The Jewish/Christian objection to homosexuality didn't even make sense within the context of what they knew back then. Anyone who has grown up with animals knows that homosexual behavior is not just some human aberration, it exists throughout the animal kingdom. I've personally witnessed it amongst cats, dogs & rats. Naturalists have reported it in many more wild species including the great apes. Before the industrial revolution, most humans lived right alongside animals & must have been intimately familiar with the facts of life, as they say, from an early age.
I suppose the Christian could retort that just because animals do it, that doesn't make it right, but then they undermine both their Aristotelian final cause argument which states that sex is designed specifically for procreation; as well their entire theology. If God created nature & pronounced it good, then anything that occurs in nature is good including homosexuality. Only uniquely human behaviors could be 'unnatual' & thus bad in that scheme. It would make more sense to condemn lifetime monogany as immoral since most animals are actually promiscuous & yet this human aberration is held up by the Christians as the only form of sexuality approved by God.
I know: preaching to the choir. But it's just so self-evidently wrong & contradictory.
That's why I call it obnoxious. I suppose, though, Christians would say we're created in God's image, so we shouldn't follow animal behaviours. But that's hardly sustainable since ancient Christians would had to have recognized that we have animal bodies, that we, too, breathe, eat, sleep, and so forth. So you're right that even ancient sanctimony about heterosexuality should have seemed tribal and parochial rather than divinely revealed.
It would be interesting to know the prevalence of homosexuality in primitive societies vs. civilizations. I believe I've read that homosexuality is more prevalent in capitalist countries than communist ones. The free time that civilization affords to some, might lead to more individualistic tendencies. People who might have had tendencies toward same sex attraction, might suppress those in a primitive society for sake of survival.
I don't agree with Nietzsche's perspectivism. I interpret objectivity in pragmatic terms, but I think there's a difference between objective and subjective truth. The objective kind has a different, more systematic impact in the world such that that truth can have a variety of uses.
Truths of how we feel about facts or about our preferences and dislikes.
We can use our knowledge of subjective truths for manipulating people, which enables us to engineer effects in the world, but we'd have to act based on that knowledge to make it happen. If we know that Hugo likes pickles, we can lure him to a location by offering him pickles. But the fact that Hugo likes pickles is a fact about Hugo and his relation to pickles, not about pickles in themselves.
By contrast, objective models tell us about the external world in itself. These facts are noumenal rather than phenomenal, to use Kant's distinction. Kant said there's no purely objective or noumenal knowledge, since even objective statements tell us in part about how our minds and languages work. Still, the consensus in science is that some models can be at least partly objective and noumenal.
The Jewish/Christian objection to homosexuality didn't even make sense within the context of what they knew back then. Anyone who has grown up with animals knows that homosexual behavior is not just some human aberration, it exists throughout the animal kingdom. I've personally witnessed it amongst cats, dogs & rats. Naturalists have reported it in many more wild species including the great apes. Before the industrial revolution, most humans lived right alongside animals & must have been intimately familiar with the facts of life, as they say, from an early age.
ReplyDeleteI suppose the Christian could retort that just because animals do it, that doesn't make it right, but then they undermine both their Aristotelian final cause argument which states that sex is designed specifically for procreation; as well their entire theology. If God created nature & pronounced it good, then anything that occurs in nature is good including homosexuality. Only uniquely human behaviors could be 'unnatual' & thus bad in that scheme. It would make more sense to condemn lifetime monogany as immoral since most animals are actually promiscuous & yet this human aberration is held up by the Christians as the only form of sexuality approved by God.
I know: preaching to the choir. But it's just so self-evidently wrong & contradictory.
That's why I call it obnoxious. I suppose, though, Christians would say we're created in God's image, so we shouldn't follow animal behaviours. But that's hardly sustainable since ancient Christians would had to have recognized that we have animal bodies, that we, too, breathe, eat, sleep, and so forth. So you're right that even ancient sanctimony about heterosexuality should have seemed tribal and parochial rather than divinely revealed.
DeleteYou might enjoy this book.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.amazon.com/Neo-Nihilism-Philosophy-Power-Peter-Sjöstedt-H-ebook/dp/B00HN844QI/ref=sr_1_1?dchild=1&keywords=Neo-Nihilism&qid=1603505497&s=digital-text&sr=1-1
Coincidentally, I saw that author give a talk recently:
Deletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Byoa1Pjgxf4
It would be interesting to know the prevalence of homosexuality in primitive societies vs. civilizations. I believe I've read that homosexuality is more prevalent in capitalist countries than communist ones. The free time that civilization affords to some, might lead to more individualistic tendencies. People who might have had tendencies toward same sex attraction, might suppress those in a primitive society for sake of survival.
ReplyDeleteIndeed, different kinds of society would have different pressures for repression.
DeleteWhat is your interpretation of Nietzsche's quote, "There are no facts, only interpretations."
ReplyDeleteI don't agree with Nietzsche's perspectivism. I interpret objectivity in pragmatic terms, but I think there's a difference between objective and subjective truth. The objective kind has a different, more systematic impact in the world such that that truth can have a variety of uses.
DeleteWhat would be an example of subjective truth?
DeleteTruths of how we feel about facts or about our preferences and dislikes.
DeleteWe can use our knowledge of subjective truths for manipulating people, which enables us to engineer effects in the world, but we'd have to act based on that knowledge to make it happen. If we know that Hugo likes pickles, we can lure him to a location by offering him pickles. But the fact that Hugo likes pickles is a fact about Hugo and his relation to pickles, not about pickles in themselves.
By contrast, objective models tell us about the external world in itself. These facts are noumenal rather than phenomenal, to use Kant's distinction. Kant said there's no purely objective or noumenal knowledge, since even objective statements tell us in part about how our minds and languages work. Still, the consensus in science is that some models can be at least partly objective and noumenal.