Tuesday, May 27, 2008 | Reason : In the News | print version

Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

by List Universe

Thanks to Thomas Connolly for the link.

http://listverse.com/religion/top-6-incestuous-relationships-in-the-bible/

Top 6 Incestuous Relationships In The Bible

Religious scholars say that God suspended the laws of incest in the early days of man in order to ensure that man spread on the earth. In the words of the commentators of the Douay Rheims Bible: "God [dispensed] with such marriages in the beginning of the world, as mankind could not otherwise be propagated." Despite that, these tales are not all simply matters of procreation - particularly item 1. So, here is a list of 6 of the more questionable relationships in the Bible.

6. Cain and his Wife

And Cain went out from the face of the Lord, and dwelt as a fugitive on the earth, at the east side of Eden. And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city, and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch. [Genesis 4:16-17]

Cain was the first born son of Adam and Eve, and Abel was the second. In Genesis 4 we read how Cain kills his brother and is sent east of Eden where he marries a woman and "lays" with her. Because Adam and Eve were the first humans - from whom all people come - Cain's wife was his sister - and, consequently, all of the early Biblical relationships were incestuous (with the exception of Adam and Eve). Cain, incidentally, was the guy that caused so much trouble for the Mormon's who believed that the cursed "Mark of Cain" meant black skin, leading them to forbid blacks from entering the Mormon priesthood (God "revealed" that they were allowed to let black skinned people in to the priesthood in 1978). You can read more about that blunder here. In the image above we see Cain killing his brother Abel.

5. Abraham and Sara

Howbeit, otherwise also she is truly my sister, the daughter of my father, and not the daughter of my mother, and I took her to wife. And after God brought me out of my father's house, I said to her: Thou shalt do me this kindness: In every place, to which we shall come, thou shalt say that I am thy brother. [Genesis 20:12-13]

Abraham married his half sister Sara in Ur. The King of Gerara took her from Abraham and God sent him a dream to tell him that he would be destroyed for taking a woman who already had a husband (God approved of the marriage between the brother and sister). The King returned Sara to Abraham and they remained together as a couple until she died at the age of 127. Incidentally, Abraham died 38 years later at the ripe old age of 175.

4. Nachor and Melcha

And Thare lived seventy years, and begot Abram, and Nachor, and Aran. And these are the generations of Thare: Thare begot Abram, Nachor, and Aran. And Aran begot Lot. And Aran died before Thare his father, in the land of his nativity in Ur of the Chaldees. And Abram and Nachor married wives: the name of Abram's wife was Sarai: and the name of Nachor's wife, Melcha, the daughter of Aran, father of Melcha, and father of Jescha. [Genesis 11:26-29]

This is one of those complex "generations" quotes that are found throughout the early stages of the Bible, but if you pay close attention you can see that Nachor (Abraham's brother) married Melcha (his niece). It is phrases like those above which make it so difficult to read the Bible cover to cover. Frankly, these parts of the Bible make Proust's "In Remembrance of Things Past" read like a Doctor Seuss book!

3. Lot and his Daughters

And the elder said to the younger Our father is old, and there is no man left on the earth, to come in unto us after the manner of the whole earth. Come, let us make him drunk with wine, and let us lie with him, that we may preserve seed of our father. And they made their father drink wine that night: and the elder went in and lay with her father: but he perceived not neither when his daughter lay down, nor when she rose up. And the next day the elder said to the younger: Behold I lay last night with my father, let us make him drink wine also to night, and thou shalt lie with him, that we may save seed of our father. They made their father drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went in, and lay with him: and neither then did he perceive when she lay down, nor when she rose up. So the two daughters of Lot were with child by their father. [Genesis 19:31-36]

It doesn't really get much more blatant than that. The two daughters had sex with their father, Lot, in order to preserve his family line. Incidentally, this all happened shortly after they had fled from Soddom and Gomorrah which was destroyed by God for its immorality - ironic?. After the events described above, Lot had no memory of it (maybe it was the liquor) and nine months later the daughters gave birth to two sons, Moab (father of the Moabites), and Ammon (father of the Ammonites).

2. Amram and Jochabed

The sons of Merari: Moholi and Musi. These are the kindreds of Levi by their families. 20 And Amram took to wife Jochabed his aunt by the father's side: and she bore him Aaron and Moses. And the years of Amram's life were a hundred and thirty-seven. [Exodus 6:19-20]

This is the family history of Moses - the guy who lead the Jews out of Egypt and later was given the ten commandments (which were not actually 10 commandments - more on that here). Jochabed was Moses' Great-aunty Mom.

1. Amnon and Thamar

And it came to pass after this, that Amnon the son of David loved the sister of Absalom the son of David, who was very beautiful, and her name was Thamar. And he was exceedingly fond of her, so that he fell sick for the love of her: for as she was a virgin, he thought it hard to do any thing dishonestly with her. [II Kings 13:1-2 ] And Thamar came to the house of Amnon her brother: but he was laid down: and she took meal and tempered it: and dissolving it in his sight she made little messes. And taking what she had boiled, she poured it out, and set it before him, but he would not eat: and Amnon said: Put out all persons from me. And when they had put all persons out, Amnon said to Thamar: Bring the mess into the chamber, that I may eat at thy hand. And when she had presented him the meat, he took hold of her, and said: Come lie with me, my sister. She answered him: Do not so, my brother, do not force me: for no such thing must be done in Israel. Do not thou this folly. [II Kings 13:8-12] But he would not hearken to her prayers, but being stronger overpowered her and lay with her. [II Kings 13:14]

Our final item is not just a case of incest - it is a case of incestuous rape! Amnon fell in love with his sister, Thomar, and was counseled by a crafty man to trick her in to having sex with him. He followed the bad advice and when Thomar tried to defend herself, he raped her. At least justice was ultimately done as Thomar's other brother, Absalom, killed Amnon two years later in vengeance. Let that be a lesson to us all!

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1. Comment #185156 by Dhamma on May 27, 2008 at 5:56 am

But Yahweh loves them all!

Other Comments by Dhamma

2. Comment #185157 by Godfree Gordon on May 27, 2008 at 6:00 am

God must have been busy in Tasmania too.

Other Comments by Godfree Gordon

3. Comment #185158 by Laurie Fraser on May 27, 2008 at 6:00 am

Oh yum, it saves me reading anymore Jilly Cooper novels. So much lust!

(Pathetic, isn't it?)

Other Comments by Laurie Fraser

4. Comment #185164 by Dhamma on May 27, 2008 at 6:07 am

Hmmm.. They say in the text Adam and Eve were not incestuous. But if Eve is really only Adam's rib, then she must share his complete DNA, right? Won't get more incestuous than that!

(Should be noted that I know hardly nothing of the bible, so I may be wrong)

Other Comments by Dhamma

5. Comment #185165 by j.mills on May 27, 2008 at 6:07 am

And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived, and brought forth Henoch: and he built a city, and called the name thereof by the name of his son Henoch.

Kinda keen, Cain, ain't he? Building an entire city when the world population is, like, six?

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6. Comment #185166 by Vinelectric on May 27, 2008 at 6:08 am

And God said unto his prophets: Incest (Insist) on your followers to preserve my chosen race by all means...

Scribal typos, happens all the time, don't you all start to act all excited. And don't forget the symbolism. Lot's daughter sleeping with their father means that..urrmm..you won't understand the theolgoy anyway...so why waste time with you

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7. Comment #185167 by Ygern on May 27, 2008 at 6:09 am

Hmm. If memory serves Cain's wife was from the Land of Nod - ie no relation whatsoever of the Adam's Family. (apostrophe intentional!)

Ironically the Land of Nod proves that Adam and Eve were not the only humans on earth in spite of what Genesis claims but a few paragraphs earlier.

Genesis 4:16 in fact (after googling it!)

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8. Comment #185171 by Cartomancer on May 27, 2008 at 6:19 am

I can understand the use of incest as a literary trope to induce horror and revulsion - some of the greatest Greek tragic literature uses it masterfully - but I am at a loss to explain precisely why it seems so prevalent, and so unremarkable, in works of ancient semitic fiction. It seems that the Graeco-Roman world had a far more pronounced and visceral dislike of incest than did the ancient semitic and middle eastern world. I can only put this down to a more family-oriented social structure, centred on the oikos or familia, in the former as opposed to a more prevalent tribal group mentality in the latter.

Just goes to show that, wherever our late antique, medieval and modern dislike of incest came from, it certainly wasn't the bible...

I am also highly amused by the Sodom and Gomorrah story. It forms a wonderful corrective for dousing the ardour of firebrand street preachers (when you don't have a drink to hand to throw over them). "So... homosexuality is wrong and evil, but the premeditated incestuous drug-rape of the homeless and recently bereaved is perfectly okay then? Sounds like a wonderful moral system to me..."

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9. Comment #185172 by Laurie Fraser on May 27, 2008 at 6:21 am

Ah yes, the land of Nod...that's the one that had me buggered when I was nine. How the fuck did THEY get there?

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10. Comment #185181 by Cartomancer on May 27, 2008 at 6:42 am

The standard explanation for the existence of other people in the Land of Nod is that Adam and Eve had been rather busier with their grubby heterosexual copulations than the explicit story in genesis suggests. Only three children of the randy protoplastic pair are named in the bible - Kain, Abel and Seth - but theologians have speculated that their filthy man-on-woman dalliances would have spawned hundreds if not thousands of second generation Adamite sprogs, given the unnatural length of their lives.

It was, of course, out of the question to have god create additional, non-Adamic, people in the same way as he made the first one. That would mean there were people running around who weren't infected by original sin, and hence didn't need to pay the church money for its alleviation. That would never do. Many catholic christological writings (particularly those of Anselm of Aosta) make much of the fact that Jesus was not of Adamic birth, being both an eternal god and virgin-born (though, paradoxically, also of the line of David...) and thus free from the taint.

Honestly. If god had wanted society to run properly he should have only created one gender and done reproduction through some sort of secure online shopping arrangement. Then it wouldn't matter who had sex with whom, because nobody would be related in the first place.

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11. Comment #185185 by donmak on May 27, 2008 at 7:01 am

I would love to send this to my extremely religious family members. But as you know, they have this all explained rather easily.

THEY say the reason incest was tolerated then was because there weren't as many people on the earth so the only people they could screw was family members.

THEY also say that it didn't result in weird birth defects and retardation because humans were still so close to perfection. You know, since only a generation or so ago they were supposedly "perfect" and had not sinned.

THEY say the most important thing was to fulfill God's command to "become fruitful and fill the earth", so incest was only a minor quibble, eventually becoming socially unacceptable only after the human population had grown sufficiently to do away with incest.

Haha. I know. Don't shoot the messenger. I only report the news.

dm

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12. Comment #185188 by BillySands on May 27, 2008 at 7:06 am

Religious scholars say that God suspended the laws of incest in the early days of man in order to ensure that man spread on the earth. In the words of the commentators of the Douay Rheims Bible: "God [dispensed] with such marriages in the beginning of the world, as mankind could not otherwise be propagated."

What pish. God could have made several people. Also, if god is perfect - and his laws are perfect, then surely allowing something (or bringing into being something) that is imperfect makes him imperfect.

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13. Comment #185194 by danny_z on May 27, 2008 at 7:19 am

ohhhh so that's where all the dumb people came from.... and that is why the fruit of knowledge didn't work!!

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14. Comment #185196 by Stella on May 27, 2008 at 7:21 am

What about Noah?!?!?!?!

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15. Comment #185202 by HunterZolomon on May 27, 2008 at 7:30 am

Honestly. If god had wanted society to run properly he should have only created one gender and done reproduction through some sort of secure online shopping arrangement.

LOL! Oh we'll get there sooner or later...

Other Comments by HunterZolomon

16. Comment #185214 by Pattern Seeker on May 27, 2008 at 8:02 am

And let's not forget the gay 'menage a trois' between God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost(whooooooo) known as the Trinity.

I'm sure there is some sick fuck somewhere who uses shit like this to justify the abuse (rape, incest) of their own children. Oh yeah! Can you say FLDS anyone?

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17. Comment #185219 by Tyler Durden on May 27, 2008 at 8:12 am

1. Amnon and Thamar

I had not read about this one, heard about the other five.

How can the pious Christians defend this sick, twisted behaviour???

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18. Comment #185244 by Stew282 on May 27, 2008 at 8:57 am

And...many churches, even to this day, still burn incest in front of the congregation!!!

Don't forget to check in on http://stewton.myminicity.com/ -it's coming along nicely, but work on the ice-palace still hasn't started.

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19. Comment #185248 by irate_atheist on May 27, 2008 at 9:03 am

17. Comment #185219 by Tyler Durden -

How can the pious Christians defend this sick, twisted behaviour???

Theology. The cure for all known thought processes.

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20. Comment #185252 by DavidJGrossman on May 27, 2008 at 9:10 am

Great! Just what we need; *more* inbreeding in the Bible Belt.

- Dave

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21. Comment #185257 by BillySands on May 27, 2008 at 9:24 am

Oh, and let's not forget god and his mum (mary)

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22. Comment #185260 by Tyler Durden on May 27, 2008 at 9:42 am

Billy,

Is the offical line from the Vatican that "Adam and Eve" did not actually exist, and so the story is just allegorical? I thought the Vatican approved and accepted evolution by Natural Selection?

I was approached by some Christians while passing by their church the other day, they were evangelizing, and they were convinced "Adam and Eve" existed, and the world was only 6,000 years old.

I did my best to educate them, but after an hour they were sick of my logic, reason, science, psychology, biology, and biblical knowledge that they ran back inside their church - same old excuse from the theists: "we have to go" :-)

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23. Comment #185262 by Border Collie on May 27, 2008 at 9:49 am

Silly, silly, silly ...

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24. Comment #185266 by Bandit 19 on May 27, 2008 at 10:01 am

Chapter 3 of Genisis gods "difficult" third series...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E_EXqdJ4L7I

As I sit here in the Middle East listening to the "quaint" call to pryor (blasted out of a speaker approaching 90 decibles about 50 foot from where the infidels work) I can't help but smile that RD's website has not yet been found and blocked by the internet morality police. Of course they marry their cousins around here so maybe they are busy shuffling through their family album for potential dates.

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25. Comment #185267 by dpsych on May 27, 2008 at 10:02 am

"Religious scholars say that God suspended the laws of incest in the early days of man in order to ensure that man spread on the earth"

Well shucks, Why not just make more people. Humm how not very omniscient of him

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26. Comment #185279 by Diacanu on May 27, 2008 at 10:59 am

Cartomancer-

I am also highly amused by the Sodom and Gomorrah story. It forms a wonderful corrective for dousing the ardour of firebrand street preachers

And all of these stories, particularly Amnon and Thamar make a good corrective for people who say we get our morality from the Bible.

Because, if you'll notice, hardly anyone WITHIN the bible gets their morality FROM the bible, they just up and do whatever, and god either gives a shit, or he doesn't.

Amnon rapes Thamar, god doesn't say or do anything.
Absalom kills Amnon, god doesn't say or do anything.

Did the Ten Commandments help during all this at all?

Not really.

Just a bunch of humans doing stuff, just like life.
Yet, in real life, we're supposed to rifle through this book for instruction.

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27. Comment #185290 by mikecbraun on May 27, 2008 at 11:25 am

I know it will have been touched upon, but the rational question just begs to be asked again: why was incest the only way that humans could spread on Earth? If an all-powerful God could create two humans, why could He not create a whole bunch that could breed new humans without any incest occurring? Just when you think the ideas that come from religion can't get any more idiotic... I feel like Michael Corleone from Godfather III (inferior, yes; good quote, also yes). "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in!"

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28. Comment #185301 by Diacanu on May 27, 2008 at 11:40 am

mikecbraun-

why was incest the only way that humans could spread on Earth?

So that all of humanity would carry the mark of original sin, so God could keep holding his petty grudge, so christians up to today could hold onto their nasty worldview that humans are pieces of shit that need to be kept in line with cultish bullshit stories.

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29. Comment #185303 by Bobington on May 27, 2008 at 11:45 am

In all fairness, who among us has not gotten drunk and had sex with his daughters?

Oh wait...

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30. Comment #185320 by mikecbraun on May 27, 2008 at 12:41 pm

Diacanu-
Suddenly it's all so clear. Thanks! But the answers bring up one more question: why didn't God skip all the subtle insults and mucky-muck and just mold us out of feces? Out with it, man!

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31. Comment #185325 by scottishgeologist on May 27, 2008 at 1:00 pm

Love that Lot story. Girls got their dad so pissed that they were able to do the deed with him without him knowing. And not remembering it either.

In which case he was SERIOUSLY sozzled. Yet still managed to get a hard on and presumably fire his pink pop gun...

So no "brewers droop" in those days. Praise the sweet name of the Lord!!!

Anywy, good version of the tale here:

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/the_seduction_of_lot/gn19_30.html

This one is good:

http://www.thebricktestament.com/genesis/the_seduction_of_lot/gn19_35b.html

Reverse cowgirl? Sweet!

SG

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32. Comment #185331 by BillySands on May 27, 2008 at 1:47 pm

Tyler, you may be right about the catholics - next they will be telling me that god is metaphorical :-)

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33. Comment #185341 by phil rimmer on May 27, 2008 at 2:38 pm

Thank God there is none of that filthy Greek Oedipal stuff.

No wait...Oedipus and Jocasta got their comeuppance (so to speak).

Pretty moral by comparison those Greeks....

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34. Comment #185346 by JernJane on May 27, 2008 at 2:50 pm

They don't. They know very well that it's wrong. Just because it's in the Bible doesn't mean Christians think that it's right.

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35. Comment #185360 by UncleJJ on May 27, 2008 at 3:42 pm

I don't know why we waste our time discussing this load of bronze age fairy stories as though it had any relevance to anything today. What a pity we can't just consign it all to the dustbin and get on with tackling the real problems that real people have rather than this made up drivel. The real world is so much more interesting than this imaginary nonsense.

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36. Comment #185361 by Nails on May 27, 2008 at 3:49 pm

I always took the story of Lot and his daughters to be the other way around, he got drunk and raped them.
And, for reasons of clarity (because they had just been rescued from the most immoral city the world has ever seen) the blame lay on the girls, much as it does with many other biblical stories.

Sick, from start to finish.

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37. Comment #185363 by BillySands on May 27, 2008 at 4:01 pm

Of course, the weird thing about Lot was that god thought he was righteous enough to save - no surprise when you consider that god pumped his own mum

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38. Comment #185369 by acs on May 27, 2008 at 4:15 pm

With the geneaologies - what I want to know is how Adam comes out of the Garden of Eden and knows how to calculate years? I know when I leave a job they usually give me a parting gift, something small, a calendar maybe?

Even God is a cheap employer!!!

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39. Comment #185443 by ghuckin on May 27, 2008 at 8:09 pm

It's a fairy story, people! Why are you wasting so much time analysing it as though it actually happened. Or is it you DO believe it actually happened?

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40. Comment #185462 by JimJ on May 27, 2008 at 9:26 pm

I wish someone would make a movie and call it "The Uncensored Scriptures" or something like that. Make it like a big biblical epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur, but instead of the run of the mill stories like Jesus and Moses it would focus on shit like this.

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41. Comment #185464 by MaxD on May 27, 2008 at 9:31 pm

Ghuckin,
It is important to highlight shit like this for the people who actually think that the fairy stories actually did happen. Some people actually think the bible has some morality tales in it.

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42. Comment #185471 by LeeC on May 27, 2008 at 10:03 pm

JimJ

I wish someone would make a movie and call it "The Uncensored Scriptures" or something like that. Make it like a big biblical epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur, but instead of the run of the mill stories like Jesus and Moses it would focus on shit like this.

That would be a great movie but R-rated stuff though so the kids cannot watch it.

Lee

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43. Comment #185502 by Patrick McArdle on May 28, 2008 at 12:50 am

"I wish someone would make a movie and call it "The Uncensored Scriptures" or something like that. Make it like a big biblical epic in the vein of The Ten Commandments or Ben-Hur, but instead of the run of the mill stories like Jesus and Moses it would focus on shit like this."

It was called "Life of Brian".

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44. Comment #185535 by bachfiend on May 28, 2008 at 3:18 am

I think I read in Jared Diamond's "The Third Chimpanzee", that most animals have a built-in mechanism to avoid incest. For example, male mice are imprinted to prefer female mice that sort of look like their mothers or female litter mates, but not too closely (how their tiny minds can recognise the difference is beyond me; all mice look exactly the same to me). It explains why there are geographical variations in humans. Swedes tend to be fair, blond and blue-eyed not because the lack of sunshine favoured less melanin to avoid vitamin D deficiency, but because the small numbers of Homo sapiens who went to Scandanavia 4000 years ago were fair, blond and blue-eyed, and were favoured as partners over darker individuals.

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45. Comment #185538 by Mitchell Gilks on May 28, 2008 at 3:29 am

What is the point of this exactly? Beyond the "yuck" factor, what is the secular argument against incest between two consenting adults?

The best one I've heard is that there is a higher change of genetic defects, but then shouldn't all persons that have a risk of having children with genetic defects be barred from being able to reproduce? And isn't that a form of eugenics?

I think that it's pretty gross, and it seems everyone else on here does as well, beyond that however, why is it morally wrong?

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46. Comment #185551 by mordacious1 on May 28, 2008 at 4:06 am

Mitchell

Because it usually involves a parent doing it with a child who doesn't have a choice. I heard of a case, Arkansas I believe, where two adults, brother and sister got married, and no one made a big deal of it.

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47. Comment #185578 by the great teapot on May 28, 2008 at 5:43 am

Reminds me of a favourite joke of mine
"Woody, how's the wife and Kid?"
"Oh she's fine"
(Not quite incest I know but what the hell)

Mitchell I am with you on this one. "Immoral" appeals to emotion and prejudice. The article specifically quotes cases of incest not just rape.
Incest is seen by most as repellent,except of course in Norfolk and Arkansas.

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48. Comment #185591 by Mitchell Gilks on May 28, 2008 at 6:47 am

46. Comment #185551 by mordacious1

That is irrelevent for two reasons. One, I specified "consenting adults", and two, it is not more wrong when a child is raped by a relative. The child rape aspect is the thing that's wrong, not the incest aspect. Unless you plan to form an argument why incestuous child rape is "more wrong" then I fail to see the relevence, and am slightly annoyed that you ignored the fact that I specified "consenting adults".

Other Comments by Mitchell Gilks

49. Comment #185600 by Mitchell Gilks on May 28, 2008 at 7:00 am

47. Comment #185578 by the great teapot

I think there is a clear evolutionary advantage to thinking that way. The more diverse the genes, the healthier the offspring. I remember reading some where that children of mixed race are far less likely to inherit genetic defects that are prevailant in either race.

So, I think that if you care about the health of your children, you should really look for some genetic diversity in a mate. It would however be inconsistent, and strange to bar incest for this reason, yet allow other people with a high risk of having children with genetic defects to reproduce. Making it clear that it isn't the risks to the children that is being considered, but instead people's general dislike of the idea of incest.

Though I'm not entirely sure what I think about certain forms of eugenics to tell you the truth. I find it conceivable that I could be convinced that attempting to remove genetic defects in the population like this is perhaps the right thing to do. I just have not yet been convinced, and I'm not sure if it is worth the suspension of someone's rights to repoduce.

I do think that the subject is open ended at the very least.

In any case whoever, after an individual was willing to get sterilized, there then would be no reason why they couldn't procede to enguage in sexual activities with a close relative.

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50. Comment #185773 by FSMTeapot on May 28, 2008 at 1:33 pm

Sorry if someone has said this already, but isn't Amnon and Thamar is 2 Samuel 13, not 2 Kings 13? The article uses some wierd Douay-Rheims Bible which I've never seen before.

2 Kings 13 is all about Jehoahaz King of Israel.

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