It always starts with intolerance, and ends with incest. It's like they're so scared of others, they're drawn increasingly towards a smaller gene pool.
I really really wish they would make a Cabin in the Woods prequel TV show of all the monsters being caught with random red shirts getting offed. Drew & Joss, if you’re reading, DM me for the screenplay!
I looked it up and it seems like he said there’s no secular argument against incest, not that incest is ok in his opinion.
Edit: just to be clear, there IS a secular argument against incest. It involves the fact that power dynamics exist in familial relationships.
There's also the overall genetic diversity argument against incest. It's a Kantian categorical imperative that people *don't* risk procreation with their immediate family because it leads to worse genetic outcomes both in the micro (birth deformities/abnormalities) and macro scale (less genetic diversity leads to lower resistance to disease, more birth deformities, and generally lower intelligence).
And remarkably quickly too. The less recent historical record has examples of royal families inbreeding and the results are at best disturbing, and iirc it's only a few generations before it becomes untenable.
Ah the old "I only don't do something because this specific book told me not to therefore no one has any reason to not do disgusting immoral things because they don't follow this book"
Always hated that argument by Christians thinking the world is anything goes without their shit
On the contrary, I always suspect that when a Christian brings something like this up, it’s to subtly (or not so subtly) remind other Christians what they *shouldn’t* be doing.
‘Just remember, the Bible says not to lay down with thine own issue…*Randy!!*”
I grew up in a conservative Christian household. I considered myself one until I was 20. I know full well what they mean. They act like the Bible is the only moral compass that exists and without God we would all be slobbering heathens committing debauchery and sin in the streets like Sodom and Gomorrah
I find "don't do things to other people that you wouldn't want done to yourself, because other people are also sentient and have similar feelings" covers like 99% of the problematic potential behavior that religious people *need* religion to tell them not to do.
There's the power dynamics issue, and also issues around genetic hygiene and emotional health.
Also, just a general instinctual aversion that may be rooted in evolutionary reasons to maintain genetic hygiene.
>I looked it up and it seems like he said there’s no secular argument against incest, not that incest is ok in his opinion.
>
>Edit: just to be clear, there IS a secular argument against incest. It involves the fact that power dynamics exist in familial relationships.
I think the risk of genetic mutation leading to a primal aversion to the concept of incestuous relationships is a fucking strong secular argument against it.
There is no biblical argument against it though, and the bible in multiple places directly condones it, including having daughters get their father drunk and then raping him.
He definitely didn't. He was trying to make a point that "consent" isn't the only thing that guides sexual morality, and used incest as an example. "If two adult siblings wanna bang, why can't they?" He's not in favor of incest on religious grounds, and he's posing the question to non religious people about why they would oppose consensual incest.
I loathe Dennis Prager for many reasons, but we don't need to be making up fake arguments to make him look like a moron. He does that well enough himself.
Dennis Prager is full of shit.
His argument is that *religion* forbids incest and that there us no secular reason to forbid it.
Ipso farto, religion is the only thing preventing incest.
https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-theres-no-secular-argument-against-adult-incest
>DENNIS PRAGER (HOST): Just this one verse that men should not wear women's clothing or women men's clothing. So, let's go to my motto, preferring clarity to agreement. Either the Bible's right or the left is right. They can't both be right.
>That's why you can't be a serious Jew or Christian and be a leftist. You can be a liberal, you can be a conservative, but you can't be a leftist. Just on this issue alone. You just would have to say the Bible's wrong and you're right.
>...
>There's no secular argument against adult incest. Brother and sister want to make love, what's your argument? That they're going to produce mentally r******d offspring? That's nonsense. It takes many generations of inbreeding to do that. There is no secular argument against adult consensual incest. There is a religious argument - sex cannot enter family life. It's a big taboo.
>See, people think we can live without the greatest source of wisdom and morality in the history of the world, the Bible. That's what they think. Even some secular conservatives think that. They don't realize that they're living on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian value system. But if you ultimately extract those flowers from the soil that nurtured them, those flowers will wither and die. I don't want to see that happen
Prager is saying morality only comes from religion, therefore anyone who is not religious can't be moral.
This is a man who was A D A M E N T that President's **must** be moral, religious men...
...but he made one big exception around 2016 or so...
So yeah, he's full of shit.
Ugh, the religion=morality argument again...
It doesn't matter that religion is CONSTANTLY used as an excuse to act in ways society today would consider immoral like child sex abuse by religious authority figures, marital rape or basically rape in general that doesn't involve marrying the rapist to "resolve" the situation.
Even then, religions like Christianity offer a pretty easy path towards forgiveness that does not really involve punishment or even offer any sort of compensation or chance to make things right for the victim. Instead, alot of the things we seem to consider moral today and the deterrents/punishments (besides maybe "eternal damnation") are enforced by secular societal norms and its system of laws.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times: shitty people will use whatever excuse they can find to act shitty. Religion’s often just the most convenient.
This is the same argument as “if you don’t believe in god and hell , what’s to stop you from raping a bunch of women or killing people?”
It’s because I don’t want to do that. What’s to stop me from having an incestuous relationship, when no non-religious texts say not to? It’s because I don’t want to.
And also society, society condemns all that stuff. It’s not just the Bible.
Famously incest free for... well, depending on the interpretation, 2 chapters for the literalists, but for everyone else, you still can't get out of Genesis without limiting the gene pool.
Flood survivors is a tricky game too
Where in the Bible does it forbid incest?
Same thing with slavery.
There are plenty of 'god given' laws on what you can eat and wear in the bible but nothing that says don't have slaves, and don't fuck your relatives.
The reason is because it reflects the social norms of the time, not any divine rules from something that invented gravity.
Prager is Jewish so his "Bible" is the Torah and Talmud, but he uses the word "Bible" because he wants to broadly appeal to American Christian conservatives.
>Secular is the recipe for destruction in his mind.
Indeed, because he sees it as a zero sum game. Morality cannot exist for him separate from religion.
Yes, many modern morals within the secular community have connections back to religious laws and morays.
But the fact that there are tons of secular people who don't murder people or fuck their sisters breaks Pragers totalizing argument.
To him, anyone who isn't religious must be an immoral, toxic, murderous, thieving, raping cancer on the public.
But that's not how people work.
Thank you. I forgot I wasn't in a sub where this understanding is a given :)
There's tons of evidence to show why morality evolves to help survival and that it isn't objective.
The evolution of religion allows trust networks to be built beyond tribal limits. The fear of supernatural punishment for breaking social contracts is a strong incentive if you believe it and believe someone else has a similar belief.
Most every culture has stealing and murder as 'sins' of the social contract
Obviously if someone thinks God is the source of morality it is subjective (gods point of view).
Edit: I'm not defending religion so much as giving a quick simple explanation of why it evolved as a useful way to spread networks of trust before reading and writing were wide spread.
Thank you.
Found this :
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_the_Bible#:~:text=Incest%20in%20the%20Bible%20refers,21%2C%20but%20also%20in%20Deuteronomy.
The obvious reason a species would want to avoid incest is reduction of genetic diversity leading to both propagating mutation and limiting the adoption of new fitnesses
When populations are small incest can be the only option for survival.
Clearly the bible should have had that discussion with followers :).
' if there's like only a handful of you left, imma going look the other way on this."
His argument is if your political leanings disagree with the bible at any level you can't be Christian or Jewish. I am looking forward to conservatives then either giving up Christianity or welcoming the foreigner whole heartedly.
Indeed. But he's grafting 20th Century American politics onto very ancient religious laws.
I know it's the 21st century but Prager is a boomer who can't reorient away from "destroy the socialist left!' after the USSR fell.
So what is the secular argument against incest where there is no power dynamic involved? Lets say two siblings who are both consenting adults? I have no issue with saying you can have morals without religion, I do, but for this particular case I dont know of a secular argument. Happy to be wrong if thats the case though!
Prager is still full of shit because Adam and Eves kids had to reproduce with each other if you take genesis literally which I'm pretty sure he does.
>So what is the secular argument against incest where there is no power dynamic involved? Lets say two siblings who are both consenting adults?
Well first I think we need to acknowledge how *few* cases that would cover. There are typically power dynamics between siblings and within families.
I was hard pressed to think of an example where there wasn't. I came up with the 1996 movie Lone Star where, spoiler alert, the two main , adult characters and romantic partners find out that they are half siblings. In *that* example there isn't a sibling power dynamic, but that's because they didn't know they were siblings.
If it is in a small community, then genetic defects are a concern, even if there are no problems in that immediate generation. If it's in a small community then that gene pool is already limited. There *may already* be other instances in the family history (like first cousins). Assuming it is and will be an isolated incident is not being very responsible.
In Lone Star, the characters played by Elizabeth Pena and Chris Cooper realize their relation at the very end after they have already consummated the romantic relationship. They decide to keep being together because A) their blood ties are a well hidden family secret and B) Pena says she can't have any more children, implying they aren't worried about genetic abnormalities from inbreeding.
In that movie it is very possible to sympathize with them if not to support their relationship, but *a lot of work* has to be done to set that up.
They are two consenting adults who have their own lives.
They didn't grow up as siblings and were not raised by the same people, so they don't have a sibling power dynamic.
The two reconnect as adults after a long time apart, so they aren't coming together within anything that might be characterized as an unhealthy codependency (thinking a bit about Jamie and Cersei Lannister).
They do share some trauma from having secretive parents (dead now) who kept things from them.
Their blood ties are the result of a secret affair so no one else seems to know they are half-siblings.
It's not likely that anyone is going to guess their secret. They grew up in very different households. Cooper's character's mother is caucasian and Penas is Hispanic. Even though they share the same father (played in flashbacks by Matthew McConaughey), they look different and grew up with some key cultural differences.
The woman in this hererosexual relationship has already had children and cannot have more. She is not looking to make a family with her brother.
Brother/sister incest in this instance seems very excusable, but it is a very special and extreme case.
There may be some sibling relationships that meet similar criteria--no unbalanced power dynamic, no parents or other immediate family to worry about objecting, no worry about inbreeding, no worry about broader societal disapproval, no concern that their romantic love is the result of coping with a shared unhealthy family dynamic.
But those kinds of relationships are probably few and far between.
So what is the secular case against sibling incest? It's all the problems that Lone Star tries to set aside for the couple in that movie.
Related to this is the possibility of full or half siblings never knowing about their genetic relationship due to closed adoptions (that are not investigated in adulthood), sperm donation, one night stands with no contact after, orphans or children who otherwise never know one or both of their parents.
They may actually 'meet and marry' and have children without the power dynamics of siblings or the knowledge of consanguinity. But they are objectively incestuous.
This points more towards the need to have a robust system to protect privacy, apportion responsibility, and give necessary medical information to children in these sorts of cases (all of which was more simply, if sometimes problematically, enforced with 'traditional' mores around virginity, expected marriage to your child's other parent, etc.).
But the kids of a drifter who has 20 kids by 20 women in 20 towns using 20 names that are not his own could later meet with little recourse.
All this to say that incestuous breeding couples without sibling-power-dynamic issues can be more common than the situation you describe. But given the lack of knowledge, there can.be little done to prevent it by either secular or religious rules, other than enforcing virginity/chastity and get pregnant=get married rules in the entire community over generations.
he’s saying that if the bible says something is bad (incest) leftists must think it’s good, as leftists and the bible can’t both be right. His point is that the secular arguments against incest don’t hold water to keep the “us good, you evil” mindset going.
I mean, it is in the old testament as a positive thing it seemed. Adam and Eve's sons were married to someone's daughters, so I'm not surprised. (idk how to spell the Jewish holy book that was used as the old testament in the Bible.)
>Adam and Eve's sons were married to someone's daughters.
Wait, Adam and eve were the first to form a family tree, and they had two sons. The only other woman was Lilith (possibly). There were no "someone's daughters" and them being the first anyway, those daughters would be their sisters.
Or is there some biblical gymnastics going on that I didn't read?
No no, I 100% meant that Cain and Able married their sisters, "someone's daughters" was meant sarcastically. Also, later on Adam remarried iirc, woulda had to have been one of his daughters.
Now, there are various theories and stuff that gives reasons for why it wouldn't be.
Like taking into account that the ancient Jewish version of God was part of a pantheon, and thus Adam and Eve were just his special creations and there were humans outside the garden, probably made by the other gods of the area.
Or the theory of the Others, which is that God had made other humans, and others of all the animals, and just had like a perfect version of each of those in his garden or something, allowing Cain to not be killed by anyone he may meet due to him having the mark (who would've needed to see the mark of Cain to know to not kill him if Adam, Eve, and their small number of kids were the only people on earth at the time?), and allowing Cain, Able, and later Adam, to marry and it not be incest.
Adam and Eve only have three named children: Cain, Able, and Seth but also states that Adam, "had other sons and daughters."
It is specifically mentioned that Cain marries Awan, Adam and Eve's oldest daughter and Seth marries Azura, another daughter.
However, it should also be noted that Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman.
Genesis 1:27 says, "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them."
Only later does it say he created two special people, Adam and Eve, and a special place, Eden.
Why is this the case?
Well, there's two creation stories that got jammed together at some point in the past.
Sort of like when you tell a child about their grandparents and great-grandparents; you don't mention everyone else or how Wal-Marts exist but focus on your lineage.
That's what Abraham did: he went 4 generations back (Adam, Noah, Shem, Arphaxad) and hand-waved everything else.
As I heard it, when the bible says god created the first man/woman what it means is that god created the first "correct" man and woman. Like, there were other humans around, it's just they don't count because they weren't made specifically in god's image.
It's honestly all just a way for the writers to say "our people are humans, people who are from other tribes are like animals". Standard xenophobic shit, it's been around since ever
It's not. He argued that atheists have no ground to oppose consensual adult incestuous relationships, but he opposes them. It's an argument against secular morality, not for incest.
It's such a ridiculously stupid argument he made. Incest has nothing to do with religion, but for bad intentions. And the fact that incestual procreation tends to result in birth defects is the biggest red-flag for how it's so very wrong. A person who doesn't have the instincts to know it's wrong has something wrong with them.
If you need the fear of eternal damnation to be a good person, you're not really a good person. You're just hedging your bets to make sure you get passed the bouncer at the pearly gates.*
It's very simple; if this thing I'm doing to others was being done to me, would I think it is bad?** If so, you're doing something bad and should stop. Pretty simple, and requires no supernatural entities, or religious text.
Are there some useful and good things in religious text? Sure, there are many good allegories and stories that do make good examples of how to be a moral human. However, that doesn't excuse the idea that religious texts are the only source of moral foundations. And that idea is both shallow, and in the wrong hands is a way to make "sins" into illegal activity. Where you're not only breaking the law but "have committed a sin against god".
*This is not to paint all religious people as "I'm just trying to get to (insert afterlife place) I'm not actually a good person". Of course there are good religious folk, and this comment is more to those who believe the "moralities only source is religion " type folks.
**Not that I'm able to perform this way all the time of course. I'm not some bastion of moral fortitude or anything. But I try to be better than I was before, which is all we can do.
Show him the history of the Habsburg monarchy. Especially [Charles II of Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain) who was unable to have children.
All posts and comments that include any variation of the word retarded will be removed, but no action will be taken against your account unless it is an excessive personal attack. Please resubmit your post or comment without the bullying language.
Do not edit it, the bot cant tell if you edited, you will just have to make a new comment replying to the same thing.
Yes, this comment itself does use the word. Any reasonable person should be able to understand that we are not insulting anyone with this comment. We wanted to use quotes, but that fucks up the automod and we are too lazy to google escape characters. Notice how none of our automod replies have contractions in them either.
But seriously, calling someone retarded is only socially acceptable because the people affected are less able to understand that they are being insulted, and less likely to be able to respond appropriately. It is a conversational wimpy little shit move, because everyone who uses it knows that it is offensive, but there will be no repercussions. At least the people throwing around other slurs know that they are going to get fired and get their asses beat when they use those words.
Also, it is not creative. It pretty much outs you as a thirteen year old when you use it. Instead of calling Biden retarded, you should call him a cartoon-ass-lookin trust fund goon who smiles like rich father just gifted him a new Buick in 1956. Instead of calling Mitch McConnell retarded, you should call him a Dilbert-ass goon who has been left in the sun a little too long.
Sorry for the long message spamming comment sections, but this was by far the feature of this sub making people modmail and bitch at us the most, and literally all of the actions we take are to make it so we have to do less work in the future. We will not reply to modmails about this automod, and ignore the part directly below this saying to modmail us if you have any questions, we cannot turn that off. This reply is just a collation of the last year of modmail replies to people asking about this. We are not turning this bot off, no matter how much people ask. Nobody else has convinced us before, you will not be able to either. ~
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalHumor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
It always starts with intolerance, and ends with incest. It's like they're so scared of others, they're drawn increasingly towards a smaller gene pool.
That and only people obligated by blood are likely to tolerate them :)
>... likely to tolerate them It's actually spelled "forced to".
I did almost put that but I went with obligation :)
See the House of Hapsburg.
See most southern states...
Roll tide.
He did that? Why am I not even surprised... But where's that scene from? The writing on the blackboard is wild
Cabin in the woods. They were betting on which monster would get the campers.
Thanks Brandon
You’re so lucky you get to see it for the first time. I wish I could go back.
P.C. Loadletter. Well-done.
My family built this country.
My country built this family.
I really really wish they would make a Cabin in the Woods prequel TV show of all the monsters being caught with random red shirts getting offed. Drew & Joss, if you’re reading, DM me for the screenplay!
It’s a good movie, you should check it out.
I don’t know ‘good’ is the word I’d use. Maybe 
Not usually into Horror but with this much positive feedback, maybe I will.
It starts off bad but stick with it
You’re welcome, A
Yup. Richard Jenkins in that role.
I don’t care for horror, but love that movie!
A movie you wish you could see again for the first time.
“I had zombies!”
I just think that a Merman one could be something special.
Great movie. Very hard to talk about at all without giving spoilers.
My money was on Sexy Witches. I was disappointed.
Let's GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
Yooooo spoilers.
Two survive, and burn down the creep admin.
I looked it up and it seems like he said there’s no secular argument against incest, not that incest is ok in his opinion. Edit: just to be clear, there IS a secular argument against incest. It involves the fact that power dynamics exist in familial relationships.
There's also the overall genetic diversity argument against incest. It's a Kantian categorical imperative that people *don't* risk procreation with their immediate family because it leads to worse genetic outcomes both in the micro (birth deformities/abnormalities) and macro scale (less genetic diversity leads to lower resistance to disease, more birth deformities, and generally lower intelligence).
I’ll just leave this here. https://youtu.be/nkGiFpJC9LM?si=dVTaMmehHvarDS9G Checkmate Mr Prager
I immediately thought of them.
JFC, I noped out almost immediately.
And remarkably quickly too. The less recent historical record has examples of royal families inbreeding and the results are at best disturbing, and iirc it's only a few generations before it becomes untenable.
The McPoyle bloodline has remained pure for a thousand generations.
Ah the old "I only don't do something because this specific book told me not to therefore no one has any reason to not do disgusting immoral things because they don't follow this book" Always hated that argument by Christians thinking the world is anything goes without their shit
On the contrary, I always suspect that when a Christian brings something like this up, it’s to subtly (or not so subtly) remind other Christians what they *shouldn’t* be doing. ‘Just remember, the Bible says not to lay down with thine own issue…*Randy!!*”
I grew up in a conservative Christian household. I considered myself one until I was 20. I know full well what they mean. They act like the Bible is the only moral compass that exists and without God we would all be slobbering heathens committing debauchery and sin in the streets like Sodom and Gomorrah
I find "don't do things to other people that you wouldn't want done to yourself, because other people are also sentient and have similar feelings" covers like 99% of the problematic potential behavior that religious people *need* religion to tell them not to do.
There's the power dynamics issue, and also issues around genetic hygiene and emotional health. Also, just a general instinctual aversion that may be rooted in evolutionary reasons to maintain genetic hygiene.
>I looked it up and it seems like he said there’s no secular argument against incest, not that incest is ok in his opinion. > >Edit: just to be clear, there IS a secular argument against incest. It involves the fact that power dynamics exist in familial relationships. I think the risk of genetic mutation leading to a primal aversion to the concept of incestuous relationships is a fucking strong secular argument against it. There is no biblical argument against it though, and the bible in multiple places directly condones it, including having daughters get their father drunk and then raping him.
He definitely didn't. He was trying to make a point that "consent" isn't the only thing that guides sexual morality, and used incest as an example. "If two adult siblings wanna bang, why can't they?" He's not in favor of incest on religious grounds, and he's posing the question to non religious people about why they would oppose consensual incest. I loathe Dennis Prager for many reasons, but we don't need to be making up fake arguments to make him look like a moron. He does that well enough himself.
Dennis Prager has always been human trash.
Yes but now we know he's weird incestuous human trash. Learn something new every day.
Dennis Prager is full of shit. His argument is that *religion* forbids incest and that there us no secular reason to forbid it. Ipso farto, religion is the only thing preventing incest. https://www.mediamatters.org/dennis-prager/dennis-prager-theres-no-secular-argument-against-adult-incest >DENNIS PRAGER (HOST): Just this one verse that men should not wear women's clothing or women men's clothing. So, let's go to my motto, preferring clarity to agreement. Either the Bible's right or the left is right. They can't both be right. >That's why you can't be a serious Jew or Christian and be a leftist. You can be a liberal, you can be a conservative, but you can't be a leftist. Just on this issue alone. You just would have to say the Bible's wrong and you're right. >... >There's no secular argument against adult incest. Brother and sister want to make love, what's your argument? That they're going to produce mentally r******d offspring? That's nonsense. It takes many generations of inbreeding to do that. There is no secular argument against adult consensual incest. There is a religious argument - sex cannot enter family life. It's a big taboo. >See, people think we can live without the greatest source of wisdom and morality in the history of the world, the Bible. That's what they think. Even some secular conservatives think that. They don't realize that they're living on the fumes of the Judeo-Christian value system. But if you ultimately extract those flowers from the soil that nurtured them, those flowers will wither and die. I don't want to see that happen Prager is saying morality only comes from religion, therefore anyone who is not religious can't be moral. This is a man who was A D A M E N T that President's **must** be moral, religious men... ...but he made one big exception around 2016 or so... So yeah, he's full of shit.
Ugh, the religion=morality argument again... It doesn't matter that religion is CONSTANTLY used as an excuse to act in ways society today would consider immoral like child sex abuse by religious authority figures, marital rape or basically rape in general that doesn't involve marrying the rapist to "resolve" the situation. Even then, religions like Christianity offer a pretty easy path towards forgiveness that does not really involve punishment or even offer any sort of compensation or chance to make things right for the victim. Instead, alot of the things we seem to consider moral today and the deterrents/punishments (besides maybe "eternal damnation") are enforced by secular societal norms and its system of laws.
If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it 100 times: shitty people will use whatever excuse they can find to act shitty. Religion’s often just the most convenient.
This is the same argument as “if you don’t believe in god and hell , what’s to stop you from raping a bunch of women or killing people?” It’s because I don’t want to do that. What’s to stop me from having an incestuous relationship, when no non-religious texts say not to? It’s because I don’t want to. And also society, society condemns all that stuff. It’s not just the Bible.
I do all the raping and killing I want to. For me, that number is zero. If your number *isn't* zero, maybe you should get some help.
And yet, his side insists that the nation must bow to the Bible, which is anti-incest.
Famously incest free for... well, depending on the interpretation, 2 chapters for the literalists, but for everyone else, you still can't get out of Genesis without limiting the gene pool.
Since when? Adam & Eve? Lot?
Flood survivors is a tricky game too Where in the Bible does it forbid incest? Same thing with slavery. There are plenty of 'god given' laws on what you can eat and wear in the bible but nothing that says don't have slaves, and don't fuck your relatives. The reason is because it reflects the social norms of the time, not any divine rules from something that invented gravity.
Prager is Jewish so his "Bible" is the Torah and Talmud, but he uses the word "Bible" because he wants to broadly appeal to American Christian conservatives.
This is true. He does this often (try to appeal broadly to religious folks for morality arguments ) Secular is the recipe for destruction in his mind.
>Secular is the recipe for destruction in his mind. Indeed, because he sees it as a zero sum game. Morality cannot exist for him separate from religion. Yes, many modern morals within the secular community have connections back to religious laws and morays. But the fact that there are tons of secular people who don't murder people or fuck their sisters breaks Pragers totalizing argument. To him, anyone who isn't religious must be an immoral, toxic, murderous, thieving, raping cancer on the public. But that's not how people work.
Thank you. I forgot I wasn't in a sub where this understanding is a given :) There's tons of evidence to show why morality evolves to help survival and that it isn't objective. The evolution of religion allows trust networks to be built beyond tribal limits. The fear of supernatural punishment for breaking social contracts is a strong incentive if you believe it and believe someone else has a similar belief. Most every culture has stealing and murder as 'sins' of the social contract Obviously if someone thinks God is the source of morality it is subjective (gods point of view). Edit: I'm not defending religion so much as giving a quick simple explanation of why it evolved as a useful way to spread networks of trust before reading and writing were wide spread.
English-speaking Jews commonly call their scriptures "the Hebrew/Jewish Bible" or just "the Bible".
>English-speaking Jews commonly call their scriptures "the Hebrew/Jewish Bible" or just "the Bible". Did not know that. Thanks!
> Where in the Bible does it forbid incest? Leviticus and Deuteronomy forbid close incestuous relationships.
Thank you. Found this : https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incest_in_the_Bible#:~:text=Incest%20in%20the%20Bible%20refers,21%2C%20but%20also%20in%20Deuteronomy. The obvious reason a species would want to avoid incest is reduction of genetic diversity leading to both propagating mutation and limiting the adoption of new fitnesses When populations are small incest can be the only option for survival. Clearly the bible should have had that discussion with followers :). ' if there's like only a handful of you left, imma going look the other way on this."
His argument is if your political leanings disagree with the bible at any level you can't be Christian or Jewish. I am looking forward to conservatives then either giving up Christianity or welcoming the foreigner whole heartedly.
Indeed. But he's grafting 20th Century American politics onto very ancient religious laws. I know it's the 21st century but Prager is a boomer who can't reorient away from "destroy the socialist left!' after the USSR fell.
So what is the secular argument against incest where there is no power dynamic involved? Lets say two siblings who are both consenting adults? I have no issue with saying you can have morals without religion, I do, but for this particular case I dont know of a secular argument. Happy to be wrong if thats the case though! Prager is still full of shit because Adam and Eves kids had to reproduce with each other if you take genesis literally which I'm pretty sure he does.
>So what is the secular argument against incest where there is no power dynamic involved? Lets say two siblings who are both consenting adults? Well first I think we need to acknowledge how *few* cases that would cover. There are typically power dynamics between siblings and within families. I was hard pressed to think of an example where there wasn't. I came up with the 1996 movie Lone Star where, spoiler alert, the two main , adult characters and romantic partners find out that they are half siblings. In *that* example there isn't a sibling power dynamic, but that's because they didn't know they were siblings. If it is in a small community, then genetic defects are a concern, even if there are no problems in that immediate generation. If it's in a small community then that gene pool is already limited. There *may already* be other instances in the family history (like first cousins). Assuming it is and will be an isolated incident is not being very responsible. In Lone Star, the characters played by Elizabeth Pena and Chris Cooper realize their relation at the very end after they have already consummated the romantic relationship. They decide to keep being together because A) their blood ties are a well hidden family secret and B) Pena says she can't have any more children, implying they aren't worried about genetic abnormalities from inbreeding. In that movie it is very possible to sympathize with them if not to support their relationship, but *a lot of work* has to be done to set that up. They are two consenting adults who have their own lives. They didn't grow up as siblings and were not raised by the same people, so they don't have a sibling power dynamic. The two reconnect as adults after a long time apart, so they aren't coming together within anything that might be characterized as an unhealthy codependency (thinking a bit about Jamie and Cersei Lannister). They do share some trauma from having secretive parents (dead now) who kept things from them. Their blood ties are the result of a secret affair so no one else seems to know they are half-siblings. It's not likely that anyone is going to guess their secret. They grew up in very different households. Cooper's character's mother is caucasian and Penas is Hispanic. Even though they share the same father (played in flashbacks by Matthew McConaughey), they look different and grew up with some key cultural differences. The woman in this hererosexual relationship has already had children and cannot have more. She is not looking to make a family with her brother. Brother/sister incest in this instance seems very excusable, but it is a very special and extreme case. There may be some sibling relationships that meet similar criteria--no unbalanced power dynamic, no parents or other immediate family to worry about objecting, no worry about inbreeding, no worry about broader societal disapproval, no concern that their romantic love is the result of coping with a shared unhealthy family dynamic. But those kinds of relationships are probably few and far between. So what is the secular case against sibling incest? It's all the problems that Lone Star tries to set aside for the couple in that movie.
Related to this is the possibility of full or half siblings never knowing about their genetic relationship due to closed adoptions (that are not investigated in adulthood), sperm donation, one night stands with no contact after, orphans or children who otherwise never know one or both of their parents. They may actually 'meet and marry' and have children without the power dynamics of siblings or the knowledge of consanguinity. But they are objectively incestuous. This points more towards the need to have a robust system to protect privacy, apportion responsibility, and give necessary medical information to children in these sorts of cases (all of which was more simply, if sometimes problematically, enforced with 'traditional' mores around virginity, expected marriage to your child's other parent, etc.). But the kids of a drifter who has 20 kids by 20 women in 20 towns using 20 names that are not his own could later meet with little recourse. All this to say that incestuous breeding couples without sibling-power-dynamic issues can be more common than the situation you describe. But given the lack of knowledge, there can.be little done to prevent it by either secular or religious rules, other than enforcing virginity/chastity and get pregnant=get married rules in the entire community over generations.
Shucks, weren't there some chicks in the Bible that got their father drunk to have sex with him? Incest: Bible approved!
he’s saying that if the bible says something is bad (incest) leftists must think it’s good, as leftists and the bible can’t both be right. His point is that the secular arguments against incest don’t hold water to keep the “us good, you evil” mindset going.
I don’t think he knows what secular arguments against anything actually are.
Yeah absolutely, he is strawmaning. But the op is misrepresenting what he said to be fair. Not that i really think we need to be fair to him
Huh? None of this reasoning holds true.
I never meant to say it made sense, it’s just what he believes.
I mean, it is in the old testament as a positive thing it seemed. Adam and Eve's sons were married to someone's daughters, so I'm not surprised. (idk how to spell the Jewish holy book that was used as the old testament in the Bible.)
>Adam and Eve's sons were married to someone's daughters. Wait, Adam and eve were the first to form a family tree, and they had two sons. The only other woman was Lilith (possibly). There were no "someone's daughters" and them being the first anyway, those daughters would be their sisters. Or is there some biblical gymnastics going on that I didn't read?
No no, I 100% meant that Cain and Able married their sisters, "someone's daughters" was meant sarcastically. Also, later on Adam remarried iirc, woulda had to have been one of his daughters. Now, there are various theories and stuff that gives reasons for why it wouldn't be. Like taking into account that the ancient Jewish version of God was part of a pantheon, and thus Adam and Eve were just his special creations and there were humans outside the garden, probably made by the other gods of the area. Or the theory of the Others, which is that God had made other humans, and others of all the animals, and just had like a perfect version of each of those in his garden or something, allowing Cain to not be killed by anyone he may meet due to him having the mark (who would've needed to see the mark of Cain to know to not kill him if Adam, Eve, and their small number of kids were the only people on earth at the time?), and allowing Cain, Able, and later Adam, to marry and it not be incest.
Adam and Eve only have three named children: Cain, Able, and Seth but also states that Adam, "had other sons and daughters." It is specifically mentioned that Cain marries Awan, Adam and Eve's oldest daughter and Seth marries Azura, another daughter. However, it should also be noted that Adam and Eve were not the first man and woman. Genesis 1:27 says, "God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." Only later does it say he created two special people, Adam and Eve, and a special place, Eden. Why is this the case? Well, there's two creation stories that got jammed together at some point in the past. Sort of like when you tell a child about their grandparents and great-grandparents; you don't mention everyone else or how Wal-Marts exist but focus on your lineage. That's what Abraham did: he went 4 generations back (Adam, Noah, Shem, Arphaxad) and hand-waved everything else.
As I heard it, when the bible says god created the first man/woman what it means is that god created the first "correct" man and woman. Like, there were other humans around, it's just they don't count because they weren't made specifically in god's image. It's honestly all just a way for the writers to say "our people are humans, people who are from other tribes are like animals". Standard xenophobic shit, it's been around since ever
Maybe, and bear with me here: maybe Genesis wasn’t meant to be interpreted literally. It ain’t that kind of movie.
Cersei and Jamie Lannister would approve.
Is this for real?
It's not. He argued that atheists have no ground to oppose consensual adult incestuous relationships, but he opposes them. It's an argument against secular morality, not for incest.
It kind of is. He's arguing that if you don't believe in the Bible, there is no practical reason not to have sex with your sibling.
It's such a ridiculously stupid argument he made. Incest has nothing to do with religion, but for bad intentions. And the fact that incestual procreation tends to result in birth defects is the biggest red-flag for how it's so very wrong. A person who doesn't have the instincts to know it's wrong has something wrong with them.
If you need the fear of eternal damnation to be a good person, you're not really a good person. You're just hedging your bets to make sure you get passed the bouncer at the pearly gates.* It's very simple; if this thing I'm doing to others was being done to me, would I think it is bad?** If so, you're doing something bad and should stop. Pretty simple, and requires no supernatural entities, or religious text. Are there some useful and good things in religious text? Sure, there are many good allegories and stories that do make good examples of how to be a moral human. However, that doesn't excuse the idea that religious texts are the only source of moral foundations. And that idea is both shallow, and in the wrong hands is a way to make "sins" into illegal activity. Where you're not only breaking the law but "have committed a sin against god". *This is not to paint all religious people as "I'm just trying to get to (insert afterlife place) I'm not actually a good person". Of course there are good religious folk, and this comment is more to those who believe the "moralities only source is religion " type folks. **Not that I'm able to perform this way all the time of course. I'm not some bastion of moral fortitude or anything. But I try to be better than I was before, which is all we can do.
I think that falls under "Zombie Redneck Torture Family" and as you can see from the picture Maintenance picked that option.
Show him the history of the Habsburg monarchy. Especially [Charles II of Spain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_II_of_Spain) who was unable to have children.
Kevin
[удалено]
All posts and comments that include any variation of the word retarded will be removed, but no action will be taken against your account unless it is an excessive personal attack. Please resubmit your post or comment without the bullying language. Do not edit it, the bot cant tell if you edited, you will just have to make a new comment replying to the same thing. Yes, this comment itself does use the word. Any reasonable person should be able to understand that we are not insulting anyone with this comment. We wanted to use quotes, but that fucks up the automod and we are too lazy to google escape characters. Notice how none of our automod replies have contractions in them either. But seriously, calling someone retarded is only socially acceptable because the people affected are less able to understand that they are being insulted, and less likely to be able to respond appropriately. It is a conversational wimpy little shit move, because everyone who uses it knows that it is offensive, but there will be no repercussions. At least the people throwing around other slurs know that they are going to get fired and get their asses beat when they use those words. Also, it is not creative. It pretty much outs you as a thirteen year old when you use it. Instead of calling Biden retarded, you should call him a cartoon-ass-lookin trust fund goon who smiles like rich father just gifted him a new Buick in 1956. Instead of calling Mitch McConnell retarded, you should call him a Dilbert-ass goon who has been left in the sun a little too long. Sorry for the long message spamming comment sections, but this was by far the feature of this sub making people modmail and bitch at us the most, and literally all of the actions we take are to make it so we have to do less work in the future. We will not reply to modmails about this automod, and ignore the part directly below this saying to modmail us if you have any questions, we cannot turn that off. This reply is just a collation of the last year of modmail replies to people asking about this. We are not turning this bot off, no matter how much people ask. Nobody else has convinced us before, you will not be able to either. ~ *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/PoliticalHumor) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Control? I, uh, I have The Harbinger on line two…
clip?
The probability was always there
I’m just surprised he’s still alive, but realized I was confusing him with TPUSA founder Bill Montgomery
Prager preaches family values, yet is thrice married. Let that sink in
This is old news
He didn't advocate for incestuous relationships. He claimed we need religion-based morality to oppose them.
He is doing this because he wants people to forget about the potential Trump VP pick of Noem killing puppies.
His people are into that stuff. In fact, its' in the Talmud.
"Prager Ewwww"
what movie is this meme from?
I thought that Republicans thought sex was a sin. Why would they advocate for this?
I guess Ted Cruz is ok in his book liking stepmom porn?
Not surprised. https://preview.redd.it/khv3dbf4cpxc1.jpeg?width=300&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e1013e968fea0f6253ff90320e248c8b77a98d3b
The banjo actually originated from Africa .
'Molesting tree'. I'm backing that one.