Why is incest between siblings not intrinsically evil?

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Freddy said:
If reproducing within the family was an evolutionary plus (as opposed to being a negative) then incest wouldn’t be immoral. It would be entirely natural. And having sex with a non-family member might seem…unatural.
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If purple pigs had wings, then winged purple pigs could fly. 😄

Or in other words…“nature” is also part of revelation. Science can study what is observable, and that sane observation helps reveal God. Morality is informed by what is.

so it’s not like morality is neutralized, or relativized, because it depends on the arbitrary and false “if” you propose. Moral evaluation is hinged to the way things are, in all the ways God’s reality is revealed.
 
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goout said:
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Guilherme1:
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goout:
In all seriousness, this brings up the real thread question which is:
Why are human beings unable to deal with mysteries?
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I mean, what am I supposed to answer when someone asks me why the Bible, one of our great moral guides, apparently approves incest?
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The burden of proof is on the person who asserts that the bible (and by extension Christian morality) approves incest. Has the person making this assertion proved that? No. If they insist on the issue, ask them to show you the hammered metal dome in the sky, because that’s in Genesis too. That ought to show any common sense person the foolishness of literalist fundamentalism.

(you will however get those people who refuse to come to the water of common sense… shake the dust off your feet and move on. There’s an ongoing evolution thread here that has thousands of posts. You don’t have to engage every wrong-headed idea that comes along)
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The approval of incest in the Bible is a great logical conclusion and I have no good argument against that conclusion.

“You are not able to definitively prove that there was incest in Genesis” is a bad argument, because it offers no solution to the problem and does not refute this concrete logical conclusion in any way.
 
Guilherme1 said:
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goout:
48.png
Guilherme1:
48.png
goout:
In all seriousness, this brings up the real thread question which is:
Why are human beings unable to deal with mysteries?
Click to expand...
I mean, what am I supposed to answer when someone asks me why the Bible, one of our great moral guides, apparently approves incest?
Click to expand...
The burden of proof is on the person who asserts that the bible (and by extension Christian morality) approves incest. Has the person making this assertion proved that? No. If they insist on the issue, ask them to show you the hammered metal dome in the sky, because that’s in Genesis too. That ought to show any common sense person the foolishness of literalist fundamentalism.

(you will however get those people who refuse to come to the water of common sense… shake the dust off your feet and move on. There’s an ongoing evolution thread here that has thousands of posts. You don’t have to engage every wrong-headed idea that comes along)
Click to expand...
The approval of incest in the Bible is a great logical conclusion and I have no good argument against that conclusion.

“You are not able to definitively prove that there was incest in Genesis” is a bad argument, because it offers no solution to the problem and does not refute this concrete logical conclusion in any way.
Click to expand...
When you use the word “approval” you are implying that a moral evaluation has taken place, and that Christian moral evaluation is beholden to a wildly rigid biblical interpretation.

Listen to me:
INCORRECT PREMISE, yielding crazy conclusions.

Take the info you have in this thread and pray about it. You don’t have to correct every crazy, wrongheaded idea. It’s a fool’s errand.
 
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If I had to guess, and I am guessing… I would say this has something to do with power dynamics. Positions of people in authority vs their “underlings.” That sort of thing. Not that there can’t be power discrepancies between siblings or that incest is something that is acceptable to me in any way…
 
It’s key to remember:
Moral evaluation is not done by bible passages in isolation. If it were, then all kinds of crazy moral claims can be made:

God commands the killing of children
Dashing the heads of infants against rocks
Genocide
Multiple wives
Ad nauseum…

We don’t do moral evaluation according to fundamentalist bible interpretations. The bible is one part of revelation, and it has to be integrated with the whole.
 
Such a fundamentalist reading of Genesis has generated a host of problems for many sects. Some have been able to overcome most or all of these problems; others have not.
 
Guilherme1 said:
Some people when trying to justify the incest that the children of Adam and Eve probably committed to continue humanity, say that incest is only intrinsically evil in the direct line (if you have a relationship with your parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren…), but not in the specific case of incest between sibilings, which is part of the collateral line.

I don’t understand it at all. I mean, my sister is closer to me in the family tree and has a higher genetic similarity with me than my grandmother, but it would be immoral to have a relationship with my grandmother even if she and I were the only people in the world, while it wouldn’t be immoral to have a relationship with my sister if she and I were, for example, the only people in the world.

To also say that incest between sibilings was morally good in the past, but is morally bad now, sounds like saying that God’s moral law changes over time. It suggests that God’s moral law, at least in certain matters, is not bound up to reflect God’s righteous, immutable character. Rather, it is subject to practical considerations. Let’s also remember that the ends never justify the means, so you never can do an evil act to get some good result from it, even if humanity will go extinct if you don’t do this evil act.
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An intrinsically evil action is an action which is evil in all circumstances. Marrying a sibling might be very imprudent and prohibited both in the Bible and in secular civil law, but that doesn’t mean it is evil in all circumstances and that it was evil for certain isolated groups of people in the distant past.

If the reaction to this is that it just doesn’t “feel” right, remember that feelings are not what determine what is or isn’t moral or immoral. Morality is established with human reason, natural theology, and the help of the Magisterium.
 
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goout said:
Sometimes the shittiest soil makes the best flowers.
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😂 we’re going all out now that CAF is ending

Just to be clear, I agree with your point. It’s the way you said it that made me literally lol. Cheers!
 
Plenty of saints believed the earth was flat and orbited by the sun. Time and discovery have a way of changing perspectives.
 
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You can quote saints. That’s cool. You do realize that saints can be wrong and they’re not a substitute for real teaching, right?

Yeah, and it changed.
 
Oh, it hasn’t changed? We can’t read Genesis non-literally?
 
Yes. Whether the descent is total, and there was inbreeding, or if it was a situation where the unensouled were included in the family, we don’t know.

No. I’ve never heard this dogma. I need a citation on this.
 
Without the hyperbole:

Plenty of saints believed the sun revolved around the earth.

To the point of this thread, new discoveries change our understandings and beliefs. The foundational discoveries of Darwin, Watson and Crick, along with modern archeology and geology inform how we read the Genesis Story.

This in no way diminished the life or the beliefs of the saints.
 
In order to be an intrinsically evil act, the act cannot be otherwise. Unlike adulterous, homosexual and bestial acts, incest may be (have been) ordered to the good.

Note that the category of evil under which incest falls is," Other offenses against the dignity of marriage" as specified in Lev 18:7-20.
 
goout said:
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Freddy:
If reproducing within the family was an evolutionary plus (as opposed to being a negative) then incest wouldn’t be immoral. It would be entirely natural. And having sex with a non-family member might seem…unatural.
Click to expand...
If purple pigs had wings, then winged purple pigs could fly. 😄

Or in other words…“nature” is also part of revelation. Science can study what is observable, and that sane observation helps reveal God. Morality is informed by what is.

so it’s not like morality is neutralized, or relativized, because it depends on the arbitrary and false “if” you propose. Moral evaluation is hinged to the way things are, in all the ways God’s reality is revealed.
Click to expand...
That’s pretty much what I meant. Morality reflects what works.

To give another example, we have evolved to become (and perhaps evolved from) a pair bonding species. If we hadn’t, then hanging around with the mother of your children would be the wierdest thing imageinable. Not spreading your genes around as many partners as possible would seem to be immoral.

As you said, morality is hinged to the way things are. Not the other way around. So if things were different then…morality would be different.
 
TK421 said:
An intrinsically evil action is an action which is evil in all circumstances. Marrying a sibling might be very imprudent and prohibited both in the Bible and in secular civil law, but that doesn’t mean it is evil in all circumstances and that it was evil for certain isolated groups of people in the distant past.
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That’s not so much a slippery slope as a vertical drop.
 
It think it is according to Saint Thomas and it is forbidden according to canon law
 
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