the general moral stance of Westerners I don’t see any decisive argument against incest. The same for polygamy and polyandry, and also other more “creative” types of unions.

You can make a purely secular argument against bestiality, I think, but it should be quite convoluted.

I find this answer to be a rather strange one. Incest does not need recourse to a ‘higher authority’ to be seen as morally indefensible. Incest is akin to line breeding in livestock. It raises the risk of causing genetic abnormalities of various types. Not to mention the cause of confusion in family/societal roles.This is one ‘taboo’ that has kept the human race in good stead over countless millenia and is common across all societies and all epochs. If ever a moral edict has ever had a solid basis in natural law, this is it!

The call to a ‘higher authority’, particularly in Christian traditions, comes from the knowledge that man was created in His image. If ever anyone wished to defile ‘His image’, incest is a sure fire way to go about it.

 

[Leela]

I do not mean to cause offense but I do believe anal sex is unnatural. The anus is designed for defecating and not for making love. I don’t know what happens if the other person needs to go to the loo and I think anal sex can cause an injury.

Do you think tat hands are designed for typing on keyboards??? Of course not. Humans create purposes that the forces that guide our evolution never imagined. Anal sex is no less “natural” than washing your hands with soap.

 

[momor]

Do you think tat hands are designed for typing on keyboards??? Of course not. Humans create purposes that the forces that guide our evolution never imagined. Anal sex is no less “natural” than washing your hands with soap.

I think it is a very poor analogy to equate man-made objects designed to fit our biology with mis-using the rectum for sex. There is no logic here at all. But that often happens when one attempts to ‘normalise’ the abnormal.

 

[Leela]

I think it is a very poor analogy to equate man-made objects designed to fit our biology with mis-using the rectum for sex. There is no logic here at all. But that often happens when one attempts to ‘normalise’ the abnormal.

In that case I think you are misusing the hands for typing. Please stop your abnormal activity.

 

[Abu]

Facing Reality – on homosexual activity truth is whipping boy
lifesitenews.com/ldn/2010/jul/10071205.html
Monday July 12, 2010
U. of Illinois Fires Catholic Prof for Explaining Church Teaching on Homosexuality

Kenneth Howell had taught “Introduction to Catholicism and Modern Catholic Thought” at the university’s Department of Religion since 2001.
In an account posted by CatholicVoteAction.org, Howell says that although students in the course have often disagreed with Catholic teaching in the past, in Spring 2010 he “noticed the most vociferous reaction that I have ever had” regarding the Catholic teaching against homosexuality as morally wrong.
“It seemed out of proportion to all that I had known thus far,” he wrote. This, he said, spurred him to send an email explaining “how this issue might be decided within competing moral systems,” contrasting utilitarianism and natural moral law.

“If we take utilitarianism to be a kind of cost-benefit analysis, I tried to show them that under utilitarianism, homosexual acts would not be considered immoral whereas under natural moral law they would,” he wrote. “This is because natural moral law, unlike utilitarianism, judges morality on the basis of the acts themselves.”

In the email, as quoted by the Associated Press, Howell had written: “Natural Moral Law says that Morality must be a response to REALITY. In other words, sexual acts are only appropriate for people who are complementary, not the same.”

 

[John21652]

In that case I think you are misusing the hands for typing. Please stop your abnormal activity.

Leela your logic is seriously flawed. Or else your facetiousness is showing. Hands are made for manually dextrous activities. That includes the use of tools. It is that capability which has set mankind above the animals. A typewrite or computer keyboard is just another tool. Using tools is not abnormal behaviour. If it were, feeding yourself with a knife and fork would be an unusual behaviour. If we use your logic, you’d better stop feeding yourself with a knife and fork.

As for saying Anal sex is no less “natural” than washing your hands with soap, well again your logic is failing you. Firstly, you are misusing the word “natural”. Because man can invent things like keyboards and soap, it doesn’t mean he is carrying out unnatural behaviours. After all, soap is merely a cleaning agent. A keyboard, as I have pointed out, is merely another tool. Even the natives in the forest, using your logic, would be committing an unnatural act by drying their hands on available leaves! The use of the term “natural” when we are discussing Natural Law, refers to the ‘norm’. That is, what is considered to be observable and consistently uniform and normative in the world we live in. Normative behaviour, as formulated by Natural Law moral theorists, is reasoned as being “normative” as discerned from what is the norm in the natural world, which includes mankinds place in it. Natural Law morality recognises that the elementary canal of human beings is for the discharge of bodily wastes, not for the reception of bodily fluids of another human. It is both an unnatural and disordered use of the human elementary tract. Now that is a far cry from using a keyboard to make one’s life a little easier.

Natural Law tells us that homosexual behaviour is wrong. If you disagree with that, then you must decide whether you disagree with the Natural Law approach to discerning moral behaviour, or you disagree with the logical conclusion that Natural Law morality arrives at. They are two distinct and different reasons for answering in the negative the question which this thread poses.