Interesting read. I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with using natural law as a source of moral reasoning. In particular, Lewis' characterization of the male sexual drive as being far beyond it's natural purpose is flawed.
A sexual act, of course, does not always lead to a child (even ignoring contraception). On top of that, there was an era not so long ago when infant mortality was much higher, as was death of the mother in childbirth. It seems to me that there could have been a time when every woman having the most children possible was in fact the strategy best suited to survival - which I take to mean "natural".
Another interesting tidbit from nature - so far the only animal known to engage in exclusive homosexuality in the same kind of numbers as men are rams. It would be interesting to clone a gay sheep and see if the clones are also gay. It would provide an invaluable tool in understanding the origins of homosexuality. You can find a tidbit here - http://isteve.blogspot.com/2005/...people-
gay.html
Oddly, this idea has not caught on at all. You'd think such a straightforward test of the origin of male homosexuality would be popular.
Cloning is much too expensive to be used for experiments on the origins of homosexuality -- whose theoretical basis would have to be thought out much more clearly than seems to be achieved at present. Identical twins offer a more proximate field of study. In any case even if one cloned ram was as homosexual as the ram it was cloned from this would prove nothing, since environmental factors could still be what determines its sexuality. You would have to clone the same ram many times to have an inductive proof of genetically determined homosexuality.
Rams are said above to "engage in homosexuality" -- this is a rather nasty expression, and confuses the issue. The question of exclusive homosexual attraction is what should be studied. Dog owners sometimes claim that their dogs are clearly homosexual in that sense.
Certainly you'd want to do about 10 rams. How expensive is it?
"I'm still not sure how comfortable I am with using natural law as a source of moral reasoning."
The Church has been using natural law that way for about 2,000 years.
"In particular, Lewis' characterization of the male sexual drive as being far beyond its natural purpose is flawed."
How so? The natural purpose of the human male sex instinct is to aid and enable procreation of children and the fostering of loving union with his wife, the children's mother, which is in turn a boon for the children, the mother, and the father. But the human male sex instinct is not directed solely at its natural purpose, but instead has an inordinate tendency for copulation with multiple partners, often with no intent to procreate or to build a safe environment for the nurturing of children. The human male sex instinct is often not even directed toward copulation, but is prone to the perversion of self-arousal or the perversion of using animals or inanimate objects or even the male human rectum as substitutes for natural copulation. Where then is the flaw in Lewis' characterisation?
I get the feeling that you don't quite know what the Church means by "natural law."
Jordan,
I get that feeling too. I was trying too illustrate that natural utility does not appear to tell you anything about morality.
To answer your argument - none of the things you listed are "bad" from a natural perspective. Nature does not know anything about morality. How does masturbation or fornication hinder survival? Do they hinder procreation? To make any value judgments about these things, you need to appeal to an outside source of moral standards.
So explain to me, what is "natural law"?
Jacob,
Thanks for reading my piece. As always, I appreciate your interactions. As always, too, I wish I had more time to do you justice.
Just a comment. I think you're on to something here about the concept of 'nature'. I think Protestants and Catholics (like Aquinas) use 'nature' a bit differently. I think Protestants tend to think of 'nature' in the sense of Alexander Pope ("whatever is, is right"), as referring to whatever occurs in nature. But, of course, that can't teach us anything about right or wrong. There is even a biblical antecedent for this sense of 'nature' in the Pauline reference to the 'natural man', meaning one's 'fallen nature.' Certainly that can't be taken as normative in any sense.
However, Aquinas (and Catholics generally) take 'nature' in a more positive sense as referring to creation as God made it and originally intended it. That sense of nature is by no means obliterated by original sin, but is still clearly discernible. Hence, the example that we pour gasoline into automobiles, not onto tomato plants, because we discern what the nature of each thing is and what it needs to prosper. Etc.
To further what Mr. Blosser said, Jacob, natural law as used in this context has nothing to do with the laws of physics and chemistry and what you are thinking of as "nature."
The idea of natural law as used in discussions of theology and morality is that there is a naturally right way for human beings to behave which is appropriate to their true nature and is the best for them and furthermore that knowledge of this law is available to all human beings without divine revelation, although their ability to perceive it is often darkened by sin. Their true nature would not mean their instintual nature or the sum of their biological drives and needs, but would mean their nature as a rational being created by God with an immortal soul.
So we can say that murder is forbidden by natural law because we can see that a rational being given his life by God ought not to have that life taken away from him..and secondarily because we observe that societies everywhere forbid murder and that government and commerce and all aspects of daily life could not be carried out if everyone were living in fear. Someone using the idea of nature which you were using would simply observe that human beings kill each other quite frequently, and say that is according to nature.
Discussions of this sort cannot be engaged in with any clarity if these two ideas of what nature, human nature, and natural law, are, are not carefully separated and clarified.
Susan Peterson
The heritage of natural law has been obscured above all by biologistic fetichism. This was embarrassingly clear in the Schiavo controversy, in which centuries of natural law reasoning were trashed. See also http://www.guardian.co.uk/
commen...1739244,00.html
Which part of natural law asserts the right of one person to kill another who is defenseless? Please take this as a serious question since I am not a specialist (or close) in Natural Law?
The right of one person to kill another who is defenseless?
If you are referring to abortion, there is apparently such a right in the case of ectopic pregnancies and the law of double effect -- even if the embryo is clearly recognized as a person.
However, at what stage is the embryo a human person? The Church's view on this fluctuates in parallel with science.
The Church always believed that capital punishment, the taking of a person's life who is defenseless, was countenanced by natural law. A development in teaching on this point may be underway.
Can one take the life of an innocent and defenseless person in self-defense?
http://mliccione.blogspot.com/20...ity-of-
god.html
Fr.
When one is engaged in self defense, even if it rises to the level of killing, it is quite obvious that the person killed was not innocent and I question whether you could term them defenseless. He is the aggressor and is engaged in attempting to harm or harming the victim (he is not the victim).
It is clear from your lines of argument that you are not a theologian, as I bet your fancy yourself, but a nihilist. You attempt to challenge and destroy belief in what is good, true and right.
I hope no one is taken in by your deceptive trickery. I feel sorry for you.
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