Also you get to enlarge your tribe by joining with other folks, marriage -or the notion that created marriage- existed so two different families could join in a sort of social understanding. It's pretty pointless to mix yourself in that way with people that is already in your family.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
The "when we can" part of that is the most important. Taking away sex all together is not a "when we can" example. Obviously, sex is a necessity for a number of reasons. It cannot be done away with.
Maybe. I haven't really given much thought to the actual punishment. It's illegal right now, isn't it? What's the punishment they have now?
You think I'm being illogical so you thought you would be illogical too? That doesn't sound like a very logical debate tactic.
I'm saying incestuous people shouldn't even try, yes. Just like all those other people in my example that aren't even trying. It would be exactly the same thing.
I thought I had. At least I had that section of an article.
Yeah, so if conception happens, it would be a bad thing. The problem is, there is no way to stop conception 100%. So it would always be a risk when having sex.
First, this would only combat the birth defect part of my argument. Second, I don't think limiting people's sexual activities that specifically would be very effective. Like laying out guidelines for what type of sex you can have with what person/thing. You may as well just make it okay or not, since it would almost be impossible to enforce that kind of rule anyway.
I'm confused. Are you saying anyone who opposes the atomic bombings MUST support incest?
And don't we limit the things/people that individuals are allowed to breed with already?
Actually, it would have to be tweaked fairly significantly. Considering, as far as I know, miscegenation doesn't risk any of the problems I have posed with incest at all.
No. And again, it has been suggested a number of times that I am claiming people with disabilities shouldn't be allowed to live. This is not what I am saying at all, as I have said time and time again.
If a baby is found to have mental or physical disabilities they should have every right to live as everyone else. My problem is with the act that caused them to gain these disabilities. Not with the disabled people themselves.
Again, I never said that disabled people don't deserve to live. I'm saying people shouldn't be allowed to risk imposing disabilities on other people.
Of the multitude of people born with genetic defects that cause disability and impairment, but who aren't the offspring of an incestuous relationship---where do you stand on that? If you're against the very risk of having disabled children as a result of incest, what about the risk of having disabled children between non-relatives? Would you swing the pendulum straight to the edge and say that sex itself should illegal? Because it can and does produce disabled children, incest or no.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
He's addressed this point several times. Increasing the risk is what he has a problem with. There are responses to that. Old parents have a high risk of children being born with birth defects, mother's actions during pregnancy can effect the odds as well.
__________________
Graffiti outside Latin class.
Sed quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
A juvenal prank.
I sense an age limit on motherhood approaching. Next step is to flat out make birth defects illegal. Grr! We must propagate the master race! Grr!
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
Hang on, why? we can make children from testubes, we can use sperm from donors etc. Why wouldnt that work widespread? Afterall, why have a risk to children? how terrible...
At the moment its mostly imprisonment, the sentence depends on country. So by your favour, punishment of incest legally is exactly what I said, taking an already disadvantaged child and telling it, its parents are being taken away, apprently thats a good idea according to you?
Its logical from the standpoint of making someone see sense, if their doubting your view using their own logic then their doubting themselves.
Some may not try, incest itself is as I said, simply sex. Not everyone tries to have children. Contraception is incredibly decent tbh, infact there seems to be more chance of a non related couple giving birth to deformed children than a couple (incestuous or otherwise) concieving young after using contraceptive methods.
If incest was as harmless as normal sex (not that normal sex is completely harmless in all situations), sure, I would find no reason to disprove of it if it's not risking any kind of damage.
Hey, I think there should be an age limit on drivers licenses too.
Honestly, though, I haven't done any research on the birth defects associated with age. Is it as high a risk as incestuous relationships?
This is getting a little ridiculous now. Imagine the funding and man power it would take to create children for all the people who want to have them. I can't imagine the procedure would be all that inexpensive. Not to mention that fact that I have seen no evidence that creating a child in a test tube is any safer than creating it in a womb. If you really want to research the possibility of creating children in test tubes and why it is a safer and better alternative than normal conception be my guest. Until then, this point is invalid.
Not to mention the fact that I never said we should stop people from having sex. I think that would be wrong as well. I'm not suggesting stopping people from having sex, I'm limiting what and who they can have sex with, which is already being done.
I never said that. I haven't given any thought to what the punishment should be, nor do I have to.
Normally, you would give an example illustrating that flaw, not actually adapt the flaw into your debate tactic. At any rate, there is enough to discuss without getting into "logical debate tactics."
Even if they aren't actually trying to have a child, the child is part of the risk of the act. So if you perform the act, you have to take responsibility for any side effects that act can produce. Children are a potential product of sex. having sex means the potential for pregnancy, even if pregnancy isn't the goal when you perform it.
This is painfully similar to all the asinine abstinence pledge arguments "since no contraceptive method exists that won't prevent conception 100% of the time (even 99.99999% of the time isn't good enough) the solution is to never get beyond first base until you're married" in that it's unfairly ruling out actions based on chances that in other ventures wouldn't be grounds for ruling out, IE flying an airplane. The odds of any airplane piloted by a decent pilot crashing are likely (and no, I cannot verify this, I'm merely postulating based on common sense knowledge) higher than the odds of two people conceiving when they're not employing vaginal penetration, the woman is on the pill, and the man has a condom on. Yet while I doubt you'd advocate grounding all flights on the grounds that even the best planes with the best pilots have a minute chance of crashing due to catastrophic accidents/foul play you seem to be suggesting that we should "ground" all incestuous activities on the basis that there's always a chance (even if its diluted to a laughably small one via contraceptive methods heretofore mentioned) that a malformed baby could result.
Why does a rule need to be enforced? The only people that consensual incest harms are hypothetical unborn people who may never come into existence.
Nope. Breeding implies the ability to conceive. Laws against zoophilia don't count for the reason that human-animal crossbreeding is (so far as we know) impossible.
In most Western countries there are no laws that specifically forbid consensual sex between two adults regardless of who they are because such laws generally carry unfortunate implications like racism, homophobia, or eugenics.
It wouldn't be hard at all. Your claim that giving birth to malformed babies is morally wrong relies on an ideal notion of what it is to be human (having two ears, being able to see, etc) which is not really that far at all from the arguments racists used to speak out against miscegenation. In their eyes miscegenation produced impure, imperfect humans, which was according to them wrong.
I think it goes back to whether or not you truly think that it's right for malformed people to live or not. Because if you think its wrong for them to be conceived...
I asked why incest was wrong. You gave me consequences of the act, unable to point to anything in the act itself that made it wrong.
You've argued from a consequentialist moral perspective the entire time ("incest is wrong because it does X") so it follows that moral wrongness should come in the consequence of the act rather than the act itself. The consequence being that a malformed child is born.
Suddenly though when asked to explain why your main consequence is bad you've flipped flopped on that line of reasoning and have instead claimed that the consequence isn't bad, but that it's the act once again. And that's all well and good, but then if consequence need not be the origin of moral rightness or wrongness then I refer you back to my original question: what makes incest wrong? If you tell me the consequences are what makes it wrong then I will refer to this point once again: if consequences are what matter, then is it not the consequence itself (a malformed child being born) that should attract moral censure rather than the act itself (incest)? And if it attracts moral censure, and again if consequences are what matter, then does it ultimately become true that a malformed baby living as a consequence of being born is immoral?
People shouldn't be allowed to drive because there's a chance something could go wrong and you could cripple a pedestrian. People who drive in a town where they know people might be walking are immoral.
I can't wait to see what sophist argument you pull for why these things are different, if you say "the solution is to drive carefully and for pedestrians to look both ways and wear reflective vests at night"
...then how is that different from using contraceptive methods? There's a better argument to be made that "recklessly having unprotected sex with your sister is immoral because malformed children" than "having sex with your sister while taking all necessary steps to minimize the chance of conception is immoral because there's a tiny chance it could still make malformed children" in much the same way that "drunk driving is wrong" is much, much better than "driving is wrong", but even in the drunk driving case it's only wrong insofar as it carries a risk of a negative/immoral consequence, and there are additional problems in trying to equate birthing a malformed child to killing/crippling pedestrians/fellow motorists.
__________________
“Where the longleaf pines are whispering
to him who loved them so.
Where the faint murmurs now dwindling
echo o’er tide and shore."
-A Grave Epitaph in Santa Rosa County, Florida; I wish I could remember the man's name.
Last edited by Omega Vision on Dec 1st, 2011 at 11:10 PM
theoretically, a brother and sister using contraceptives have a far less probability of having a mentally handicapped child than do two strangers who do not take such precautions.
I look forward to the day of "from the ground up" design of our offspring. We are already starting to do it with our "sex selection" and abortion of retarded/deformed babies. But I'm talking about "Gattica" levels of baby-making design.
At that point, there is literally no reason at all to prevent or bar even dizygotic twins from getting it on. There's no reason, now...but there's far less of a reason when we can design the "bad-stuff" completely out. Then what?
Then it will still be illegal because it's icky and gross. The laws of the future are going to be based off of feelings.
__________________ Recently Produced and Distributed Young but High-Ranking Political Figure of Royal Ancestry within the Modern American Town Affectionately Referred To as Bel-Air.
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Nov 29th, 2011 05:51 AM
